During the past month, since the moment he’d first picked up the Krommkhatani hunting recurve Aumir had gifted him, Hunter knew one thing: no matter what the numbers on his Character Sheets said, marksmanship was not his thing.

  It reminded him of the gut feeling he’d gotten back in his first semester of college; a quiet certainty that the place was never going to work out long-term. It was just a hunch, something drawn from signs he must have picked up subconsciously, though not clearly enough to grasp in any conscious way.

  He told Aumir, fully expecting the strange huntsman to dismiss his reluctance and urge him to learn the abilities on the spot. He wouldn’t be wrong to do so, either; they were great abilities, all three of them. Hell, Hunter was already halfway to convincing himself to shut up and take them anyway, even without any external prodding.

  Surprisingly, however, Aumir didn’t rebuke him.

  “If that’s how you feel, sirrah, there’s probably a reason,” he shrugged. “Even if you can’t put a finger on it.”

  “I mean… I already got a Stealth skill and a Danger-Sense ability, too,” Hunter argued, though more with himself than with Aumir. “What’s next? Poisons?”

  “Mayhap it’s just not your Wyrd,” the huntsman shrugged again. “Baheep.”

  “So what do I so? Skip these altogether?”

  The huntsman gave it some thought, rubbing his chin. Then, to Hunter’s bewilderment, he jumped to his feet and danced a little jig.

  “Does Aumir look like a scholar to you, young osprey?”

  “I… I don’t understand.”

  “It’s a simple question. Would you say Aumir looks like a scholar?”

  Hunter gave the seven-foot tall man a once-over; tan skin, shriveled, cloudy left eye, a mess of facial scars, dreadlocks reaching halfway down his broad back, practical hunting clothes. Even without his great feathered cloak, avian skull headdress, and gas mask, Hunter would say he looked as little as a scholar as anyone ever had.

  “No,” he admitted. “Aumir does not look like a scholar.”

  “Then, would the young osprey be surprised to learn Aumir spent no fewer than a baker’s dozen years in the spires of the High Academy in Usdeneau, poring over dusty tomes and arguing scholarly points ?”

  “Ugh… a bit, yeah.” Aumir had mentioned something of the sort before, but Hunter still had trouble imagining it.

  “Still, it is true,” the huntsman said and danced another jig. “And, funny as it might sound, Aumir would never find his way to his true calling without those years of scholarly pursuits. Or to the court of Herne, for that matter, yes?”

  “Which is to say…?”

  “Which is to say, the bow could well be a worthy stepping stone, even if it is not where you aim to land.”

  That made sense; there was something to be said about journeys and destinations and all that, Hunter supposed.

  “Should I go on and learn all three of the abilities, then?”

  “Hmmm? Oh, no, no. Best to hold off, Aumir thinks. Just for a few days. Wait till you have the chance to get a divination from the Nine Hundred and Ninety-Nine Spirit Sage. Which reminds me—you might want to gather your things and get ready to get back on the road. We ride at dawn.”

  “What?” Hunter raised an eyebrow. That was the first he was hearing about this. “Ride? Where to?”

  “Why, to the Nine Hundred and Ninety-Nine Spirit Sage’s abode!” the huntsman flashed him a gold-toothed smile. “Try to keep up, young osprey!”

  ***

  Gathering his things didn’t take Hunter more than ten minutes; having access to an extraplanar storage vault with a flick of the wrist certainly had its upsides. The only thing that worried him was packing enough food for Fyodor—the direwolf had become quite particular to Aumir’s Essence-infused venison—but the huntsman assured him that wouldn’t be a problem.

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  “There’s one more thing we should take care of before we take off on the morrow,” he told Hunter in the afternoon.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s high time for the trophy from your first true quarry to be wrought into a talisman. The rabbit’s skull should be ready for the working by now, yes?”

  Hunter winced. In what little downtime his training left him with, the huntsman had been teaching him how to macerate and degrease bones. Among other things, he’d learned that the stench of carrion sitting in a sealed container full of water was one of the most god-awful things on the planet.

  The two weeks he’d let the rabbit’s bones steep in a jar of clean water would normally not be enough for the process to work, Aumoir had said. Still, time was of the essence—so he’d used some kind of alchymical reagent to speed it up.

  The degreasing that followed the maceration was equally grisly, but again, Hunter was spared the worst of it. To expedite the process, Aumir had dumped the bones in a large ceramic urn of something that smelled suspiciously like industrial-strength acetone.

