Geezer walked in the front, nose close to the ground. Oak and Sadia followed. The girl’s camouflage spell was almost too good. Despite his Boon of Darkvision, Oak had trouble discerning Geezer’s form from the surrounding underbrush.

  Mostly, he followed the sound of sniffing.

  The trail of hoofprints led them to a narrow river winding its way through the sparse trees. The river flowed without hurry, murmuring gently as it passed beneath the trees hanging over it. Sunrise was only moments away. The Corpse-God’s brush painted the sky in hues of red and orange, reflections of light guided by a hand long dead. The world stood in twilight, waiting for a new dawn.

  It's like a painting come to life. Bloody hell.

  The hoof and paw prints of different animals filled the muddy banks of the little river. This will do nicely. Oak turned to Sadia and pressed a finger to his lips, signaling that they would need to be extra quiet. He waved Geezer over, and the three of them sneaked behind a trio of bushes with a good view towards the riverbank.

  Oak readied an arrow and settled in to wait.

  The sun peeked from behind the horizon like a curious child, casting golden rays that danced on the lonely clouds above. Birdsong filled the air, and Oak could see tiny brown lizards running on the branches of the baobab trees.

  Sadia fidgeted in place. He gave the girl a stiff look, and she froze like a statue.

  Geezer perked up. The muted sound of hooves approached. Click, clack. Click, clack. A strange-looking deer strutted into view from the forest, head turning this way and that, alert eyes looking for any sign of danger. A coat of dark orange fur covered its back while the stomach and the legs were white like fresh snow in the mountains of the North. A pair of short, sharp horns stuck out from its narrow skull.

  According to Sadia, this strange deer-like creature was called an antelope. Oak’s stomach growled. Deer or not, the thing looked tasty. He stood on one knee behind the bushes, arrow ready on the bowstring, and waited for his moment.

  The strange deer surveyed the riverbank with its round eyes, twitching nervously. It looked at the river and licked its lips. The poor thing was clearly thirsty. In that moment, Oak felt a modicum of kinship with the animal. There was a familiarity there. Knowing that something was wrong, that it would end badly, and doing it anyway because you could not help yourself.

  Everyone had done things their intuition had warned about, and Oak was no exception. For all he cursed his bad luck, his mistakes had not been the deadly kind, so far. Mostly, he just lost money whenever he played dice or cards.

  The strange deer trotted forward with an uncertain gait, right towards the siren call of the river.

  You are so thirsty, aren’t you? Just a little closer. The water is right there.

  A sigh of relief passed through the animal, and it lowered its head down to drink. Oak stood, drew back the string of his bow, and sent an arrow streaking through the air. It pierced the strange deer’s flank, just behind the front shoulder blade. Right through the heart and the lungs, just like his old man had taught him.

  The orange deer bolted, and Geezer launched himself after it, jumping over the bushes.

  “Come,” Oak told Sadia, and followed the hellhound at a sedate pace. There was no need to rush any longer. The girl shook her stiffened limbs and trudged after him.

  A notification popped up in the upper right corner of Oak’s vision.

  They found Geezer circling the kill some thirty feet away from the riverbank, next to a thornbush. Not a bad run, with a pierced heart and punctured lungs.

  “Good boy,” Oak said and gave the dog a rub.

  Sadia gave him a questioning look, so Oak elaborated: “You would not believe how difficult it was to train him to leave the kill alone. Took me at least a month.”

  “Ah.”

  “So, how do you feel after your first hunting trip?”

  “Hungry.” With a snap of her fingers, Sadia broke her camouflage spell and turned them all back to normal.

  Geezer shook himself from tail to snout and sneezed violently.

  A tickling sensation raced across Oak’s skin as the spell shattered. He laughed and took a length of rope from his belt. The temperature was already on the rise, and soon the sun would bake the landscape. He would have to dress the meat right away or risk it spoiling, which would defeat the entire purpose of this little exercise.

  While Sadia sat down on the ground and watched, he tied the rope around the strange deer’s horns and hauled the entire animal into the air with the help of a nearby tree branch. Then, Oak took out his hunting knife, rolled up his sleeves, and got to work gutting and butchering the animal.

  Sadia looked on, eyes wide with fascination and a little disgust, as Oak made quick cuts around the animal's anus, before cutting the hide from ass to neck. Pierce at the sternum, lift away from the stomach and intestines; slice down to the pelvis. He sawed right through the pelvis and the sternum. Sliced the diaphragm away from the rib cage on both sides of the ‘antelope’ and severed the esophagus and the windpipe.

  The girl let out a shocked gasp when he pulled the guts free from the carcass and dropped them on the ground.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Really? It all comes free just like that?” Sadia asked. There was a hint of nausea in her expression. A tad too much green on those hollowed out cheeks of hers.

  “Yeah.”

  Sadia frowned, her youthful face furrowed in thought. She had the kind of look on her now that made Oak wonder if she was thinking about her own innards and how they might look spread around the ground.

  Never a comforting thought. While working, a butcher should keep his thoughts on his cuts and away from his own internal organs. Actually, any and all self-examination should be avoided while cutting up a carcass. Safer that way, lest you let your mind wander into dangerous places better left lost and forgotten.

  Oak cut out the orange deer’s heart and threw it to Geezer. The hellhound caught the bloody morsel between his teeth and laid down to eat with a ravenous look in his red eyes. The sound of sharp canines ripping into fresh meat filled the air.

