Age of Chaos. Thornholt - Northern Neutral Territories. Prime.
A.D. 1857.
12 years after the awakening.
The adventurers' guild hall occupied the ground floor of a broad wooden building, raised around two rows of massive pillars. Oak tables ran between the pillars, the firelight from the hearth at the far wall left the corners of the hall in thick shadow, and the wind outside battered the gaps between the boards.
The adventurers who had survived the brutal battle sat scattered in separate groups, each keeping the same silence, broken only by the creak of chairs and the crackle of the hearth. Most of them had bandages on their arms and necks, soaked with dried blood and healing salve.
At the head of the table by the hearth sat a broad-shouldered man, who looked a decade older than most of those present, his large, weathered hands lying flat on the tabletop. Theodore Solt.
"We didn't have enough men," he said, his eyes on the wooden tabletop.
Someone at the far end of the table shifted his mug and gave a short cough.
"Good men. The kind with hundreds of dead creatures behind them, not a dozen or two. Against a pack of storm wyverns, with the group we had, we were marching to our deaths from the start," Solt went on, and swept his gaze slowly and heavily across the hall.
"A task like that needs an army. Regular troops from one of the great powers, the kind that march out on command."
A little apart, at the edge of the same table, sat a short girl with fair, close-cropped hair and a scabbed scrape across her left cheekbone. Her left hand rested on her knee, while her right, lying on the table, curled into a fist. She lowered her head, sending a few strands of hair down over her face, and let out a deep breath.
"I checked every one of them. Personally. Before we drew up the plan. Everyone we took," she said.
Solt slowly turned his head toward her, and chairs creaked across the hall as the warriors sitting in them looked her way too.
"When I touch a person and connect with their Pandorum, I can see every creature they've ever killed," the girl went on.
"That's my gift... And you know it... Solt..."
Theodore turned his head away, jaw clenched and lips pressed tight, while the girl kept looking straight at him without blinking.
"Eight of the twenty-three had more than a hundred kills to their name. Five had clearly passed two hundred. Two went past... probably... five hundred! These were experienced people, Solt. Most of the ones we lost today had been hunting for years, if not decades!" she finished, her voice rising toward the end.
The fire in the hearth cracked, throwing up a shower of sparks, and immediately settled. Solt kept his head turned away, but his gaze dropped to the floor.
"Then we underestimated the pack," he answered.
The girl's eyebrows lifted slightly, and then she too turned her head away, dropped her eyes to the floor and unclenched her fist.
"Yes... we underestimated them..." she confirmed.
The hall sank back into a heavy silence, filled now and again by the howl of the blizzard outside.
At the next table a chair creaked, and the man who had been sitting there since the start of the conversation rose to his feet. He was a big, dark-haired man with broad cheekbones and a bandage over his left shoulder, its edges soaked through with a brownish stain.
"We should have gone to Aisengard from the start!... Soldiers from Terropol would have given us enough support, and there wouldn't have been losses like this! Am I right, Solt, Riana?..." he asked, his tone rising, glancing first at Solt, then at the girl.
"But no, you gathered all of us and convinced us we could handle it. Convinced us there was no need for Aisengard, and that you'd done thorough scouting... Tell me... you didn't really find out anything at all."
"We found out everything that could be found out," Solt answered, and looked the man in the eye.
"As I already explained before the battle, in those two weeks the wyverns never settled the territory. Not one proper den, no nests in the rocks. They kept to the crevices, moving farther between them each time, without ever establishing anything permanent. There was a huge risk that Thornholt would end up in their path, and that's why we had to act fast instead of waiting for help from Aisengard."
The standing man clenched his fists, tipped his head back toward the ceiling and parted his lips slightly, while Solt watched him and waited for the next question.
"It seemed to me... like they were... running from something..." Riana suddenly added.
The man slowly lowered his head, eyes wide, mouth still parted, and held the pause, looking straight at the girl, who met his eyes for a moment and immediately looked away.
For a few seconds his face stayed still — then the corner of his mouth jerked upward in a short, crooked movement.
He laughed, turned his whole body toward the hall and spread his arms wide.
"DID YOU HEAR THAT?!" he shouted, sweeping his hand across the room.
"They're RUNNING!... HALF THE WARRIORS DIDN'T COME HOME TODAY!... RODGAR BURNED ALIVE RIGHT BEFORE MY EYES WHILE WE HELD THE LINE AGAINST THOSE DEMONS!... GULVAR'S GROUP TURNED TO DUST IN A SINGLE INSTANT!... THEY DIDN'T EVEN GET TO JOIN THE FIGHT!... And according to HER... these monsters... are FUCKING RUNNING!?"
