I crept through the snow, moving carefully to avoid crunching any ice beneath my feet. I’d thought that moving through soft snow would be easy and quiet, but I’d learned my error quickly. Soft, powdery snow was great for silent movement, but packed snow groaned when you stepped on it. Of course, walking through soft snow as deep as your thighs was its own sort of hell. That was why I’d made such an effort over the last day to learn how to use the weblike contraptions strapped to the bottom of my already large feet.
The snowshoes that let me move on top of the snow without sinking far in looked remarkably like what I’d have expected: long, oval-shaped frames made from some sort of woven plant fiber with straps that bound them to my feet and behind my heel. They still sank a few inches into the snow with each step, and as I lifted my feet, I had to shake them a little to get the snow that accumulated on top of the shoes to drift back through the webbing, but they were a lot better than trying to forge my way through unbroken snow.
What I really wanted, of course, was a pair of cross-country skis. I was good with those, and they would have made the trek through the mountains a lot easier and faster. The hunters didn’t seem to have anything like those, though, and I didn’t want to ask about them; if that sort of thing hadn’t been invented in this world for some reason, I’d either look crazy for mentioning them or might cause problems for introducing the idea. See, I could learn to be less disruptive!
The first day had been a tough hike, but otherwise, it was unremarkable. While the hunters broke camp, Aeld had me watch as he started a fire using his fire spirit.
“There are three steps for dealing with a spirit, Freyd,” the shaman lectured me. “The first is the circle. Never interact with a spirit without the protection of a circle around it, even simple land spirits like this fire one—and never make a circle any larger than necessary. The circle holds the spirit within, but it also allows you to focus your power and will, and a smaller circle will concentrate that focus even more.”
I watched as he sent the orange spirit into the circle, where it hovered for a moment before dropping onto the log.
“Next, gain the spirit’s attention. To do this, offer it something it wants or desires. For this spirit, a taste of wood to burn is sufficient; it’s a simple thing, and its wants are equally simple.” He glanced at me. “Some letharvis teach that an offering of blood is the best way to gain a spirit’s attention, Freyd, but I prefer to offer it something beyond myself.”
He turned back to the fire. “Finally, there is the bargain. Tell the spirit what you want and what you’re willing to offer it in return. For this spirit, that’s unnecessary, as I’ve bound it to my will, but normally, at this point I’d ask it to provide heat for our camp in return for something, such as more wood upon which to feed. This is the important part, and the part that takes practice and experience: learning what motivates each type of spirit.”
The lesson was a pretty simple one, and while I asked him a few questions about what different types of spirits might want, he remained evasive with his answers. Obviously, he was being careful in what he taught me and didn’t want me able to actually make a deal with a spirit yet. He also hadn’t really shown me how to make a circle, call a spirit to get its attention, or anything useful. He showed me that it was possible, and that was about it. Unfortunately for him, Sara was also watching, and she seemed to get a lot more out of the lesson than I did.
After we broke camp, Bregg led the party to what I considered the north, deeper into the mountains. I followed along in silence; watching as the hunters occasionally slipped off and returned with game they’d killed. No one spoke the entire time, not that I was surprised. I’d worked out that they could communicate without talking somehow, even if I had no clue how they did it. The trek wasn’t easy, especially since I was new to using their snowshoes and had to pick up the knack of shaking them free with every step, but nothing out of the ordinary really happened—at least, not until we’d set up camp and the sun finally fell. And that was what led to me trekking alone through the peaks while the others remained in camp.
I stopped and knelt carefully, examining the tracks left by the animal that had invaded our camp a couple hours after sundown. The beast that Aeld called an anyarv bounded in from the darkness, ignoring the hunters and heading straight for the food buried beneath piles of snow. The hunters attacked it—and so did I—but our spears hadn’t done a lot of damage to it, sliding off its slick, gray fur. It gorged itself on our food, then raced back into the night, but we’d marked it enough that it left a trail of blood when it fled—a trail that ended after a few hundred feet as the creature’s wounds apparently clotted up. The thing had wounded most of the hunters, and Bregg planned to hunt it once they were healed since apparently, once it found a source of food, the enyarv would follow it for days. If we didn’t kill it, we’d have to endure its attacks night after night until we left the High Reaches.
