Siege State

Darkness lay low over Wayrest. A cool breeze fluttered through empty streets. Not many were even awake this early, some primal instinct keeping people penned inside, even in a city of such scale, though the great enchanted walls kept monsters well at bay.

The streets were empty, except for one man.

Tom stood outside a low building just outside of the centre of Wayrest. It was unassuming, overall. Not in disrepair, or otherwise ugly, just forgettable. Exactly the way the Council liked it.

It was the Hunter’s Hall. It acted as a hub for those unlucky few who had been exiled into their service. A place for them to gather, to drop off any goods they found in the Deep, and to collect payment next time they were allowed briefly back into the city. A place for them to leave news for loved ones, or to receive it from them. If they still had any.

Tom pushed open the doors and wandered in. The front half of the building was just as the name suggested: a large hall. Low raftered, with a bare handful of candles burning in lamps along the walls, it felt a hallowed place. Tom walked a few paces, and stopped. He felt like an intruder here, in the quiet. He recognised the feeling well, after all, he was beginning to feel like one outside of here, too.

“Good to see you Tom,” a voice said from behind him. “Are you well?”

“Been better, been worse. Yourself?” Tom replied, turning to find Val had slipped into the Hall behind him. She carried a bowstave, not even shoulder height on her, and had a thin sword buckled to her side.

“Not far off, I reckon,” she answered simply. “Come.” and she led him down the far end of the hall. A desk resolved from the shadows, littered with paper and other administrative debris. Val took up a tiny bell and gave it a ring.

They waited a minute, and no one answered. Tom couldn’t hear anyone moving about, either. Val gave a small sigh and rounded the desk.

She tapped firmly on a door in the wall behind, one of several that stood closed along it. Muffled sounds issued from it at her knocking; clearly someone waking up.

Before long, a sleepy looking old woman tottered out of the room in a nightgown.

“Is that you, Val?” she peered at the both of them. “And you must be Tom.”

She looked back to Val, who was waiting patiently on the woman. “Good to see you again, Val. How is it?”

“Good to see you, Sheri. It’s the same as ever: dark and dangerous.”

“I’d be surprised if it wasn’t,” the old woman said, sounding tired beyond just having woken. “You’re showing Tom here the ropes, then?”

“That’s me,” Val replied.

“Well then, I’ll mark you both off.” she gave Tom a penetrating look, at odds with her supposedly groggy demeanour. “Don’t let this one kill himself.”

Tom was about to reply, but Val grabbed his arm and began to steer him from the hall. “I won’t. Take care, Sheri. Always a pleasure.”

Outside, Tom gave Val a questioning look.

“Sheri keeps the books. She brought word of a village-killer approaching the outer ring some five years ago, and the Council let her keep the tabs on the rest of us by way of thanks. You ever come back to Wayrest, your first stop is Hunter’s Hall to see her, understand?”

Tom just nodded at her.

“Good. And you don’t keep her longer than you need to. The woman was in the Deep for forty years. She’s earned her rest.”

Tom was staggered. Forty years? It seemed outrageous.

Old Sheri must be either absurdly lucky, or stupidly dangerous, he thought. And I don’t think there’s anyone whose luck would run that good for that long.

Still, forty years, he thought to himself, reevaluating his exile. He’d come to think of it as kind of an extended death sentence, in a way, but it seemed there was the possibility to outlive it.

Tom kept his thoughts to himself though, letting Val lead the way through the streets to the gate. He still wasn’t quite sure what to make of her. She seemed… kind, in a casual, almost motherly way. It caused friction with his perception of the Hunters.

All his life he’d been warned against them. He was threatened with them if he was bad when he was young. Most children in Wayrest were. They were sent to their station for a reason, a very good one, or so the Church would have him believe.

She’s in the Hunters for a reason, he mused. Could that reason be sheer shit luck though, like me?

He pondered on it some more as they walked through streets slowly tickled with dawn’s first light. A susurrus of noise surrounded them. No specific sounds, more just the absence of silence - Wayrest and her citizens, yawning with the morning light.

Tom had been wrong in his impression of the Guards. He’d thought them all stoic, iron-spined and granite-faced, solemnly carrying out their duty to the city. Then he’d met Clairvine, and that illusion had been shattered.

The thought of the affable Guard sent a pang through his heart. He’d judged her wrongly. People had been judging him wrongly all his life. Perhaps Val was due some more consideration. After all, she had saved him.

Yet he couldn’t quite shake the thought that she must have some kind of unsavoury Ideal. The legends of the Hunters were ingrained too deeply.

They soon approached the city walls, and found the Guard just opening the north gate for trade for the day. Pink light poked through as they pulled the portal open, and Val and Tom wasted no time in crossing through.

As he passed through the threshold he noticed an odd pressure, pressing in on him, vibrating not against his skin, but some more metaphorical membrane he had been previously unaware of.

The enchantments, he realised. Goddess, they’re strong. He’d never noticed them before, not being an Idealist, and therefore having no sense of mana.