Once he'd finished his outburst, he got no response, and saw only that some were looking at Riana, and others at the floor.
Breathing heavily, he spun toward the girl with a growl and crossed the distance between the tables, planted his hands on the tabletop in front of her and leaned his weight onto his straightened arms.
"They're wyverns, Riana," he said in a flat voice, tilted his head slightly and tried to catch her eyes, while Riana herself kept her head turned away, unwilling to meet his gaze.
"They're fucking wyverns. Give them one more pair of legs and you'd have yourself a goddamn dragon! And there's more than a dozen of them out there, damn it! So don't feed me any bullshit, just say it straight: you didn't want to go to Terropol because you can't stand Aisengard, and that's why you talked us into taking up arms and marching out ourselves, so skillfully, so persuasively... you played the heroes, rallying all of us against some great threat, and in the end you shit the bed and got dozens of good warriors killed, all over your own pride and ego."
Solt rose with a sharp scrape of his chair against the stone floor.
"Enough. She was there. And you know it. We were ALL there. Everyone risked their lives, and you're not the only one who lost friends," he said harshly.
The man kept staring at Riana's profile with his lips pressed together, then let his face drop and took his hands off the table, straightened up and dropped heavily back into his seat.
Riana didn't lift her eyes, her fingers picking at the cuticle of her left thumb.
Solt turned to her and came closer around the table.
She shook her head, not letting him start.
"I saw," she said.
"I checked every one of them. Held their hands, saw the numbers..."
She stopped her thumb and clenched her fist.
"And still..."
Solt said nothing, and looked from her hands to her face, hidden behind the hanging strands of her hair.
"Maybe the gift lets me see things like that, but it doesn't let me see what people actually went through," she said quietly, her voice trembling slightly.
Solt pulled up the chair beside her and sat down, rested his elbows on his knees and laid his big, rough hands over hers. They sat like that for several minutes, the hall silent around them beneath the crackle of the hearth and the muffled push of wind against the walls.
Then the door slowly opened, letting in a brief gust of cold air.
The survivors turned and saw a stranger walk into the hall, close the door behind him and move with a straight back, without any hurry.
Black hair tied back in a short, untidy tail, and a high black collar hiding most of his neck. A two-handed sword across his back stretched from his left shoulder to his right hip, its guard covered in runes, no two of them in the same style.
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He crossed the hall to the counter without letting his eyes linger on anyone seated there, and stopped at its edge.
From the other side, the woman who took in and handed out job orders came up to meet him.
Her face was visibly tired and drawn as she leaned both hands on the counter before speaking.
"There are no orders today," she said to the stranger.
His gaze slid to the board on the wall, bare of any notices. In their place hung a map marked with pencil notes and arrows, laying out the plan of the recent attack on the pack.
He looked at the map for a few seconds, then turned to the woman.
"Have you already hunted the wyverns?" he asked.
The woman let out a breath and gestured toward the hall.
"Everyone you see here is less than half of those who marched out this morning to attack."
The stranger looked at the map again and studied the markings in the mountains.
"How many are there?" he asked.
A short laugh came from the table. The man with the bandaged shoulder was staring at the tabletop in front of him with a crooked smirk and raised eyebrows.
"A lot," he said, and turned his head over his shoulder to look at the outsider.
"What's it to you? Go look for orders somewhere else."
The stranger turned toward him, held his gaze for a brief moment, then went back to the woman at the counter and looked her in the eye.
"They counted around twelve," she answered with a sigh.
He lowered his head and brought a hand to his chin, rubbing it slightly.
"Twelve?... then where are the other two?..." he muttered under his breath.
"What?" the woman asked.
He didn't answer, but turned to the board and stepped closer. In that moment, the woman caught sight of runic tattoos on his neck, peeking out from under his collar.
He raised a hand and traced a finger along the ridge on the map, paused at the marks and moved from one point to the next.
Riana had been watching him closely from the second he walked in, while Solt sat motionless and looked on with the same interest.
Why do I have... such a strange premonition... , Riana thought.
The stranger lowered his hand from the map, then turned to the woman at the counter.
"Do you have any runes or devices against blizzards?" he asked.
The woman looked slightly thrown, knitted her brows and faltered before she answered.
"Well... unfortunately there aren't any runes left..."
He sighed, his shoulders dropping, and glanced at the map one last time.