To me, the thing seemed like a perfect chance to level up my isyagarl profession. I’d had the choice to add my XP from the wolf fight into Hunter, Spearman, or Warrior, and after some thought, I chose Hunter. I was tempted to pick Spearman, but Hunter just seemed to match more closely with what I always seemed to end up doing in new worlds. That gave me 2,500 XP for the common profession and shot it all the way up to level 5. That got me another ability that wasn’t that big of a deal.
Ability: Efficient Kill Cleaning
You clean, dress, and prepare kills 5% faster than normal, +1% per two levels of hunter
That was the problem with common professions. They leveled quickly, but you didn’t get much from them. At level 5, I cleaned hides a whopping 7% faster than normal, meaning for every hour I would normally spend, I saved a whole four minutes. Yay.
I’d put the XP from the undvarn into Undkrager, bringing it to level 2, and while I didn’t get an ability from it, that single level gave me the same number of stat points as four levels of Hunter plus two skill points that Hunter didn’t give me and that I didn’t assign yet. I could have assigned them to Tracking, but I hoped that to the skill myself first, saving those skill points for later.
Aeld protested when I suggested that I try to hunt the creature myself to save time, but to my surprise, Bregg stepped in and stopped him.
“His path is his own to choose, Letharvis,” the big hunter said. “If he wants to turn it away from ours, that’s his right—and it isn’t our place to try and stop him.”
The shaman looked unhappy but seemed to have no choice but to agree. “However, we’ll be here all day recovering, then we’ll hunt it ourselves at first light tomorrow. If you choose to rejoin our path, you’re certainly welcome.” Bregg hadn’t really liked that, but he hadn’t complained.
So, I’d set off as soon as the sun rose high enough to let me see where I was going. I’d have gone sooner, but I’d discovered something interesting about this world that night: it had no moon. Either that, or the moon orbited below the planet’s horizon, as Sara suggested, so that it was out of sight. Whatever the reason, while stars speckled the night sky liberally, including one especially bright one that Aeld called “The Wanderer” and seemed to have special meaning for the hunters, starlight wasn’t nearly bright enough to hunt by. That meant that we were mostly confined to our camp at night, able to see only as far as the fire Aeld kept burning lit the darkness. That same fire also acted as a beacon to things like the enyarv, of course, but it couldn’t be helped. We needed both light and warmth to survive in the cold.
I stood and looked around; the enyarv had led me down into a valley between two peaks, where the snow was thicker and heavier. Shadows dappled the snow, which rose in odd swells that resembled sand dunes, driven by the wind that rippled through the valley, funneled there by the mountains. Nothing grew here, or if it did, it was buried beneath the snow and ice, making the landscape eerily monochromatic. The dark gray mountains blended into the silver-white snow and hid the sky unless I looked straight up. No colors existed in that world, as if they’d all been drained away, leaving everything dappled shades of gray. Even my fur and gear matched; my leather armor and snowshoes were both light gray, and the hair covering my body had a mottled pattern that would make it harder to see in a place like this.
The enyarv had passed this way not too long ago. Its wide, flat paws served it much like my snowshoes, lifting it above the snow and keeping it from bogging down, but they still left distinctive prints. Another storm would have filled those in and make tracking it impossible, but with the clear sky, I had no trouble following it. In fact, it was much easier than I’d expected. The creature didn’t even try to move along the rocks and ice that would hide its tracks. Something inside me seemed bothered by that thought, but I couldn’t quite pin it down. It was little more than an odd feeling, a sense of urgency that something was wrong.
“The hunter always has to be careful not to become the hunted.”