  Sadia added a touch of fear to her expression of nausea.

  “Now, I just need to butcher the carcass.” Oak cleared his throat. “You don’t have to look if you don’t want to, you know?”

  ***

  Forty pounds.

  It filled his backpack to the point of bursting. Twenty packets of meat, two pounds each. Oak had not been stingy with the salt. He had covered every piece of meat from all sides to make sure they would not spoil in the warm weather. It was a good haul for such a short hunting trip.

  He could not wait to try some ‘antelope’, and see how it compared to proper deer.

  The sun had risen above the treetops, bathing them and the sparse forest in rays of golden light. Sweat dripped down from Oak’s forehead into his eyes, and he wiped it away. It was a hot morning, and getting hotter by the moment. By midday, he would be praying for cold rain.

  The tiny brown lizards from before had increased their numbers, forming packs and chasing each other from tree to tree and branch to branch. They climbed up the trunks just as well as any squirrel Oak had ever laid his eyes on. Some lizards with blue and green coloring joined in on the fun, little feet flapping as they ran up and down the trees in a flurry of activity.

  Funny little buggers.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Sadia stumbled over a protruding root, hands spinning like windmills.

  Oak caught her arm before she fell on her face. “Sure. How about a question for a question? I have something on my mind as well.”

  “Thanks. Ah, I think that is acceptable,” Sadia said. “I wanted to know how you learned theurgy. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t seem like a type who enjoys pouring over dusty tomes.”

  “Yeah, you ain’t wrong there,” Oak replied. Despite the heat, a cold shiver passed through him as the talk of books reminded him of the Imperial Library and the walking, biting collection of knowledge inside those prestigious halls. “I learned out of necessity.”

  “Necessity?”

  There was a war in the North. I took part. Joined up to fight when I was seventeen.” Oak chuckled. “Terrible idea, by the way. A lot of my friends and acquaintances joined too. All worm-food now.”

  “Worm-food?”

  “Under the dirt. Dead.”

  Sadia’s eyes widened. “Oh, I am so sorry!”

  A wave of guilt rose up inside Oak. “Don’t be. You didn’t put them there.” He pushed the feelings down into the darkness and soldiered on with his tale.

  “We kept running into thought-plagues and all kinds of nasty tricks. A couple of spooks on our side did me a solid and shared some of their knowledge after I showed an aptitude for the art,” Oak said. “After that, I learned by doing. And by killing.”

  “I went to a university.” Sadia bit her lip. “To become a spellsinger, I mean.”

  “Different strokes for different folks.”

  Oak could spy the old road between the trees on their left. A welcome sight, after a long while of trudging through the underbrush. They made their way out of the forest. Geezer sat in the middle of the road, wagging his tail and panting. His black fur absorbed the sunlight like a hole in the world, sucking in the golden rays.

  Sadia shivered at the sight of the hellhound and kept Oak between herself and Geezer as they walked back towards their campsite.

  “I guess it’s my turn now,” Oak said. “Why do you fear dogs?”

  Sadia glanced at Geezer from the corner of her eye, shoulders tense with fear. “When I was a child, we lived in the slums of Hafa with my…my mother.” She swallowed. “The poor and the destitute had to share the streets with packs of stray dogs. If you walked alone, the dogs would follow you. Sometimes, they would chase.”

  “Ah, I see. Yeah, that’ll do it. For what it’s worth, Geezer ain’t going to hurt you.”

  Sadia nodded hesitantly. Oak did not press the issue further. Fear was not something you could argue your way out of. For it to lessen, the girl would need to trust Geezer and trust took time to build. For a moment, they walked in silence, both stewing in their own thoughts and kicking up dust.

  Sadia cleared her throat. “Can I get another question?”

  “Why not? I am feeling gracious.”

  “The night before last. When I woke up, you had blood on your clothes,” Sadia said. She glanced at Oak with a guarded expression on her narrow face. “What happened?”

  “I figured you would want to know sooner or later.” Oak pulled the backpack higher up on his back. The straps chafed his shoulders. “That night, I walked back the way we had come with Geezer, and picked a spot with a tree that kept me out of sight from the road. We settled in to wait.”

  “And?” Sadia asked impatiently.

  “Five men from the village walked right into my little ambush around dusk. Boys really, and drunk to boot,” Oak said. “Led by a young man called Besnik. I was not introduced to the others, but there was also a Jozef and a hook-nosed man named Ervin.”

  “How come you know their names, then?”

  “I took their ghosts.”

  “Ah. I…I should have known.”

  “Well, we got to talking, and I gave them a choice,” Oak said. “They could return the way they came, or they could try to go through me. They chose poorly.”

  “A hook-nosed fellow dragged me to the gallows.” Sadia grimaced. “Might be that his name was Ervin.”

  “Might be.”

  “Fucker.” Sadia spat into the dirt. “He punched me in the stomach.”

  “Yeah, he did.”

  They rounded a corner of the road, and their campsite came into view. Geezer took off like an arrow from a warbow, running full tilt towards Ur-Namma. The elf lounged against a nearby tree, whittling another piece of wood into shape.

  It was cute as Hell. Geezer wanted to say hi to his friend.

  “How do you feel about it?” Oak asked from Sadia.

  The girl blew a strand of black hair away from her face and bit her lip, an irritated expression on her face.

  “I don’t know.”

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