"I see. Thank you," he answered, then turned and headed for the exit.
Suddenly, a chair scraped sharply nearby, and Riana bolted up from it.
"Wait!" she called out.
The stranger stopped and turned his head toward her.
The girl walked between the tables, drawing every eye, while the outsider stood motionless and watched Riana stop in front of him and dig for something in her pouch.
Lowering his eyes, he watched her hold out a polygonal stone with a glowing rune carved into it.
"Here. This rune will put up a small barrier that'll help you against the blizzard. It holds for about half an hour," she said.
He took the stone and turned it over with a flick of his wrist to examine it, then nodded and dropped it into his pouch. Next he pulled out a small purse and drew coins from it, holding them out to the girl.
Riana put out her hands in confusion and watched three gold coins drop into them, the kind of money that could usually buy fifty runes like hers. Everyone around gaped at the sight, and the man with the bandaged shoulder, who'd been leaning back against his chair, sat forward.
"W-wait, what is this..." she said in surprise.
"Hm? Not enough? Sorry, how much more is missing?" the outsider answered, and pulled out the purse again to sort through the coins in it.
"N-no, no! That's not what I meant!... I just wanted to give you this rune..." she answered, waving her hands in front of her.
The stranger froze, raised one eyebrow and looked into her confused eyes.
"The rune?... For free?... But why?"
"I... won't need it anymore... besides, you're heading for the wyverns, aren't you?"
The survivors around them tensed, and the hall filled with a brief murmur of startled warriors.
The stranger stood straight, looking at her without any reaction, giving no direct answer.
"Are you suicidal or something?... More than twenty seasoned warriors went down to those things, and we didn't manage to take out even one!" the man with the bandaged shoulder spoke up.
The outsider only glanced at the man, then turned his eyes back to the startled Riana and put the purse away into his pouch.
"Take the money, it won't go to waste," he said, turned his back to her and headed for the door.
"W-wait!" she called out again.
The black-haired warrior stopped short of the door and turned back to the girl, who stepped closer to him, tucking the coins into her pocket.
"Since you're going there, let me shake your hand for luck," she said.
"Shake hands... for luck?" he clarified, raising his eyebrows.
"It's a tradition we have... we shake hands to wish luck for the task ahead," she answered, holding out her hand to him.
He paused briefly, looking at her hand, then slowly raised his own palm and gripped it firmly.
Solt smirked, and realized that Riana had invented this tradition just to touch the stranger.
The instant the warrior's hand closed around Riana's palm, her consciousness shifted, and the hall around her smoothly dissolved.
She found herself in a dark, boundless space, where the only source of light was a white glow coming from above.
And suddenly, her eyes widened and her breath caught at what she saw before her.
Hundreds of thousands of human silhouettes stood in rows, receding into the depths in dense columns. The rows stretched so far that the eye found no end in that depth, and behind them stood creatures.
Her gift had always given her recognizable images of boars, wolves, wyverns, griffins, and everything ordinary hunters might come across. But here, she could barely make out even a third of the creatures whose silhouettes rose among the human columns.
No nightmare, no dreadful campfire tale could hold things as terrifying and monstrous as the ones staring at Riana in that space. And there were more of these creatures than there were people, receding into that same dense, impenetrable depth.
And with each row further back, every monster grew larger than the one standing before it, and mostly took on shapes ever harder to explain: several heads, tentacles, tails, wings, mechanical limbs, turret mounts grafted into flesh, and other mechanical implants.
And finally, at the very end, where Riana's power barely held the thread of contact, stood three figures. Three colossal silhouettes, each so enormous that hundreds of thousands of people, creatures, and monsters fit entirely within its shadow.
At the sight of it, Riana's mind could no longer bear the strain, and blood ran from her nose.
The connection snapped, and in the next instant the stranger was in front of her again, the hearth nearby, warm light, and the moan of wind in the walls.
He let go of her hand, and Riana stood frozen with it still raised, her eyes and mouth wide open, and drops of blood trickling from her nose.
"You shouldn't have done that," the outsider answered, then turned toward the exit and left the hall, slamming the door shut behind him.
The hall went still, watching Riana stand like a statue, her hand still raised in the handshake, her face set stiff.
Everyone slowly rose from their seats, while Solt hurried over to the girl, stopped in front of her and flinched at what he saw.
Riana's face reflected the full depth of a primal terror no one had ever seen in her before.