  Whatever it was, it had worked wonders; when Aumir opened the urn, the skull came out squeaky-clean and white as porcelain.

  “In time, you’ll learn this craft yourself,” Aumir said as he rinsed the skull in the stream and held it up to the afternoon light, clearly satisfied. “It takes patience and practice, but it is a vital part of talismongery.”

  Hunter had no idea what talismongery was, but figured that if he still had trouble finding work after his stint at the Happy Motel, at least he had a head start on a promising career in taxidermy.

  “I suppose I could turn it into a bone charm,” he said as he followed the huntsman back to the cabin. He still had enough cores and parts to make a dozen, and his Craft Spirit Charm sat snuggly at a maxed-out 25.

  “No,” Aumir shook his head. “Not yet. You’ll have to turn it into a proper hunting trophy first. Get that tarp of yours ready; you’d better be ready to perform the ritual by dusk.”

  They set up behind the log cabin, where the light was best at this hour. Hunter cleared a flat patch of ground, spread the tarp he’d been using for his grisly arts and crafts, and unpacked his sack of monster parts.

  “Use this one,” Aumir pointed at a Bramble Blight core. “Aumir would rather go with something more natural, but it is of little consequence. In this ritual, the hunting trophy should not absorb any of the aspects of the core. You’ll just use it as a source for Essence.”

  Hunter picked up the core and mixed it with his blood, its prickly thorns and ghostly strands dissolving into a viscous ooze. With that as his ink, he set to work painting the ritual circle. The rite was a secondary working of his Rite of the Hunt, and as with other rituals, he felt himself sliding into a trance. His fingers traced runes and sigils across the tarp as though guided by a will not entirely his own.

  Getting everything right took the better part of an hour. Aumir loomed over him the whole time, watching his handiwork in silence save for the occasional grunt of approval. By the time Hunter finished the circle and the rest of the preparations, dusk was already creeping in.

  “Good,” the huntsman said. “Your hand for sigil-tracing outstrips your hand for shooting—you were right about that. Mayhap we’ll yet make a proper talismonger of you, too, young osprey.”

  “Thanks, I guess?” said Hunter. “Should I go on with the rite, then?”

  “Best to wait a spell, till the sun sinks lower. Dawn and dusk are the hours of the Hunt. Those are the moments when the rite is most likely to take hold. Take a breather; it won’t be long now.”

  Hunter did as he was told; these trances always took a lot out of him. Aumir picked up the rodent skull—it looked even smaller and whiter in his large, callused hands—and studied in the fading light.

  “Do you know why Aumir tasked you with hunting this quarry in particular?”

  “I assumed it was some kind of hazing, to be frank.”

  “Not at all. See, most hunters would seek to prove themselves by hunting big game; some grand or rare beast whose head would look good mounted over a fireplace.”

  “Makes sense in a way, doesn’t it?” Hunter asked.

  “In this regard, most hunters are fools,” Aumir shook his head. “Your first proper hunt should be about the act of hunting itself. Letting it be overshadowed by obsessing over the grandeur of your chosen prey is foolishness.”

  “I see.”

  “Not yet, you don’t. See this trophy of yours? It is not the skull of some great beast, some moon-antlered moose, some fire-breathing drake. On its own, it holds little merit or significance. It is your hunting of it that makes it special. That’s why it makes the perfect base for a very special kind of talisman.”

  He reached into his undershirt and drew out what Hunter guessed was the trophy of his own first hunt—the skull of a some bird of prey, even smaller than the rabbit’s. It hung from his neck by a length of simple, unassuming twine.

  “Such a talisman is to be held close to your heart, to be used as a focus as you meditate and reflect on your hunts. It makes for the perfect vessel for memories, for emotions. For what you stand for.”

  Something clicked in Hunter’s head, and he understood.

  “It’s a heirloom, isn’t it?”

  Aumir raised a scar-ravaged eyebrow, pleasantly surprised.

  “Top marks, young osprey. Indeed. One might not be able to craft a heirloom the same way they would enchant some other item; still, there are ways to go about creating one all the same. They’re simply more… roundabout.”

  He passed the rabbit skull into Hunter’s hands and tipped his chin toward the ritual circle.

  “Do your working. The time’s as good as it’s going to get.”

  Hunter placed the skull at the center of the circle and knelt on the ground, taking his place by it.

  “Think of your hunt, young osprey,” Aumir placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Think of your quarry.”

  He closed his eyes, awakened the Essence inside his channels, and did exactly that.

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