119. The Rules of the Game

  [Designation: ABYSSGAZER]

  [Instrument Class: ZEALOUS]

  [Anchored Realm: PRETJORD (+1)]

  [Item Description: If there’s a mountain for us to climb, we climb it. The all too natural creed at the heart of every soul’s drive toward ascension. But why work hard when you can eat smart? Such was the evolutionary endpoint of Wildspawns that chose the abyssal depths as their home and feeding ground—obligate scavengers feasting on a whole Realm’s worth of scraps at the bottom of the Roots. One in particular went ‘deeper’ than all the others, growing over the Kalpas into a colossus fit for its status as the Realm’s most legendary trophy. It watches and reads with its myriad eyes and all-knowing feelers. And it waits for a hunter worthy of its challenge. Who’s to say that an avatar of the abyss can’t also dream of ascension—from perennial scavenger to apex predator?]

  ***

  Serac dashed across the ice on well-worn cleats, looking for a Wayfarer to hunt.

  Her search was somewhat complicated by the changing environment. The titanic clash of Frostkrill-vs-Gulloyne had left the frozen Netherpool in a less-than-frozen state, the ice layer breaking apart at the seams. Having to hop from one island to another proved a risky proposition for an aquaphobic Rakshasa. To make matters worse, all this happened in growing darkness.

  “Over the years, the Frostkrill has surfaced 17 times, with five of those occasions resulting in successful smites.” Some time earlier, Renate had kicked off her briefing with a history lesson. “But what most Pretjordians today don’t realize is the Realmhunt didn’t always play by the same rules. Granted, the rulebook is brief and bare-bones enough to seem like an arbitrary collection of Tyr Djofulsen’s harebrained ideas, but the truth is—”

  “That’s twice.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s twice you’ve called him Tyr Djofulsen,” Serac had elaborated. “I only noticed because you’re the only one who does that. Everyone else here calls him ‘King’. Sorry, shouldn’t have interrupted. Go on!”

  “…Right,” Renate had said slowly, giving Serac a curious look. “As I was saying, the rulebook developed over the years in response to the Frostkrill’s feeding habits. You can dress it up however you like with a scoring system and wagers on the side, but at the end of the day, there’s only one prize that matters. Here, let me break it down for you, starting from the simplest rule: the time limit. Start at high noon and end at sundown. With the season being what it is, that doesn’t give the hunters much time. No matter how you look at it, it only seems like self-sabotage. How do you possibly justify such a rule?”

  Serac could only shrug. But Zacko, he of the Manesferan sensibilities, had taken a stab. “Entertainment value? No one wants to watch a game drag on forever, right?”

  “A reasonable guess,” Renate had conceded with a faint smile. “Certainly, heightened excitement for both the competitors and spectators is one byproduct, but it wasn’t the original intention. You see, the first few editions of the Realmhunt didn’t have the time limit. They were multi-day affairs, allowing the contestants to hunt from the crack of dawn to well past the dead of night. Problem was, these Hunts would turn out to be duds, often ending with nary a ripple from the abyssal deep.”

  “Threat escalation,” Serac had parroted the term she’d only just learned today. “A tight time frame forces the hunters to concentrate in one area instead of scattering all over the Netherpool. Higher smiting density leads to better chance of drawing the Frostkrill’s attention.”

  “That’s one part of it.” Renate’s smile had widened just a touch. “And I daresay that was primarily the intended effect. Though I’ve come to learn of a secondary, unintended effect that’s much more relevant to our task. But I’ll come back to that in a bit…”

  The hour was late, and the sun was not long for the skies. Already, the seafoam had been all but saturated by a darker forest-green.

  It only made things more difficult for an outrealmer who knew barely anything about the Kronvakt members she was trying to hunt. In the growing darkness, they were all shadowy figures with vaguely aquatic silhouettes. In the end, she resorted to using Pathsight to tell them apart, which eventually landed her on:

  [Designation: RODRIN SKJORTSDATTER]

  [Wayfarer Race: YAKSHA]

  [Karmic Level: 15]

  [Liminal Karma: 1,812 ?]

  [Realmhunt Score: 0]

  It was that KL-15 baby! Bless her heart, she’d huffed and puffed all the way to the final phase of the Realmhunt, now pack-hunting the Frostkrill alongside her big brothers and sisters. But she clearly didn’t have a smooth time of it. Her paltry Liminal Karma and the ‘zero’ next to her score were proof enough of that!

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Just then, one of the Frostkrill’s enormous limbs swung down from the darkened sky, as the prawn twisted away from a salamander tongue. Rodrin Skjortsdatter’s shadowy silhouette barely dodge-rolled out of the way, before scrambling away to relative safety. Oh no, she didn’t even try to fight back!

  “Are you absolutely sure we need to do this?” Serac asked the water that lapped against the edge of her icy island.

  “I am,” the water—or rather, a hooded pink head that poked out of the icy surface—answered. “Remember, you agreed to do everything according to my plan. This is the plan, so it’s up to you to follow through.”

  Serac sighed, then exchanged a look with Zacko, who clearly didn’t share her qualms. The plan was a go, and she’d have to console herself with the fact the KL-15 baby didn’t have much to lose from one measly death.

  The Frostkrill moved again, now twisting in reverse to ‘punch’ Gulloyne’s midsection. The rest of its limbs shifted over in concert. Which, for the Wayfarers on the ground, meant more megaton punches falling from the sky.