"Riana?... RIANA!... HEY!... RIANA, SNAP OUT OF IT!" Solt shouted, and shook her by the shoulders when he saw she'd stopped breathing.
A few seconds later, Riana finally managed to draw a breath and immediately dropped to her knees, and Solt caught her and lowered himself beside her.
"Riana!... Riana, look at me!"
She slowly lifted her eyes and looked somewhere past his shoulder, with a blank, unfocused gaze.
"What happened... W-what did you see?..." one of the warriors crowded around them asked cautiously.
She didn't answer, still staring at a single point.
"Riana?" Solt repeated, gripping her shoulders a little harder.
She slowly turned her head toward him and looked at him with empty eyes, which then widened and filled with tears.
Suddenly her hands closed around his jacket on both sides, her fingers gripping the fabric until her knuckles went white, and she pressed her face against him, an unstoppable, ragged sob tearing from her throat, while her whole body shook with a violent, uncontrollable tremor. Not a single word ever came out of her.
Solt held her tight and pulled her against him, trying to calm her while she kept sobbing.
He lifted his head and looked at the adventurers crowded over them, who looked back at him, then turned toward the door the stranger had walked out through.
In that hour, the only sounds in the hall were the crackle of the fire in the hearth, the wind in the walls, and the sobbing of the girl who, in the witnesses' eyes, looked as if she had seen death itself standing before her.
By late evening, the hall had nearly emptied.
People left one by one, two by two, some with a bottle in hand, some in silence, while Solt and Riana sat by the hearth.
She sat up straight, both hands wrapped around a mug of ale, staring at a single spot on the wooden surface in front of her.
The ale had gone cold long ago, but she kept holding the mug. Solt sat across from her, forearms braced on the tabletop, said nothing as he looked into his partner's eyes, then let out a heavy breath through his nose and turned to the fire.
Suddenly, a powerful jolt came from below, shaking the floor, shifting the mugs, and knocking a hook with a tag off the wall.
Several people jumped to their feet, looking around.
A second jolt came a couple of seconds later, just as short, and just as clearly pushing upward from below.
A third followed.
"An earthquake?" one of the adventurers asked.
"I don't think so. It doesn't come in sharp bursts like that," Solt answered warily, steadying Riana.
Then a din of voices and commotion rose from outside, and everyone hurried straight for the door and out into the street.
The people of Thornholt were already standing along the street, heads tipped back toward the ridge, where bright flashes of light were bursting between the mountain peaks.
The flashes were short and local, and the sounds that came with them reached the townspeople only after a delay — muffled peals in which one could sometimes make out an impact, sometimes an explosion, lightning, and sometimes a roar.
Solt stood watching the ridge, then looked down at Riana beside him, her trembling hands hanging at her sides, fingers slowly picking apart her cuticles.
A group of seven set out with first light and climbed the mountain trail to scout.
By mid-morning they reached a ridge crest that looked down over the hollow where the wyverns had once been.
Solt walked ahead and was the first to stop, freezing with his mouth open.
The rocks in the hollow were gone. Where massive stone ridges had once stood, with crevices that had sheltered the pack, craters now lay, the smaller ones scattered along the edges, with melted rims and crumbling walls, each sinking several meters into the ground.
At the center was one huge crater, spanning several hundred meters across, and at its bottom lay fused rock, still holding heat in places.
One of the adventurers, who had circled around the right edge of the crater, raised his hand and called the others over.
Solt walked over, tilting his head slightly, shoulders dropping, his eyes still just as wide, the frozen shock on his face making plain that he didn't believe what he was seeing.
The torn-off head of a storm wyvern lay on the rocky ground right at the edge, five times the height of an average man, with broad brow ridges and scales that had taken on the gray tint of death.
The neck had been torn away, its edges ragged, vertebrae exposed, and across the whole of the wound there wasn't a single mark that any blade could have left.
But that wasn't what frightened Solt most.
Slowly lowering himself onto one knee and looking into the wyvern's eyes, he felt at once a terrible cold run down his spine and a wave of goosebumps with it: this monster's eyes held the same mad, primal terror he had seen in Riana the evening before.
"It's him..." a quiet voice came from behind him.
Solt slowly turned his head over his shoulder.
Riana stood two steps away, looking at the wyvern's head, then lowered her eyes and looked straight into Solt's.
"It was him."
Solt went still for a moment, then slowly turned back to the monster's head, his mind still refusing to accept it.
And still, reality remained reality.
Whatever had come here that night was gone.
And it had left behind exactly as much as it wanted to leave.
The God Hunter.