I split the best of Zemy's banners capes between myself and Cali.

"Why do I need to wear these gaudy things?" She asked as she pulled several banner-capes over herself.

"They're a shield against cursed things like Jotuns," I explained.

"Why didn't you put them on me earlier?" She demanded.

"I didn't think about it," I shrugged. "And Stormy didn't tell me about it. In a way it was good that that thing got into your head."

"What? Good how?" She demanded.

"If we know the plans of our enemy we can work around them," I said.

"Do you have a plan for anything?" Cali demanded. "All I've seen you do all day is write nonsense in that leather book of yours."

"If I had a plan, I wouldn't tell you about it," I shrugged.

She squinted at me.

"Yaga Grandhilda told me that speaking of dark creatures somehow notifies them of your existence," I said. "It therefore stands to reason that we shouldn't be mentioning them by name. Let's call the thing that invaded your dream a... George instead."

"Why George?" Cali sputtered.

"It's a mundane-sounding male name where I’m from," I shrugged. “Nobody will suspect anything if we say that you had a dream about our lovely ol' uncle George!”

The Felix Arcanicx eyed me if I was a bit bonkers.

We emerged from the pub and went into Cali’s Sleigh, pulling out anything and everything of value. Cali quickly described everything she had and I catalogued it in a list in the Codex:

* A set of enchanted lockpicks that could open any non-magical lock

* Farcast orb which allowed Cali to track people even from a great distance as long as they touched the orb before leaving

* Several vials of various basic healing potions and acids, some of them now broken.

* A semi-shattered box containing rare spices and herbs from the South and East

* An Avoidoscope that pointed to the most magically dangerous direction to avoid running into bandits or Star-Eaters on the road

* A Stormscope which predicted the weather

* A pair of boots that muffled the wearer's footsteps, which I promptly pulled on myself.

* An invisi-cloak that muted smells and changed colour to match its surroundings, which I also put on myself.

* A quill that never ran out of ink.

* A set of weighted dice that always rolled in the user's favor.

* A deck of cards that could predict minor future events when shuffled by someone who had a talent in precognition.

* A flute that could play music on its own.

* Various collectible coins from various regions of Thornwild.

* A set of unbreakable glass vials for storing volatile substances.

* A necklace that warmed the user when it was cold.

* A set of six pairs of connected Voicecast runestones.

* Several sets of magisteel tools.

* A lockbox with hundreds of magic pearl-stones, jewellery, glass beads, gold and silver.

* Various foodstuffs squished in the now broken coldbox

* Luxurious Textiles and Cali's extra clothes and toiletries

* A bunch of books from Iridium

* Gloves that allowed the wearer to climb on walls.

According to Cali, some of the items were curious trinkets from the East.

They didn’t require Star-Shards, instead operating on pearl-stones, which a Sorceress or even a mortal girl with enough talent could slowly charge by pushing their Aura through them.

“Why are so many items here theft-related?” I asked, noting a pattern.

“In case I had to break into Skulldug to get information about a Champion,” Cali explained. “In the end I simply won the auction and bought the Prophecy about you, so I didn’t need any of it. The information was... excessively expensive."

"Nice to know that I cost a lot," I commented.

Cali frowned, clearly disappointed that she wasn't going to parade me as her overpriced Champion in Iridium.

“Why don’t more people use these pearl-stones?” I wondered, observing one of the pearls in my fingers with the Astralscope, noticing the very slight yellow-gold radiance emanating from it.

“They’re expensive to buy and a pain in the ass to charge,” Cali shrugged. “Unlike Star-Shards there’s only so much magic they can hold in them. For example, the Voicecast stone can only contact its partner stone once a week at best. Same with the quill, boots, flute, lock-picks and cloak - the essence pearl runs dry about after an hour of use."

“Why aren’t these handy devices powered by Star-Shards?” I asked.

“Because I didn’t get them in Iridium,” Cali blushed ever so slightly. “You could say that they’re… a tad illegal. Not something that a noble Sorceress would ordinarily carry on her.”

“I see,” I said, pondering whether I could perhaps improve on their design by submerging the pearls in my domain. “Can Star-Seekers eat the pearls too?”

“No,” Cali shook her head. “The pearls aren’t compatible with reinforcement blood magic on the account that they will just explode, shatter and decay if too much magic runs through them."

“So where do these magic pearls come from?” I asked her.

“Indarra, the Eastern City of the Castian Ring,” Cali said. “The pearls come from the coral reefs there. Fishing them is quite dangerous too due to the great leviathans and their brood that feed on the local coral-life.”

“Leviathans?”