I frowned, unsure where that thought had come from, but I knew it to be true. I’d lived that maxim in my previous life, in fact. Most marks knew or suspected that someone hunted them, and they took precautions against that. They hired security, controlled their movements, and only traveled between secure locations. Some even hired another assassin to kill the first before they could finish their job. Most of us wouldn’t take jobs like that—not out of any sense of honor, mind you, but just because it was a lot more dangerous—but some would. You could usually tell that happened when the mark behaved unusually, exposing themselves for no reason or letting their security lapse a little. They were the bait, and if you went after the seemingly easy prey, you were likely to end up with a bullet in your skull for your trouble.
That vague unease gelled in my mind. That was exactly what this felt like. The enyarv was a hunter, and while we hadn’t killed it, we’d wounded it. No wise hunter would run directly to its den, where it could be pinned down and slaughtered. It would either try to escape and hide, or it would lure its pursuers into an ambush. And the mountain valley looked like a perfect ambush site: the wind whipping against my back carried my scent into the valley, the thick snow would make it hard to move or flee, the shadows would aid the creature’s camouflage, and the mountain slopes offered excellent perches for something to leap down on pursuers. Scanning the slopes, I spotted a half-dozen spots of deep shadow behind piles of ice or rock that would let the creature fall on top of anyone passing beneath.
I crouched once more, thinking furiously. If I were the enyarv, I would have continued my trail through the valley all the way to the other edge, then bounded up the slopes and backtracked to find cover. That way, if a group larger than I was willing to face came through, I could hightail it back down the mountain and retreat the way they’d come. By the time the pursuit reached the end of the trail and realized what happened, I’d be long gone. However, that meant I needed an avenue of escape, just in case; a rocky or icy slope I could scramble up to conceal my tracks would be perfect. The two mountains surrounding me looked more or less the same, but one had far more bare rock showing, and most of that glistened and sparkled with a layer of ice. I guessed that the sun shone on that slope more than the other, melting more of the snow away and exposing bare rock. If I were the enyarv, I’d have made for that slope and hidden somewhere fairly close to the valley’s entrance. That narrowed it down to two likely hiding places, but when I peered at each, all I saw were dappled shadows. Nothing moved within them that I could see.
I’d read once that knowing about an ambush gives you an advantage against the ambusher, but that was a load of bullshit. Knowing about the ambush gives you choices, nothing more. You can try to prepare for it, flush it out, or avoid it. The attackers still have the advantage: they get the first shot at you, usually from a better position than you have, and to respond, you have to live through that initial attack. In this case, I didn’t actually know anything. I suspected an ambush, but I didn’t know where it would come from or what form it would take. All the thing had to do was knock me down into the snow, and the fight would be pretty much over; I wouldn’t be able to defend myself while on my back, buried beneath the snow. That suggested that avoiding the ambush was the best strategy; I could retreat, circle around the peak myself, and come at the creature from above. It would take a couple hours, but it was better than getting caught unawares.
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“Or you could try one of your new abilities, John,” Sara suggested.
“My new abilities?” I quickly scanned through them all. “You mean See Spirits? I thought that couldn’t be used to see bound spirits like the enyarv’s.”
“Not that. Speak with Spirits.” She appeared before me and gestured at the windswept valley. “There’s probably at least a few spirits in this place, and after what Aeld showed you, I’m pretty sure I can guide you through the process of dealing with one. If you can find one with See Spirits, maybe you can ask it if it knows where the enyarv is.”
“Could it tell me?” I asked dubiously.
“That depends on the spirit. Aeld seemed to suggest that the weaker and smaller a spirit is, the less intelligent it is, too. You just have to ask one that’s powerful enough to be able to answer.”
“Okay, so what do we do?”
“Well, first, let’s choose a suitable spirit to try this on.”
I activated the ability, and the entire valley quickly lit up with the glow of spirit energy. A misty gray power swirled around the slopes and drifted through the center of the valley. Cloudy wisps of white flickered overhead, and steely gray blobs pulsed along the rock walls, surrounding the largest boulders. A handful of blue-white shapes danced beneath my feet, gliding through the snow and ice without effort.
“Any thoughts as to which one?”