  It was every Wayfarer for herself. Baby Rodrin did the right thing, breaking into a run to get out of the danger zone. But her progress was interrupted by Serac’s bullet, shot from a safe distance and aimed at Rodrin’s feet.

  For one Ksana, the two women’s eyes met across the haze of battle. Rodrin—a mackerel type like Petter, as it turned out—looked up with surprise, confusion, and betrayal. The sight of it broke Serac’s heart, but she didn’t have to reckon with the pain for long. Zacko promptly did his part: a [Pauldron] barge from the side to knock Rodrin back and into the path of a Frostkrill megaton punch.

  [1,450 ?]

  Serac almost didn’t want the Karmic reward, but Pathsight wouldn’t let her off the hook. The Frostkrill was so inconceivably large and so indiscriminate in its violence that ‘borrowing’ its flailing limbs counted as an environmental smite. In this case, the smiting blow had been credited to Zacko, so Serac received the smaller share doubled by [Insatiable].

  One more hapless Wayfarer down, but the Hunt was far from over.

  “This feels so wrong, man!” Serac cried to whoever would listen. “After this is over, I need to see one of those Manesferan therapists Zacko told me about.”

  “I don’t like it anymore than you do, Rakshasa.” In the absence of a therapist, the water at Serac’s feet would have to do. “But this is how the game is played, if you intend to win it.”

  “If I may add, Wayfarer,” Trippy chimed in, eyes ever on the larger picture, “this is a perfect microcosm of the true nature of Wayfaring. You all seek the ultimate prize—that of ascension to Devahood—but you inevitably must cut down your fellow Wayfarers to do it.”

  Well, if that’s true, Serac thought bitterly, this Devahood thing better be worth it…

  Even in her traumatized petulance, Serac understood the reality before her. She couldn’t worry let alone argue about the big picture. She was in this godsforsaken Hunt to win it, and to that end, she’d do well to heed the soul who’d done it before.

  “The second rule that seems arbitrary but is in fact grounded in the very real need to adapt to the Frostkrill,” had been Renate’s justification for Wayfarer-on-Wayfarer violence, “is that we have teams at all. What’s to stop a skilled Wayfarer from going it alone? And what’s in it for the unfortunate hunter who survives and smites until the very end of the game, only to watch her teammate deal the final blow and take all the spoils?”

  “When you put it like that,” had been Serac’s honest response, “yeah, it does feel like the rule is just there for… entertainment value? Although, I think there’s real merit to having at least two Wayfarers to work the loops. Splitting land and underwater duties is definitely handy.”

  “I’ll grant you that. But the fact is Tyr Djofulsen only introduced this rule in response to a certain quirk of the Frostkrill’s Instrument.”

  “ABYSSGAZER, is it? Gazing into the abyss… or is it the abyss gazing back? What is it, a super ripple-reading device?”

  “You’re not far off. The Frostkrill indeed is the most powerful and far-ranging ripple-reader in all of Pretjord. But besides that, it’s the Realm’s most resourceful scavenger. It feeds, not just on the flesh and Dust of its fallen victims, but on the collective [Hunger] of those who would hunt it in turn.”

  “Our collective [Hunger],” Serac had muttered, more than a little disturbed. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. Even in the second Realm, the big bads liked to use the resident souls’ base nature against them. “But isn’t that an argument against forming teams? It sounds to me like bringing more hunters would only make the Frostkrill happier.”

  “How else would you draw it out in the first place, unless you dangled what it wanted?”

  Serac had gasped then, along with a flash of recognition. “Using ourselves as bait.”

  “Precisely. After some trial and error, Tyr Djofulsen learned that two was the bare minimum. One hunter to present herself as the Frostkrill’s direct prey, and a second to provide ‘fuel’ for its Zealous magic. That’s the only way the Frostkrill would feel ‘safe’ enough to come out and play, owing to a scavenger’s cautious instincts.”

  Hard to imagine a creature of the Frostkrill’s size and power needing to exercise caution, but Serac wasn’t about to argue with 300-plus years of trial and error.

  “Let me get this straight. In this scenario, Gulloyne is the ‘direct prey’, and the rest of the Kronvakt are the ‘fuel source’? And in order to disable the Frostkrill’s magic, we need to cut off its fuel?”

  “Couldn’t have summarized it better myself.”

  “Then I guess my next question is… what is this magic exactly that we need to kill our fellow Wayfarers over it?”

  “Poke your head out and take another look,” Renate had advised from the safety of their snow fort. “You’ll see it plain enough.”

  Serac had seen it. And she continued to see it now as she surveyed the hectic scene on the ground.

  The Frostkrill came with its own hefty HP pool, as any good boss should. But instead of the usual sanguine red, its Health came with a special visual effect: a translucent ‘coat’ of jade-green veined with lotus-white. The same strangely beautiful color as the Frostkrill’s own carapace. The Pathsighted representation of its magical, impenetrable defense.

  “One hunter down, but we’ve still got plenty more to go,” Renate croaked, egging on her outrealmer allies. “Keep to the shadows and don’t make waves. Take out the Kronvakt, one by one, until the shields are down. Then you may go in on the Frostkrill proper. Trust me on this. I have first-hand experience.”

  First-hand experience of assassinating a bunch of Wayfarers just to score yourself a smite, Serac thought darkly, turning an unhappy gaze to the water at her feet. Her ‘the Finless is a good, misunderstood soul’ theory had just taken another hit, yet she herself was about to follow in the same lonely footsteps.

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