“Giant Beasts of the sea, land, or sky,” Cali explained. “There was one of them, in that book of yours–the Ouroboros, ‘a giant serpent which sustains itself on its own blood, the Divine Beast of the Laima people’. The book’s wrong about that though, the Leviathans simply feed on the radiance of the Wormwood Star that permeates the Azure Ocean. It's why they grow so big."

“Right. Well, let’s get everything into the pub while it’s still early,” I said. “We have a witch to meet today.”

----------------------------------------

After I finished sealing the valuables in the floor, we left the pub again, this time with Stormy leading the way, taking us to the depths of the Shalish wood.

"You're certain that she knows where she's going?" Cali asked, eyeing the black kitten marching in front of us.

"She hasn't steered me wrong yet," I shrugged. “Say how far is nine thousand Nordstaii steps time-wise?”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“About one Iridian hour,” Cali said.

“And how many Iridian hours are in a day?” I asked.

“Thirteen hours in the day,” Cali replied. “And thirteen hours in the night.”

“So the day-night cycle is 26 hours,” I thought. “Why thirteen?”

“Thirteen is a sacred magical number,” Cali explained.

We chatted more about things, walking forward as tendrils of pale, silver fog slowly snaked across the dead forest all around us.

“So,” I asked. “What’s Skulldug like?”

Cali's ears twitched at the name. "Skulldug Isle is... well, it's unlike anywhere else in Thornwild," she said. "It's a Northern place of ancient power, where the veil between our world and the Astral Abyss is very thin."

I listened, keeping an eye out for potential beasts, but the forest around us was dead silent.

"The entire island is surrounded by a perpetual supercell storm spiral," Cali explained. "They say it's Amari's doing - her way of harnessing the power of the Wormwood Star shard that fell there long ago. Lightning strikes down any man, woman or beast who dares to enter into her great Citadel uninvited. Invitees are given a runestone which permits them to bypass the great Thunder-Ward.”

“Sounds like a decent security system. Sort of like your Sleigh, but bigger,” I commented. “How do you get invited?”

“To get invited, one must prove that they’re a hunter of great renown,” Cali said.

“Oh?” I eyed her curiously.

Cali’s white ears drooped.

“I paid to get in,” she said. “The Liesl family is one of the wealthiest in Iridium.”

I contemplated whether gold could effectively be produced with magic with some kind of transmutation process.

“Skulldug Citadel was founded four thousand, one hundred and one years ago, its towers carved from the bones of a felled sky-leviathan,” Cali chatted on, clearly embarrassed about her lack of success in hunting down Champions. “The locals boast that Amari had killed the leviathan herself when she was just a young Sorceress... but if that were true, then she'd be one of the eldest women on Thornwild."

"Does she look old?" I asked.

"No," Cali shook her head. "She looks like she's my age, around nineteen. They say that the power of Skulldug Isle grants her eternal youth."

I nodded, trying to picture Skulldug as a possible domain ruled by an immortal four-thousand-year-old witch. "And the people there? What are they like?"

Cali's tail swished thoughtfully. "Fierce. Proud. Barbarous. Utterly devoted to Amari. They call themselves the Hunters of Storms, and they're some of the most skilled killers in all of Thornwild. Some say that Amari doesn't see the future at all, that she simply has ears everywhere. She's got worshipers all over Thornwild, marked by the agate amulets they wear with her face on it."

"Sounds like a charming vacation spot," I quipped.

Cali shot me a withering look. "The Court of Skulldug is a neutral ground of sorts where the most powerful Sorceresses of the North gather to trade secrets and make alliances. Once every seventy seven days an Auction Ball is held during which a wealthy enough Sorceress can buy a genuine Prophecy from Amari, one relating to hunting the greatest prey... which will change their life."

“How changed would you rate your life at?” I asked.

“Ugh… very,” Cali huffed. “I don’t think that my life could get any worse from here.”

“Brrrr,” Stormy commented as if she knew something.

Cali gave the kitten a glare.

"Every seventy seven days," I rubbed my chin. "Do you think that Amari will sell my location to another wealthy huntress, on the account that you've failed at it? Say, how long has it been since you attended that Auction Ball?"

"About... sixty five days." Cali's ears twitched.

"So we potentially have around twelve days before Amari might sell information about me to another hunter?"

"Uhhh," Cali blinked, her eyes widening. "Goldara's tits! I have not even considered this. I didn't expect to fail at binding you. She will absolutely sell your location to another hunter, no matter where you are, on the account that I’m clearly not bringing you to Skulldug. Amari isn't known for her patience."

"Peachy," I sighed. "Just what I wanted in life, women chasing me in cycles of every seventy seven days."

"It won't be just women," Cali swallowed. "The next hunter might already have a Champion, one that can fly. By flight, a Champion can reach Svalbard in about seven days from Skulldug, carrying his Sorcerous Mistress in a basket on his back."