“I think I’d avoid the ice ones beneath you or the air ones above you. See how small they are, and how translucent? That means they aren’t very powerful, and they might be hard to communicate with.”
“What about the mist filling the whole valley? What sort of spirit is that?”
“I’d definitely avoid trying that. As best as I can tell, that’s not an actual spirit. It’s an echo you’re getting from the spirit of this valley.”
“An echo?”
“Yes. You know, like when you call out and hear the sound reflected back to you, John. An echo.”
I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “Ha, ha. I mean, how is that an echo?”
“Your ability isn’t actually seeing spirits, John. It’s seeing the disruption they create in this world’s energy field. The spirits absorb specific types of energy from that field, and you’re seeing the lack of that energy as a specific color and shape. Your eyes work essentially the same way with white light.”
“Okay, I get that,” I nodded slowly.
“Well, the valley’s spirit doesn’t absorb energy, it radiates it. That’s disturbing the local field, and you’re seeing that as a mist. It’s warning you that a very powerful spirit is dormant nearby. I definitely wouldn’t wake it up. It might get angry.” She pointed at a large rock nearby, only a dozen feet or so away. “I’d try one of the larger earth spirits surrounding the boulders.”
“Fine. How do I get its attention?”
“The way Aeld said. This is where your Ritualism skill comes into play, and why it’s part of the letharvis profession. The first thing you need is a circle.”
I examined the rock she’d pointed to. Snow covered it, making it look like a giant mound, but I could see the ponderous gray spirit resting beneath it. I trudged up to it and stuck the butt of my spear in the snow, walking in a rough circle while still keeping an eye on the opposite slope. I had a feeling the enyarv was still watching me from hiding, and I didn’t want it bounding up and catching me by surprise while I did—whatever the hell I was doing. The circle I ended up with wasn’t very circular—it looked more like a rough oval—but my skill told me that while a perfect circle was better, any shape would work as long as it was continuous, without breaks.
I began to ask Sara what was next, but I realized that I knew, thanks to Aeld’s lesson that morning and my Ritualism skill. The earth spirit slumbered, and I had to awaken it with an offering. I had no idea what an earth spirit might want—a pretty rock or gem, maybe—but I didn’t have anything like that. What I did have was the one thing Aeld suggested wasn’t the greatest idea but was probably my only option.
I sighed as I swept a space of the boulder clear of snow, preparing to offer the thing a bit of my blood. According to my skill, my blood would have to touch the boulder directly, or the spirit wouldn’t sense the offering. With that done, I knelt before the boulder and focused my intent. The skill suggested that an incantation or ritual phrase would help me do that, but I had plenty of practice concentrating my focus thanks to the various types of spellcasting I’d had to learn. I focused on calling the spirit forth, held that idea firmly in my mind, then took an awkward grip on my spear, holding it just below the spearhead, and jabbed the tip into my left forearm. I clenched my teeth at the wisp of pain as I held my arm over the rock, concentrating on offering the blood in return for the spirit’s attention. A drop of blood plopped from my arm and fell directly onto the stone, and as it did, a jolt of energy passed from me into the rock.
“Whooo calllls…?”
The low, rumbling voice in my head sounded like a landslide or small earthquake, slow and ponderous and barely intelligible. The spirit in the boulder shifted, rising to the surface of the stone, and I felt its attention focus on me. “Whooo calllls meeee?”
“Um, I do,” I replied a little inanely. I wasn’t really sure how to speak to a spirit, to be honest. “Freyd.”
“Yooour offfferrring isss accccepteeeed. Speeeeak.”
“Ask it if it can find your prey,” Sara suggested.
“I’m hunting a creature that’s hiding in this valley,” I told the spirit. “I want your help finding it.”
“Aaand whaaat dooo youuu offerrr innn reeeturrrn?”
I blinked in surprise. “I already gave you my blood,” I reminded it.
“Aaaand Iiiii gaaave youuu myyyy attenntionnn.”
I grimaced as my Ritualism skill confirmed the thing’s words. My blood had been offered only to grab the creature’s attention. If I wanted anything else, I had to offer more.
