111. The Favorites

  [Designation: GUNGNIR]

  [Instrument Class: AUXILIARY]

  [Anchored Realm: PRETJORD (+1)]

  [Item Description: Those of us who’ve spent too long roaming the slopes of Mount Meru can sometimes forget… that gods come in many shapes, and often with little in the way of fanfare or grandeur. A prayer for favorable weather. The lamentations of a grieving mother. Or sometimes… the simple desire of a soul to be recognized and justly rewarded for his skill and talent. One such god heard one such prayer in one such memory of a long-forgotten world. The god recognized and rewarded this soul by crafting a divine weapon: a perfect replica of the soul’s skill as a hunter, and his talent for never missing his mark.]

  ***

  Along with the final bombastic syllable of King Tyr’s speech, the Netherpool’s serene winter wonderland descended into chaos.

  Despite the royal arbiter’s warnings (invitations?) about what was or wasn’t allowed by the rulebook, no team seemed interested in forming alliances or rivalries—at least this early into the game. Pairs of Wayfarers, together with their Anchored spotters, scattered across the open ice, intent on carving out a piece of the pie that—with any luck—would yield the biggest slice on the table.

  As for Team Serac, they monkey-saw and monkey-did, doing their darnedest to look as purposeful as the rest of the competition. They were somewhat slowed, however, by the ice itself as well as by the pace of Petter Svensen, who lagged behind the bigger, fitter, and more experienced spotters. Zacko didn’t seem to mind the apparent deficit, as he offered a typically stoic quip:

  “This is fine. This gives us the best vantage point for watching and learning from the entire field. Like my mama always used to say, when in Pretjord.”

  Serac, ever the eager student, gave the Manusya several seconds to finish his sentence, before running out of patience: “When in Pretjord what?”

  “Never mind. Take a look up ahead, though. The favorites are already getting stuck in.”

  The ‘favorites’, of course, referred to Team Rathor. They boasted a formidable line-up made up of two captains: Rathor himself of the Kronvakt and Captain Sea Bass from the regular army, today acting as spotter. Rounding out the trio as the second hunter was a [Designation: HILDE VINDSDATTER], she of the manta ray typing and an impressive pair of pectoral fins.

  If there was one example to watch and learn from, Team Rathor had to be it. Serac kept her eyes peeled even as she jogged behind the main pack. She wasn’t alone in her approach, judging from how the Wayfarers on the other teams appeared to hang back slightly, as if ‘waiting’ for Rathor to claim the first stake in the Realmhunt. Even in this supposedly free-for-all competition, a clear pecking order was in effect.

  In the end, however, it was an Anchored soul who made the ‘move’ of real substance. Captain-turned-spotter Sea Bass ordered his group to a halt with a raised fist, which his two Wayfaring teammates promptly obeyed. The man then brought his scarred face close to the ground, looking for all the world like he wanted to ‘sniff’ the ice. After only a brief moment of this, he took out a carving knife (just a regular one; nothing magical about it!) to quite literally mark a ‘spot’ on the ice, before stepping back a fair distance.

  The hunters immediately sprang into action. First, Rathor jumped into the air, fishing trident in hand. At the same time, Hilde ducked underneath him and brought both of her finned arms skyward with a powerful stroke.

  Whoosh! The ensuing gust of wind pushed Rathor higher into the air (and sent his ash-gray mane awhirl, Serac couldn’t help but notice), well into fall damage territory. It was from this elevated position that the Yaksha prince threw his GUNGNIR with an almost casual flair, sending its barbed triangle of a blade plunging onto the ice.

  [Auxiliary Technique: TRUEFLIGHT]

  The trident hit the mark with remarkable accuracy, breaking off a sizable block of solid ice as it did. Then, as if pulled by an invisible string, it shot straight into the air and back into the hand of its thrower, ice-block and all.

  A gasp of wonder and excitement went up from the spectators in the tented area. The ‘show’ was well and truly on, with a flashy opener from its marquee performer.

  As for the performer himself, he handled his near-lethal fall with aplomb and trickery. He brandished his trident with the beginning of a throwing motion, but stopped short of letting go. GUNGNIR and its ‘captured’ block of ice crashed earthward in the blink of an eye, dragging with it Rathor’s bullet-like figure—back straight, legs together, and one arm tucked into the side.

  The ice shattered into smithereens, dispersing the kinetic energy of the landing while leaving behind a GUNGNIR that stood on its blade, straight up and down. Its wielder, of course, had held onto GUNGNIR’s shaft for the duration of the circus trick. For one instant, Rathor appeared to be doing a one-armed handstand, with his sinewy musculature helping to absorb what remained of the impact.

