“What just happened,” Max asked, staring at the cold dead skull. “It’s different somehow.”

“I’m not certain,” Oren said, examining it more closely. He held a burning torch close to the rotting head. It smelled terrible and was beginning to grow mold. The eyes were now completely lifeless. “We’ll have to keep an eye on the Mayor.”

“Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to bring it back here,” Max said.

“We had to,” Oren said. “No one would’ve believed us without it. You know what this means.”

Max titled his head. This was world-changing, but he'd never actually been outside of the Wastes.

"They'll send word out tomorrow with the courier," Oren said. "Athracia will send men to verify what we've done. This place will no longer be a small outpost."

Max said nothing. He still needed time to mourn his loss. His chest felt like it was being crushed. All that was going on around him was like a whirling storm and that didn't help him recover.

"I know it's difficult," Oren said, looking Max in the eyes and placing his hands on his shoulders. "What you're going through. Your father's loss, and what's about to come, but you need to be strong now."

"Tell me about how he died," Max said. "What happened out there?" He still hadn't heard the story of his father's death.

Oren paused, his eyes adrift as if he was lost in thought. What had happened that night was still a mystery to him.

"We were hunting a spiker," Oren said. "Or at least we thought it was a spiker."

"What's a spiker?" Max asked, furrowing his brows.

"A spiker is a diabolen about the size of a bull," Oren said, gesturing with his hands. "It has sharp fangs and claws and, more dangerously, thousands of quills that protrude from its back like those of a porcupine."

Max grimaced. He'd heard of these creatures before but the hunters had never taken one back.

"A single cut from one of its quills," Oren said. "Secretes a poison that would kill the strongest of men."

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"How do you kill a spiker?" Max said, lips forming a line.

"You trap it in the ground," Oren said. "Then you bury it. You can't get close enough to a spiker seeing how its quills are longer than most of our weapons. They also make it hard to shoot arrows or spears without the tips missing their mark. Quills are surprisingly good deterrents against projectile weaponry."

"So is that what you did then?" Max said. "You caught the spiker?"

Oren shook his head. "That's not what happened."

Max was silent.

"I said we thought we were hunting a spiker," Oren said. "It turned out that we were wrong. Very wrong."

Max nodded, understanding. "A behemoth."

Oren tilted his head forward slightly in agreement. "The funny thing about diabolen," he said. "Is that the more powerful ones are actually harder to see. Even for Alex and I. This one actually changed its shape."

Max's eyes widened.

"Their power is not in their size," Oren said. "It's in their cunning. The behemoth got the better of us."

Max clenched his jaw.

"It tricked us into thinking we were hunting something else," Oren said. "When in actuality, it was hunting us."

Max dug his heels into the dirt beneath him. "What happened?"

"We dug our trap and set the bait," Oren said. "Anton waited patiently?"

"What was Anton doing?" asked Max, confused.

"Anton was the bait," Oren said.

Okay, of course. Max's lips formed a line.

"Eventually it attacked, in the form of a spiker."

Max was wide-eyed.

"We thought we'd won," Oren said. "We'd caught the spiker and were going to bury it in a bit and burn it alive."

"What happened next?" Max said.

"It revealed its shape," Oren said. "It grew to ten times its size and it attacked. Our weapons were down and we had no time to prepare. A creature like a behemoth attacking a group of hunters unaware is certain death."

"Then how come you're still here?"

"Your father did something no on expected," Oren said, pausing.

Max's heart beat rapidly. He could hear every breath he took like it was ten times as loud as was typical.

"He used a soulbreaker attack," Oren said. "Something that I didn't even know existed"

Max jerked his head. "What's that?"

"It's a dangerous attack that I've only heard about from Darkseer lore. Your grandfather taught us about it. It requires a willing sacrifice."

Max gulped. "He sacrified himself."

Oren nodded. "And not just any life will do. It requires a particularly strong soul. But it's effects stand for themselves."

"How did he do a soulbreaker attack?" Max said.

"I don't honestly know," Oren said. "I will teach what I do know as Alex would have wanted me to, but there is much you will have to discover on your own."

Max nodded, taking it all in. "What do we do next?" Max said.

"Tomorrow," Oren said. "We begin."

"Begin what?" Max asked.

"Your first hunt."

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A spiker