“Um, what do you want?” I asked it.
“Youuu offerrr nooothinnnng?” Its voice sounded disapproving, almost angry. “Weee arrre donnne.”
I felt the spirit descending back into the stone, returning to its slumber. A flash of irritation washed through me; I had no idea I was supposed to offer something extra to the spirit. Aeld hadn’t really been specific about this part of the ritual, and my skill didn’t give me much more. Besides, what would I offer? I had nothing but my clothes and spear, and I wasn’t about to give up those. I suppose I could offer it more blood, but that just felt wrong to me. As it sank beneath the surface, a predatory urge flowed up within me. I wasn’t about to let this thing dismiss me like that; I needed it, and one way or another, it was going to help me!
As the spirit drifted downward, I felt myself reaching out and grabbing it, not with my hands but with some sort of mental fingers. This wasn’t the spiritual combat I’d done with the undvarn; I was simply imposing my will on the spirit. I yanked on it, trying to haul it back to the surface. It was heavy, but I pulled harder, and it rose swiftly to the top. When it hit the surface, it began to fight, resisting my pull, but I let out a mental snarl and tugged. I felt a sharp snap as the spirit suddenly tore free of the stone, and I held it out before me, struggling in my mental grip.
“Reeleease meee!” the thing demanded as it writhed and twisted, flowing like mud in my grip.
“Not until you agree to help me,” I snarled back at it. “Agree to find my prey, and I’ll let you go.”
It fought me for another second before it stilled. “Agreeed. Iiii willl fiiind themmm. Whaaat isss youuur preeeey?”
I sent it an image of the enyarv. “Find it…” I pasued as an idea came to me. “And can you hold it in place?”
“Iiii will tryyyy. Reeleease meee.”
I lowered the thing back toward the stone, a little worried that it would just try to escape if I did.
“That’s not a concern, John,” Sara assured me. “It’s bound to this rock and can’t go far from it. You can always pull it back if it doesn’t do what you want.”
“Good to know,” I nodded, touching the spirit to the stone and releasing it. It flowed down into the rock, then sank past it, into the ground beneath. I watched the spirit drift through the earth, spreading out into the soil and vanishing from my sight. As Sara said, though, a part of it still lingered in the stone, and I suspected that if I wanted, I could drag it back to me through that connection.
“Did you figure all this out just from watching Aeld this morning?” I asked Sara as I waited.
“No. His explanation wasn’t really that good—probably deliberately,” she laughed. “I’ve been watching him do this for a while, though. Have you noticed that there’s always a circle of some kind around the camp, whether it’s the stone walls of a cave or piled snow? He’s using the camp’s boundaries to set some sort of spiritual ward or barrier around it. And I’ve seen him light the fire a few times already. Between that and his explanation this morning, I’ve seen enough to know how to perform a simple ritual like this.”
I spun as a loud hiss sounded from the other side of the slope. The enyarv stood beside a large boulder, snow dripping from its mottled gray coat. It looked like the damn thing had actually buried itself partway in the snow to hide; no wonder I couldn’t see it! Now that it was in the sunlight, I got a better look at it, and the closest approximation I could make to it was a giant wolverine. The beast stretched eight feet long with a long, flat tail that I bet it could drag behind it to obscure its tracks. Its head was conical, with low ears and eyes buried beneath its smooth fur. Its mouth was large and filled with sharp fangs that looked good for tearing off bits of flesh, and its legs were long and sturdy, holding it high above the snow.
The creature hissed again and batted at the boulder beside it as a tendril of stone flowed outward and wrapped around it, trying to grab its neck. It freed itself with a shake of its head, but another binding rippled out and snagged its leg. It broke that one just as easily, and I realized that the stone spirit wasn’t going to be able to actually hold it. That was fine; if it could distract it, that was all I needed.