It was the same gate Tom had left through for the Reaping, and everything seemed now to have come full circle. It occurred to him that he didn’t know where they were heading. All Hunters were based in one of the outer-ring villages, but there were many on the north side of Wayrest. He vaguely recalled Val mentioning Corin’s Grove, but ultimately decided to hold his tongue. He would find out sooner or later.

After they passed through the great gates Tom turned to take a last look at Wayrest. His last for six months, at least. He found himself in much the same mood as the night before, pensieve, heartsore, but not devastated like he would have imagined. This was saying goodbye to a friend he had outgrown, in many ways, not the shattering separation of lovers parted by death.

Wayrest would be fine, he would make sure of it. And he was determined to grow and survive and improve himself doing it.

The massive walls slowly faded into the distance, and Tom soon found himself keeping a comfortable rhythm with Val. They walked for perhaps an hour, at which point Val removed the thin leather gloves she wore.

She held both her hands out to her sides, and with a whisper of displaced air, a dog dropped suddenly from her right hand, and a cat from her left.

The dog, being medium of build, almost to her hip in height, dropped a few inches and began trotting alongside her. The cat twisted in the manner of falling felines and then swept up Val’s leg to her shoulder. There it perched itself, turning its green gaze to stare at Tom from a round, smoky grey face.

The dog, having checked about in front of them, circled around and began to sniff at Tom’s hands. It wasn’t a particularly intimidating beast. Its grey coat was longer of hair, silky not shaggy, and its build was on the slimmer side.

He wasn’t sure how to react to its inquisitiveness, having never owned any pets. He had also seen familiars only rarely, at the Academy mostly, when someone summoned them for one reason or another, and he’d never had occasion for close contact with any. He settled for stiffly letting the canine snuffle at him.

“That’s Smitten,” Val said, giving Tom a small fright as she broke their silence for the first time in over an hour. She gestured briefly to the dog still amusing itself with the smells on his pants. “Seems she likes you. But then, she likes everyone.”

“Uh…” Tom said, not knowing what to say.

“This one’s Scorn,” Val continued, giving a thumb to the cat sitting on her shoulder. “He’s harder to please.”

“They seem …nice,” Tom finally managed. He was preoccupied with his thoughts. The familiars being summoned, and Smitten sniffing at his hands, had brought his attention to his newest tattoos.

Last night, he’d discovered that his Wings of Grief tattoo sat between his shoulders, spreading up the back of his neck. It reminded him of the pictures he’d seen of tussocky plains shrubs, all stemming from a central point on his spine and feathering outwards in tiny, tiny lines from there.

Both his hands too, all the way to his elbows, were now covered in intricate lines. Curving gently, they flowed up his arms, sometimes stopping in a sharp corner, recurving, before recurving once more and flowing onwards again. Occasionally the lines were interrupted or interspersed with small dots or dashes. They vaguely reminded him of the calligraphy he’d seen traders from the Rust Sands using in the market.

As he’d looked from his window, pondering his last evening in Wayrest and idly thinking on the feelings it had conjured, he had manifested another skill.

Ideal Two (Classic): Silence.Skill Three (Classic): Quiet Under Moonlight (Ritual (Familiar)).

Mana cost: Extreme.

Cooldown: Extreme.

Requirements: Sixty life essence, ten hunger essence, ten blood essence, two sound essence, two silence essence, two dark essence, and two wild essence.

When summoned: Familiar can make moderate damage physical attacks. Familiar has an attack that deals low magic damage up to short range, and trivial damage up to moderate range. Familiar has a channelled ability which causes trivial magic damage while channelled.

When subsumed: The caster’s movements are completely silent. Caster can see in the dark. Extreme buff to caster’s sense of hearing. Moderate buff to caster’s coordination.

Tom was beginning to get aggravated at the lack of information on ritual familiars from his wisp. It bobbed along in front of him as he walked, its pink core making it seem perennially merry. He knew it was simply how information on familiars was displayed, having studied them at the Academy, but he was incredibly curious to know what they were exactly. They could make the difference between life and death in the Deep.

He planned on summoning them as soon as he could. He only had enough essences to activate his Survival of the Fittest ritual, so far. The requirements for his newest familiar were high, although, with any luck, his Ideal of Silence would help him in finding sound or silence essence. He didn’t recall seeing any for sale in the market.

The most limiting factor was the aspect essence requirement from Survival of the Fittest. He still hadn’t decided which way to aspect his familiar, and without knowing what type of creature it was, he didn’t want to aspect it with something less than optimal.

Aspecting was the process of attuning a familiar to a particular element, or sometimes a more general concept, by feeding its ritual tattoo certain essences, or a combination thereof. Only certain familiars came with aspecting requirements, some already came with a preset one, and others were just ‘plain’. The resulting familiar would have abilities, or physicality, that was derived from the chosen aspect.

The Instructors at the Academy recommended the basic essences: fire, air, earth, water, and so on, for aspecting, as they would produce useful results no matter what one did. Tom had picked up some of each in the market; the only trick was deciding which to use to aspect his first familiar.

It had cold essence among its requirements, which led Tom to thinking that more cold essence might buttress some of its natural skills. He was also toying with the idea of adding fire essence. Adding an opposing essence combination could often produce staggering results, or so he remembered from his studies. It could also produce very poor ones, too.