  Cool as you like, the prince finished off the sequence by flipping back onto his feet, prompting more applause. Serac had been watching his HP bar the whole time (among some other things) and saw that he hadn’t lost a single drop of health. The man even had the casual audacity to turn and wave towards the adoring crowd!

  “You can just do that?” Serac turned to her teammates, scandalized. “Pretend to throw your spear and somehow gain the power of flight?”

  “Not quite flight in the traditional sense, Miss,” Petter explained confidently, clearly having done his homework. “Notice he needed Miss Hilde’s help to fly up into the air in the first instance. That’s because there was nothing solid for GUNGNIR to aim at. The technique also has limited range. For example, Prince Rathor couldn’t just fly from here to the top of the Realmtree in one go, even if he were to aim for the canopies.”

  “Either way, it’s a homing spear guided by an aimbot,” there Zacko went again with his jargon, “which apparently you can hold onto and use as a gap-closer. Conditional or no, seems plenty OP to me. I guess he ain’t the big shot prince/captain for nothing.”

  “Oh, if you think that’s powerful, Mister, wait until you see it in action with FURNACE! Keep watching now; I think they’re just about to start their hunt proper.”

  “Through that new hole in the ice, right?” Serac asked, taking mental notes.

  “That’s right! First, Mister Army Captain marks out the prime location. Next, Prince Rathor carves out the chokepoint. And now—”

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  Right on cue, Hilde the manta ray folded her fins and dove straight into the so-called ‘chokepoint’ (brrr!). This was followed by a lull in the action, one Serac seriously considered might end with the manta-ray woman floating back to the surface as a block of frozen Wayfarer. But then the ground at her cleats began to shake, signaling a large-scale movement in the water beneath.

  Whatever Hilde was doing down there, it was working. Her trick was nowhere near as flashy or crowd-pleasing as the prince’s, but you couldn’t argue with the results. The first of which now ‘popped out’ of the chokepoint in the form of a dark, scaly shadow.

  In a Realm of fish-people, it was no surprise that some of the Aberrants also took after a piscine form. The [Mennesketer] was one such horror show, though in truth, it looked to be more teeth than fish. A slippery, wriggling body that tapered far too acutely into a tattered tailfin. A head that was larger than the rest of its body, consisting of only two discernible components: a single eye that glowed a [Hungry] red, itself overshadowed by the creature’s flaring spike-pit of a mouth.

  The Mennesketer splashed through the surface, furiously snapping its jaws as if it wanted to eat the very air. But its appearance proved short-lived, what with a seasoned hunter waiting on the other side of the ice.

  [FURNACE: ON]

  [Auxiliary Technique: TRUEFLIGHT—SAMGHATA]

  Before Serac could even process what had happened, the Mennesketer went poof into Souldust, leaving behind sparks of white-hot fire as the only clue of how it died. Serac snapped her attention onto the likeliest smiter, just in time to see a burning GUNGNIR fly back into its thrower’s hand.

  Rathor himself had undergone a temporary visual change. The Rakshasa part of his torso, namely the faded vermilion skin that wasn’t covered by shark scales, now took on a scorching, dark-red hue—much closer to Serac’s own cinnabar. He also radiated with an aura whose distinguishing color was hard to define, as it flickered constantly between Zealous green and Infernal black.

  The effect was brief, however, and the prince was back to his vermilion, smile-and-wave-at-the-crowd self in no time, along with a Pathsighted message that read: [FURNACE: OFF]. And still, no actual ‘furnace’ in sight!

  Rathor’s in the same category of Wayfarers as Zacko or the Tomasens, Serac analyzed on the fly, by which I mean he imbues his Auxiliary with the magic of his main Instrument. Just where is he ‘hiding’ it though? Unless—?

  The show was far from over. The ‘ice-quake’ continued in conjunction with Hilde Vindsdatter’s underwater work. And before long, more piranha-like Wildspawns broke the surface in droves, where only a fiery death awaited them.

  [FURNACE: ON]

  [Auxiliary Technique: TRUEFLIGHT—RAURAVA]

  Serac was ready this time, and she bore true witness to GUNGNIR’s true flight—or multiple flights in this case. The trident caught fire again, but the flames now split off into five detached tongues, with each of them morphing into its own replica of the main body.

  Six tridents—one physical and five fiery apparitions of the real thing—flew into the swarm of Mennesketers at speed. It was like spearing fish in a barrel. The whole lot of them went up in flames and Souldust, as instantly dead as their pioneer before them.

  “It’s an AOE upgrade to the first spell,” Zacko muttered exactly what Serac had been thinking. “Our big shot prince has got something of a toolbox up his sleeve. A figurative sleeve, of course, in every sense of the word.”

  Serac was locked in. So much so she didn’t even let the unwelcome reminder of Rathor’s fashion choice distract her from the main attraction. The show now moved onto its climax with the entrance of its big bad villain.