I hefted my spear and charged awkwardly up the hill, moving as fast as I safely could in the snow. The snow thinned as I ran up the slope, turning into harder ice that made my footing treacherous, but I managed to close with the creature before it broke free. I set myself, holding my spear much more easily now that I actually had a skill with it, and activated Spiritual Strike for the first time. A surge of energy rolled down my arms into the spear, which took on an odd, translucent appearance, looking misty and wavering. It still felt solid in my hands, though, so I readied my feet and thrust at the center of the wolverine.
When I’d tried this before I got my skill, I’d been jabbing, using both arms and my body weight to lung forward with the spear. While that worked, it was ridiculously inaccurate since my entire body moved, pulling the point away from my target and forcing me to correct. This time, I kept my left hand still and twisted my hips, pushing with my right hand and letting the spear’s shaft slide along my left palm. My left hand kept the weapon on-target, and my right added the power of my twisting body to it. The misty spear darted out and plunged a foot into the center of the creature’s body, sinking into it like water before I slid it swiftly backwards, freeing it from the creature and allowing it to firm up once more.
The enyarv screamed as the wavering spear passed through its body and ripped into the spirit within. It staggered and hissed, backing away from me as its legs trembled beneath it. My spear hadn’t touched its body, but the blow to the center of its spirit damaged its ability to function. I stabbed again, this time aiming for its face, and it whipped a paw up to slap the spear away. I’d already withdrawn it, though, and I thrust instead at its chest below its upraised paw. The spear slid along its greasy fur before lodging against a rib and sinking a couple inches into its flesh, and the wolverine stumbled backward, its legs too weak to really support it and its strength flagging.
So, that was the result of spiritual damage. The creature looked drunk—or maybe poisoned. Either way, its legs seemed to lose their strength, and it started panting as if it had been running for miles. That was what Sara meant by spiritual damage taking away its ability to fight; the hole I’d torn in its spirit seemed to let its strength and vitality leak out. The way it swung its head around as if it had trouble focusing on me suggested that even its thoughts were cloudy. The fact that I’d gotten a free shot and hit it right in the center probably made it even worse, although I didn’t know if the center of a spirit was in the chest, head, or wherever. For all I knew, it could have been in its ass, although I hoped that wasn’t the case. I didn’t care if the spear didn’t really touch the beast’s body; if I had to run it up its butthole to kill it, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to pick it up again after. At least, not without washing it.
Whatever the case, the enyarv acted like I’d hit it with a massive dose of tranquilizer. It struck at me with wild, unfocused swings that lacked any real power. Even if it had hit me, I doubted it would do all that much damage. Even so, its heavy fur and thick hide kept me from doing too much damage to it. My spear slid along its pelt, inflicting shallow wounds that bled for only a short while before clotting shut. It had some sort of quick healing ability, I supposed—or at least a quick clotting ability—so while I was hurting and weakening it, I wasn’t doing it very quickly.
Three times it turned to flee, but each time, its legs failed it, and my spear punished it for trying. We battled for a full minute, and I activated Spiritual Strike once more, feinting at its face to draw its paw upward then stepping to the side and sinking the misty spear once more into the center of its body. I spun the shaft around, tearing its spirit even further, then yanked it out. The enyarv stumbled and coughed, spitting up several gobbets of blood, then fell onto its side, its legs moving weakly and its eyes glassy and unfocused. Apparently, that second strike had been enough to seriously cripple it, and it didn’t fight in the slightest as I stepped up and plunged my spear into its throat. Whatever clotting ability it had wasn’t enough to help a torn carotid, and the thing bled out swiftly as arterial blood sprayed from its neck, drenching the snow and the nearby boulder.
“Myyyy thaankssss.” The sound drifted from the boulder as the blood on it seemed to sink into it and vanish, and I realized the spirit there had just claimed that blood as its reward. It didn’t matter to me—it wasn’t like I needed the blood, after all—but it felt a little ghoulish. Still, it had helped me, and I figured if I repaid it, word might spread that I was willing to be generous to spirits that aided me.
Besides, I really didn’t want to piss off a spirit that found blood tasty. That just seemed like a bad idea, all the way around.