So many considerations, he thought, lost in them as he trundled along.

“Wake up, Tom!” Val snapped at him.

He jolted out of his reverie to find her glaring at him, with Scorn providing a scathing harmony from his perch.

“Why do you think I summoned my familiars, lad?” she asked of him, and then bulled on as soon as he opened his mouth.

“We’re outside the walls now. That means monsters. Sort yourself,” she said harshly.

Tom raised his gaze to the road, banishing idle thoughts of his own familiars as heat crept up his neck and blazed in his cheeks.

Val’s gaze softened. “It may be unlikely, this close to Wayrest, but old Hunters are cautious ones, and the unwary ones don’t grow old.”

She held his gaze until he nodded acceptance.

“Your familiars just put me to thinking… Sorry,” he shrugged helplessly, offering his tattooed hands in contrition.

“It’s alright, Tom. Just you remember though, all it takes is one slip out there, and I'll have an easier time saving your neck if you’re watching out for it yourself.”

They lapsed into silence again, walking quietly for some time. Smitten ranged about on the road ahead, stopping occasionally to thrust his nose into the breeze and drink it in for several moments, before trotting off again. Scorn simply sat where he was, his long hair waving softly about. The two familiars made an odd pair, diametrically opposed and yet closely matching in colouration.

Tom studied Val out of the corner of his eye. The harshness of her outburst was a warranted reminder, but it also pushed the unknown reason for her being exiled back to the forefront of his mind.

As if reading his thoughts, Val broke the silence.

“It was twenty years ago this winter, that I was exiled,” she began.

Tom turned slightly to better see her. Val’s gaze remained fixed on the road ahead. He perked a questioning eyebrow at her.

“Got sick of you giving me the side-eye, lad.”

“Oh, sorry, I didn-” he fumbled, not realising he’d been so obvious. But then, women always seemed to have eyes in the backs of their heads, especially for the expressions of men.

“If we’re to work together it’s best you know my story, Tom. It’s alright.” She sighed, and began again.

“Twenty years ago. I was young then, just about your age, in fact. Lived a good life in the Artisan’s District, growing up. Or so I thought. My da was a sculptor, would you believe it? Run from a long line before him, hence the name.”

She gave a weary shake of her head.

“My ma, well, she was a goodwife, and good at it too. Had Earth, she did. Used to help da even, when he condescended to let her. I hadn’t a worry ‘til I was almost grown.”

“Was enrolled in one of the Schools. Around my sixteenth year, I manifested my first Ideal. My parents were so proud of me I thought I was going to burst.” She trailed off then, seemingly lost in her own thoughts. Tom gave her a moment, feeling that to interrupt her would be a misstep.

“Love,” she continued, giving herself a small shake. “Love was my first Ideal.”

Tom frowned, the obvious question rising on his lips. He reigned it in immediately. This was her story, and she would connect the dots for him in time.

“We had a good few years. Really good ones, you know?” She looked at him then, then a sudden realisation pinched her face into contrition. “Sorry, I …wasn’t thinking.”

Tom murmured at her and waved her on. She’d obviously guessed of his family life. He was unsure what to do with the sympathy.

“Well, it turns out my da wasn’t so good a sculptor. Not terrible, mind you, but over the years he’d slowly drained us dry. Had to work with marble, dragged all the way from fucking Horizon, Goddess knows why. But he insisted on it.”

“My ma took up with the Guard. They always have need of dependable basics like Earth. She was never one for fighting, but she did it, to keep us afloat.”

Val paused again. Eventually, she took a long breath and exhaled with a tiny hitch. If it weren’t for Tom’s newly Idealist hearing, he doubted he would have caught it.

“She died. Defending Sap’s Mill. Just …never came home one day.”

Tom knew of Sap’s Mill. It was overrun by several unrelated monster attacks over the course of a few months. It had yet to be re-sown.

“My da barely seemed to notice. I see now he was grieving, just as I was. Threw himself into his work. Didn’t help me at all, when I need a father, not a fucking sculptor. Manifested my second Ideal then. Doesn’t take much guessing.”

She smiled wryly.

“Hate,” she said simply. “And that was all it took. Within a week, I was packed up and told to fuck off.”

Tom’s heart welled for her. For her beloved mother to die, making money they could have easily not needed had her father been less selfish, for a pointless village of no import - it was tragic. Tom searched for the right words.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know it doesn’t help, but all the same …I’m sorry.”

She nodded at him. “Every Hunter has a story, Tom. Me and you, we’re the unlucky ones. But we’re also the few. The stories they kept you in line with as a kid? There’s more than enough truth to them. Keep your wits about you.”

They walked the north trade road for hours, passing the first and second rings, diverging afterwards to the north-west, and nearing the outer ring. Cool autumn air played across the hard packed dirt, tickling Tom’s hair. A slightly raw, respectful, but not-uncomfortable quiet lay on the pair throughout the rest of the walk. As dusk drew its curtain over the day they approached Corin’s Grove.

Tom found he had more than enough exercise in keeping his mind from following wandering thoughts.