  In fact, the ‘Elite Mob’ did more than just make an entrance. It sent more broken chunks of ice flying everywhere as it widened the chokepoint to accommodate its own formidable size. And where the Mennesketer had been a piranha with too much teeth, the [Jotuneter] looked to be more tentacles than fish.

  A Wildspawn that had taken after the kraken of legend. It extended its tentacles onto the icy surface, almost like probes, before writhing and uncoiling into its full, fearsome height. Easily twice the size of even a bull-shark Yaksha king, and therefore instantly dwarfing and casting a multi-faceted shadow over every soul in the vicinity. A giant-eater indeed.

  The Jotuneter now unfurled the bulbous proboscis that passed for its mouth, before letting out a spittle-flecked screech. It made no audible sound (and therefore elicited a complete non-reaction from Zacko), yet Petter as well as the gathered spectators broke out in cries of pain and dismay. Even Serac winced a little, as her somewhat ripple-aware horns picked up on the monster’s ravenous intent.

  And as it turned out, the Jotuneter’s ‘greeting’ did have its intended effect, at least as far as Pathsight was concerned. For Serac’s overlay suddenly exploded with multiple messages at once, affecting almost every Wayfarer in range:

  [Status Effect: FEAR]

  Almost everyone—except Zacko and Serac herself. It seemed being outrealmers did have its perks after all!

  Prince Rathor too appeared utterly unfazed, smiling up at his much bigger ‘prey’ despite the spittle that splashed onto his face. The scaly portion of his torso, however, did react to the screech by standing on end, proving that he wasn’t entirely immune from the Jotuneter’s scare tactics. All the same, it wasn’t enough to proc the [Fear] effect, which meant the trident-slinger was free to use his spells with impunity.

  [FURNACE: ON]

  [Auxiliary Technique: TRUEFLIGHT—TAPANA]

  Back to a single burning spear, but it flew as swift and true as always, finding its mark inside the Jotuneter’s open maw. The kraken didn’t instantly disappear like its little piranha brothers, but the whole thing did go up in flames, eliciting another silent scream of a much more pitiful variety.

  [JOTUNETER Status Effect: HELLFIRE]

  It then stayed on fire for some time, unable to fight back, and curling up into overburnt calamari all the while. [Tapana]’s fire, rather than the white-hot explosion of [Samghata], flickered green-and-black like Rathor’s aura, even as the Jotuneter’s HP bar shriveled into nothing.

  Funnily enough, the effect reminded Serac very much of her own [Catharsis] spell. It seemed to be a persistent DoT effect (a powerful one at that!) rather than separate hits of tiered damage, which only made it even more terrifying in her mind. Then there was Rathor himself, admiring his own barbecue-craft with the wolfish smile of an apex predator. The whole scene left Serac feeling more than a little queasy…

  “There’s that fight-or-flight response again, Wayfarer,” Trippy in his monotone underscored the disturbing turn of events, “though I rather suspect it’s for a different reason than previous.”

  “You aren’t wrong about that,” Serac muttered in her outside voice. Then, her mood turned on a dime as a new thought occurred to her, “But you know what, somehow this whole thing has got me feeling peckish. What a shame to see that big Wildspawn burn up into Souldust! If only I could’ve [Harvested] it, I’ll bet you Petey could’ve come up with another banger recipe.”

  “You’ll get your chance yet, Miss Serac,” the chef in question piped up. “You’ve now seen the basic loop of the Realmhunt. Spotter to scout out a promising chokepoint, then the two hunters work together to flush out and smite as many Mob-class Aberrants as quickly as they can. The more Mobs you smite in one concentrated area, the higher the likelihood of drawing out an Elite, like the Jotuneter we just saw. With any luck, you catch the attention of the biggest ‘fish’ in the sea: the Frostkrill. At least, that’s the theory under typical conditions.”

  As if to illustrate Petter’s summary, Hilde the manta ray now jumped out of the chokepoint herself, drawing the curtains on Team Rathor’s first ‘loop’. Drenched from head to toe, she wrapped her fins around herself and shivered violently, striking a miserable contrast to her partner’s turn as the flashy and very-much-dry showman. To Rathor’s credit, however, he immediately set his GUNGNIR on fire again, demonstrating his chops as an on-demand heat source on top of being an apex predator.

  Aw, there Serac went again with her flip-or-flop response, what a gentleman! Oblivious to his hunter’s inane thoughts, Petter drew in closer, eager to get the Team Serac show back on the road.

  “But there’s nothing typical about this year, Miss Serac, what with that secret weapon in your pocket,” he said with a confident and conspiratorial smile. “We’ve seen what the favorites are up to. And now, it’s time for us long shots to flip the script!”

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