He picked one of the monster cores—he went with that of a Bramble Blight—and carved a small cut into his forearm. Using his fingers, he mixed the wispy, ethereal material with his blood until it formed a sticky, red-brown paste.
Over the next half-hour or so, Hunter worked feverishly, drawing circles and triangles, adding curlicues, sigils, and runes of power. Before he knew it, he’d slipped into a trance-like rhythm, the motions flowing one into the next. He lost track of time entirely. Biggs and Wedge stood by, unmoving, their glossy black eyes fixed on the growing ritual circle. They watched in silence, mystified.
When his ritual circle was nearly complete, Hunter paused to examine it for flaws. He found none. The lines were clean, the symbols precise; he’d done a good job. All that remained was to place something of his prey’s in the center, and breathe life into the carvings with his Essence.
That something was, of course, the pellet of droppings. He put it carefully in its place, then cycled Essence through his channels until it thrummed beneath his skin, just shy of overflowing. With a steady breath, he let it pour into the circle.
You have initiated a Hunt. You have marked the rabbit as your prey.
Your Rite of the Hunt is now at 2.
Your Rite of the Hunt is now at 3.
Your Rite of the Hunt is now at 4.
Your Occultism is now at 23.
The rite took hold, and Hunter felt… well, not much.
If he’d been expecting a compass needle or a glowing trail pointing him straight to his prey, he was sorely disappointed.
What he did feel were traces and impressions of the rabbit’s presence, faintly imprinted on the pellet. It belonged to a large male, hale and wizened by rabbit standards—an older survivor, cautious and well-acquainted with the dangers of the Weald. Through the droppings he’d used as an anchor for the rite, Hunter read the faint echoes of its thoughts and feelings, simple but powerful.
Fleeting moments of alertness. Dim light filtering through dense vegetation. The absent-minded bliss of nibbling leaves, roots, and berries. The desperate, primal urge to stay low and hidden. The ever-present edge of fear, and the practiced instinct of something that had spent its life avoiding teeth and claws. And that maddening, involuntary instinct, to freeze when danger drew near, to trust stillness over flight.
It wasn’t much, but it was a start. He could feel it in the back of his mind, the bond between predator and prey, between hunter and quarry. It told him he was relatively close; the traces and impressions carried by the droppings matched the feel of the surrounding area. Once he drew nearer, that sense would sharpen, grow more vivid.
His best shot at spotting and catching his prey would be either in the early morning, before the sun climbed too high, or in the late afternoon, as it began to dip. That was when the rabbit would be most active; the low light would offer some protection from predators.
Well, not from himself, obviously; from other predators.
Dusk was still hours off, though. He should probably use the time to narrow down the areas where his quarry was most likely to be hiding.
He turned his thoughts to his familiars, focusing on the subtle thread of connection between them. Carefully, he tried to channel the impressions from the rite through the bond he shared with the ravens, those faint, instinctive echoes of the rabbit’s world. He wasn’t sure it would work, but ever since he’d picked up Augmented Familiar, the mental link between his mind and theirs had been growing stronger by the day. If they could pick up even a fragment of what he was feeling, it might give them the edge they needed.
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“Are you getting this, guys?”
They didn’t have to answer. The sudden wave of enthusiasm and fascination that surged through the bond was proof enough.
“Think you can take a look around the area, get a feel for where it might be nesting?”
Both ravens cawed eagerly in reply, already beating their wings as they took to the air.
Sending them out to do some preliminary scouting was the right call. His own presence would likely disturb the area, doing more harm than good. He’d rather not go stomping through the brush blind—not before he had a clearer sense of where to look.
As Biggs and Wedge began their search, Hunter considered what he’d do once the rabbit was actually in sight. The obvious answer was to shoot it with his bow. It would be proper, traditional, the way Aumir would do it. Still, he was far from confident in his archery. He’d hate to actually find the right rabbit, only to miss his shot.
Would it be cheating if he had the ravens strike it with a blast of magic instead?
Would that spoil the hunt?
He pushed the question aside for now. He’d try the proper way first, if he could. If that failed, he could then he see if and how the system could be gamed.
He spent the rest of the day meditating, focusing on the rite’s bond with his quarry. Biggs and Wedge continued their reconnaissance, sweeping farther with each pass, feeding him fragments of notions and images of the surrounding area through their shared link.
Slowly but surely, he began to piece together a mental map of the area, marking clearings, dense thickets, and shaded hollows, highlighting and prioritizing the places where the rabbit was most likely to be found.
Fyodor took advantage of the seemingly slow day to nap at Hunter’s side, lazily stretched out in the grass. Over the past few days, he’d spent most of his time tearing through the woods with Klothi and the ravens, sticking his snout into gods-knew-what. Between that and Hunter logging out every night, the two of them had barely spent any time together. If things went the way Hunter hoped, he’d make it up to the excitable direwolf before the day was out.
Biggs and Wedge, finally given something interesting to do, were tireless. They continued their sweeping passes, combing the surrounding woods from above even as Hunter logged out of Elderpyre for the afternoon. By the time he returned a couple of hours later, the two ravens had a pretty good idea of where he should begin his hunt.
To the west of the cabin, a short hike away, there was a thick patch of shrubbery and tangled vegetation growing around a narrow stream. The ample cover and proximity to water made it an ideal nesting ground for rabbits. According to the ravens, that was also where Fyodor had been doing most of his rabbit hunting. It was as good a place to start as any.
Waiting for the sun to dip low enough in the sky, Hunter considered the best way to go about this hunt. He sent Biggs and Wedge out for another round of reconnaissance, then settled on a plan. His best bet, he decided, was to climb one of the trees near the stream and wait for his quarry to reveal itself. With how dense the cover was down there, hunting from the ground would be next to impossible.
Besides, an ambush from above would likely give him a cleaner shot—no small thing, considering his marksmanship was still nothing to write home about.
There was on hitch in his plan; the 250-pound furry goofball currently sprawled on the grass beside him, yipping and pawing at the air in hopes of earning some belly rubs.
“What am I going to do with you, boy?” he asked, smiling at the look of pure ecstasy on the direwolf’s lupine face as he obliged him. “How am I going to get you to stay put?”
Taking him along on the hunt was out of the question. The moment Fyodor spotted a rabbit, he’d tear through the undergrowth like a rocket, ruining any chance of a clean ambush. He was docile, generally speaking, but Hunter’s only real chance of getting him to stay put was to leave him under the watchful eyes of Biggs and Wedge. He was still a juvenile, after all, and the two ravens had proven surprisingly capable babysitters when needed.
The problem was, they were also his scouts, his eyes in the sky. If they were stuck keeping the direwolf out of trouble, he’d be going into the hunt half-blind. His chances of spotting the rabbit in time would plummet to practically nothing.
Hunter briefly considered tying him up by the cabin, then took a look at the adoring way the young direwolf was gazing up at him and dismissed the idea completely. Fyodor wasn’t a dog—he’d never been leashed, never needed to be. Trying to restrain him like that would only make the poor thing panic, and it’d do more harm than good to the trust they’d been building over the last couple of months.
One way to keep his cake and eat it too would be to split the ravens; leave one behind to keep an eye on Fyodor, and take the other along on the hunt. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed like the most plausible solution. What was the benefit of having two familiars, after all, if he didn’t occasionally get them to work independently of each other?
Hunter turned to his ravens, eyeing them with mock seriousness. “You two know how to draw straws?”
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