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 towards ascension. But why work hard when you can eat smart? Such was the evolutionary endpoint of a subset of Wildspawns that chose the abyssal depths as their home and feeding ground—obligate scavengers who fought over a whole Realm’s worth of scraps that pooled at the bottom of the Roots. One scavenger 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. Even now, it watches and reads—with its myriad eyes and all-knowing feelers. And it waits. It waits for a hunter worthy of its challenge. For 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 her well-worn cleats, looking for a fellow Wayfarer for her to hunt.

  Her search was somewhat complicated by two factors. First, the titanic clash of Frostkrill-vs-Gulloyne had left the frozen Netherpool in a less-than-frozen state, with much of the ice layer breaking apart at the seams. Needless to say, having to hop from one island to another proved a risky proposition for a hydrophobic Rakshasa.

  The second factor was the growing darkness.

  “Over the years, there have been 17 Frostkrill surfacings, with five of them resulting in successful smites.” Some time earlier, Renate had kicked off her briefing with a history lesson. “But what most Pretjordians living today don’t realize is that the Realmhunt didn’t always play by the same rules. Granted, the rulebook is still short and bare-bones enough that it might seem like an arbitrary collection of Tyr Djofulsen’s harebrained ideas with no rhyme or reason to them, 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. But she’d quickly switched back to coach mode as she went on, “As I was saying, the rulebook developed over the years in response to the Frostkrill’s ‘feeding habits’. Because 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 from high noon and end on sundown. Given the season, that doesn’t leave the hunters with much time for dallying. What possible advantage does that give us over the Frostkrill? No matter how you look at it, it only seems like self-sabotage. And why do you think that is?”

  Serac could only shrug, but Zacko—he of the Manesferan sensibilities—had taken a stab at it.

  “Entertainment value? No one wants to watch a game drag on forever, right?”

  “A reasonable guess,” Renate had conceded with a faint smile, “and certainly, heightened excitement for both the competitors and spectators is one byproduct of the time limit, 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, giving the hunters plenty of time from the crack of dawn to well past the dead of night. Problem was, these Hunts would always turn out to be duds, often ending with nary a ripple from the abyssal deep.”

  “Threat escalation,” Serac had parroted the term she’d heard from Petter. “You introduce a tight time limit, forcing the hunters to concentrate in one area instead of scattering all over the Netherpool. Higher density of smiting activity equals better chance of drawing the Frostkrill’s attention.”

  “That’s one part of it.” Renate’s faint smile had widened just a touch then. “And I daresay that was the intended effect. I’ve come to learn, though, 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 over the Netherpool. Already, the color of seafoam had been all but saturated with a darker forest-green.

  It only made things more difficult for an outrealmer who barely knew 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 Serac had taken note of at the Hubstation! Bless her heart, she’d huffed and puffed her way all the way to the final phase of the Realmhunt, now pack-hunting the Frostkrill alongside all her big brothers and sisters. But she clearly didn’t have a smooth time of it; her paltry Liminal Karma and the big fat ‘zero’ next to her score were proof enough of that!

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  Just then, one of the Frostkrill’s enormous limbs swung down from the darkened sky, as it twisted out of the way of a salamander tongue. The shadowy silhouette that belonged to Rodrin Skjortsdatter 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 just barely poked out of the water’s 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 that the KL-15 baby really didn’t have much to lose from one measly death.

  The Frostkrill moved again, now twisting back the other way to deliver a ‘punch’ into Gulloyne’s midsection. It meant the rest of its limbs had to shift 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 in an attempt 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. For Zacko wasted no time to enact the second part of the maneuver, a [Pauldron] barge from the side to knock the young woman 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. In this case, the smiting blow had been credited to Zacko, so she received the smaller share doubled by the effect of [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 think 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 Manesferan therapist, the water at Serac’s feet would have to do. “But this is how the game is played—at least if your aim is to win it.”

  “And if I may add, Wayfarer,” Trippy chimed in, always ready to remind Serac of the larger picture, “this is a perfect microcosm of the true nature of Wayfaring. You all seek the ultimate prize—that of ascension to Deva-hood—but you inevitably have to cut down your fellow Wayfarers to do it.”

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

  But even in her traumatized petulance, Serac understood the reality before her. She couldn’t worry let alone argue about the big picture now. She was in this godsforsaken Hunt to win it, and to that end, it behooved her to heed the advice of one who’d done it before.

  “The second rule that seems arbitrary on the surface but is 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 at it alone? And what’s in it for the unfortunate hunter who survives and smites until the very end of the Realmhunt, 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… what was it? 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,” Renate had granted her that, “but the fact is this particular rule only came to be after Tyr Djofulsen cottoned onto a certain quirk of the Frostkrill’s powers—namely those of its Instrument.”

  “ABYSSGAZER, is it? Gazing into the abyss… or is it the abyss gazing back? What is it, like… 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 more than 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.”

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

  “But 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 its scavenger side’s cautious instincts.”

  It was hard to imagine that a creature of the Frostkrill’s size and power would need to exercise any 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 all 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.”

  “Okay, 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 plainly enough.”

  Serac had seen it. And she still saw it now as she surveyed the hectic scene on the ground.

  The Frostkrill came with its own hefty health pool, as any good boss should. But instead of the sanguine red of all other HP bars Serac had seen thus far, this one had a special visual effect. A translucent ‘coat’ of jade-green veined with lotus-white. It was the same, strangely beautiful color as the Frostkrill’s carapace—the Pathsighted representation of its magical, impenetrable defense.

  “One hunter down, but we’ve still got plenty more to go,” Renate croaked, egging her outrealmer allies onto the fruition of their shared plan. “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.”

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

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