"First class basket flight, huh," I mused, picturing a musclebound Champion soaring through the air with a wicker basket strapped to his back, a dainty Sorceress sipping tea inside. "Probably not a lot of legroom. Nothing says 'I'm a hero' quite like flying on a weapon made from your own bodily fluids. Very hygienic."

Cali chose not to respond to my comments, nervously looking left and right.

We walked in silence for about thirty more minutes, the crunch of snow under our feet the only sound. The fog around us deepened, making it hard to see clearly past a few meters. Dead trees loomed all around like clawed hands.

“Are we still good Stormy?” I asked.

“Mrrr,” the kitten confirmed.

“This fog smells… unnatural,” Cali whispered with a shudder.

“Probably the Yaga’s protection,” I said, squinting into the sudden gloom.

An inhuman howl suddenly resounded across the forest. Stormy stopped in her tracks and then rushed back, up my rock-covered armor and hid herself in the nook between my shoulder and neck, trembling

“What?” I asked her.

“Jrrrrrrrrshhhh-oooom-rrrtttt-uuuuuummm,” Stormy growled.

“Jotun,” Cali said, stopping in place. “Goldara’s tits! This is bad. This is…”

I pulled her closer to myself, pulling both of us down to the ground as I quickly draped the invisi-cloak over us. Then, I twisted the pearl inside the containment runestone to activate it. As the pearl ignited, the cloak turned semi-transparent from within.

I swallowed, hoping that the cloak actually hid us from sight and didn’t simply become transparent.

I held my breath as the monstrous figure emerged from the fog.

It was a nightmarish sight, far worse than any illustration in my book of monsters had captured. Its body was a grotesque amalgamation of human and beast, with limbs that bent at impossible angles and skin that seemed to writhe and shift, bulbous, rotting, fleshy, vein-covered organ sacks jiggling with each step.

As it drew closer, I could make out more horrifying details. Its head was adorned with massive, gnarled horns that twisted upwards like the branches of a dead tree. Its face was long and hideous, with four sets of deep eye sockets, somewhat resembling an elk, a wolf, a spider, and a man turned inside out.

The creature's mouth opened wide, as it let out another howl, revealing rows upon rows of jagged, yellow, broken teeth of what looked like the mouth of a person and several other animals.

I felt Cali and Stormy press closer to me, their bodies trembling against mine, clinging to me. I kept my eyes fixed on the approaching monstrosity. The Jotun moved with an unnatural gait as it lumbered forward on six spider-elk legs. Four muscular hands with jagged wolf claws stretched from its sides.

The air grew colder as it neared, and I could hear a faint, discordant whisper emanating from its body. It was as if the very fabric of reality was warping around this abomination.

A trail of pure, pulsating wobbling darkness was visible in the creature’s wake through the Astralscope. The trail of darkness folded into itself as if it existed in another, separate dimension, one that had extra depth.

Blood magic. An entire ocean of blood magic. More blood magic than I'd seen on Cali's neck.

There was so much blood magic trailing behind the creature that staring at it made my head throb. Whispers, intertwined with human screams resonated, pulsed from the extradimensional trail of the Jotun, pouring into my throbbing head.

The thing’s head suddenly snapped towards me.

Shit. Did it notice me because I could see its blood-trail?

I pulled my Astralscope off, staring at it with my eyes alone. It came closer and closer to us, looming over us and sniffing the air, inverted organ sacks pulsating as it drew in a raggedy breath.

It radiated an awful, horrid smell of rotting eggs, of something that had died long ago and was left in a swamp for far too long.

One of its wolf-human hands suddenly swung at the air right above our heads.

The whoosh of its motion was like a deafening thunder-blast.

It blew snow all around and nearly pulled the cloak off us, was I not holding onto it for dear life.

The mass of displaced air hit the trees behind us, making them sway and creak, a few of the branches snapping off.

“The beast-fold-wolf smells the flesh of catling-she,” the Jotun's long mouth warped and wobbled, producing an approximation of human speech entwined with bones scraping against bones.

Another toothy maw opened on its chest and a single, blood-red human eye without eyelids emerged from its innards, connected to what looked like a tongue shaped from ligaments and nerves, twisting left and right in an attempt to spot us.

“Aclard Dulsea, our man-flesh-fold name be. Reveal yorr-self claimer-she, let us into yorr heart of hearts, so that we may take yorr and Ioan Starfall-he to Chernobog as our Master-she commands," the Jotun boomed, its voice somehow deafeningly sharp, digging into the inside of my skull as if rusty nails were being nailed through my eyes and ears with each word.

Cali choked.

I saw that her fingers started to crawl towards the pearl-rune of our invisi-cloak on their own accord.