The next morning, Blake chartered a longboat taxi. Since they were heading to the surface, he’d have to pay the fee, but he’d planned for that. After his first meeting with his recruits, he’d caught six mana rats and exchanged enough hacksilver for a flight down to the surface and a return journey.

  When they reached the surface, landing just outside the mists, he and the other recruits hopped off the longboat. He took the lead and pulled his staff out from his backpack.

  They walked in silence for a half hour, until Blake was certain that no one could hear him. He turned to face the four recruits and said, “I’m sure you’ve all heard or guessed who I am by now.”

  “You’re the guy who killed Heron Silverbeard,” a boy said. His name was Jared, and he’d given Blake a long Nord name which Blake declined to remember. He had long blond hair, which he kept in a ponytail, and wore a tattered green tunic. All of the recruits carried backpacks with their life possessions, and Jared was no exception.

  “I think it was a rhetorical question,” the girl whispered. Her name was Sara, and she had given Blake a Nord name as well, which he ignored. He was pretty sure she would’ve been considered Hispanic before the Integration, but he also didn’t have much frame of reference for what that meant.

  “This one has heard of you,” said a boy with glowing turquoise eyes—his name was Grímur. He was an offworlder, and his family had fallen on hard times, so they’d had to take up residence in the lower city.

  The last boy, who Blake had only managed to get a few words out of so far, gave him a nod. His name was Cedrick, and he spoke with a faintly French accent.

  “Good,” Blake replied. He folded his arms around his staff. “That business about ratting each other out? I know you’re all lying. That’s exactly why I chose you four.”

  They turned to each other and gave a nervous swallow.

  “I won’t tell on you either, I promise,” Blake said. “It’s a good thing. Here, we have honour and loyalty to each other. I’m here to help you, and I chose you four for a reason. And I know you won’t tell on each other, either. So let’s make sure to help each other, yeah?”

  They glanced at each other. Grímur nodded eagerly, smiling ear-to-ear. He had slightly pointed ears, too, which wasn’t because he was Blended—none of them were—but due to some variation of the planet he’d come from.

  “You had me worried for a second,” Sara said.

  Blake nodded. He wasn’t about to spring his plan on them yet, nor was he going to tell them about his Secret Society. Not just yet. First, he had to earn their trust.

  For a brief moment, he remembered the Hunters. When he’d met another person from Earth and asked her what she thought about the Nords, and she’d been completely reluctant to even consider it. It had been a terrible idea in retrospect. You couldn’t just go up to people and ask them if they wanted to start a revolution.

  First, he’d earn their trust. Then he’d swear them into the Society for Creation.

  “Today’s a trial run,” Blake said. “We’re going to hunt some monsters. I want to see what you guys can do, and I’ll help out a little, too. We’re going to be dealing with two clients tomorrow, and I can’t take both groups.”

  It wasn’t ideal, and Stone Moon was making him expand the operation faster than he would’ve liked, but he didn’t have much of a choice.

  Blake led them for the morning. Since Ethbin was asleep, he had to rely on his own senses to track monsters, which turned out to be easier than he thought. Although he couldn’t sense their magic yet, when he had no crutches and had to use his enhanced physical senses, he picked them out from the wilds with ease.

  First, he tracked them by their smell. He’d fought enough howlers and shroomclaws to know exactly what they smelled like, and once he got closer, he listened for them. They were usually quiet, but he could pick up on the monsters from farther away than they knew about him, and they weren’t being careful.

  After guiding them to a howler to test each recruit’s combat skills against, he gave the floor over to Cedrick, who was the best tracker among them.

  Cedrick brought them to a pair of howlers, Blake let the others handle it together. They’d all trained to use weapons, and they all seemed to have some knowledge of fighting wild animals instead of humans. Sara especially—she said she’d been training under the Green Bears’ principle monster hunter before the sect collapsed.

  Jared wasn’t the most combat capable, but he was a dutiful lookout and scout, and his weapon of choice was a spear. And then lastly, there was Grímur, who fought when needed, using an axe, but tended to hang back until he was absolutely needed before planting a killing blow. He claimed to be better against Men.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Most importantly, though, Grímur had accurate senses and could pick out their targets almost as well as Blake could.

  As the day progressed, they drifted deeper into the mists, harvesting the monsters they encountered. At noon, they stopped to eat, but Blake hadn’t brought anything for himself. Quietly, he fed River, and she was smart enough to stay quiet too. He would have to reveal her to his recruits at some point, but not right away.

  They followed Jared’s nose for the next half-hour, stalking a flock of fell-crows. But after a few minutes, they ascended to the top of a ridge, and Blake paused. A distance slithering noise wormed through the mud. The ground shifted away, parting from whatever creature was approaching them.

  If something was coming right toward him, it couldn’t have been good…but he also couldn’t exactly pinpoint what it was. After a few seconds, Jared hesitantly tapped Blake’s shoulder and said, “Do you hear that?”

  “Yeah,” Blake replied. “It’s still coming toward us.” He paused. “If you were out in the wilds with a lord, what would you do right about now? Something is approaching. We’ve moved, but it keeps getting closer. It’s changed its course to follow us.”

  “If we told a Jarl about it, he’d insist on fighting it,” Sara said with certainty.

  “Probably,” Blake replied. “Can we beat it?”

  “We don’t know,” Cedrick replied.

  Grímur was already tightening his grip on his axe, like he thought a battle was a forgone conclusion.

  “I’d highly suggest that we make our way back,” Blake said. He remembered his first encounter with a Spiker, and how he’d instilled a healthy fear of things way too powerful. Whatever this foe was, he wanted the recruits to remember that they shouldn’t start a fight they didn’t know if they could win.

  He was one to talk, of course. But it felt different now. He might have had a self-destructive flair, but he wasn’t going to let that endanger his friends.

  “We should turn back, then,” Sara said. The others glanced at Blake and slowly nodded, except for Grímur, who only gave his axe a flourish. He looked at Blake with a scowl, but then conceded and followed him and the others.

  They made their way back through the mists, but Blake focused his hearing. The thing was still approaching. It was upwind of them now, and a reptilian scent flowed off it, mixed with the acrid stench of fiendsmoke.

  That was a bad sign.

  He picked up his pace, and the monster did as well. When Blake and the others began to run, it sped up too. They’d revealed that they knew it was following them, and it acted accordingly.

  The mask was off, and now it was moving to attack. Blake grimaced. “We’re not going to escape it.”

  “Turn and fight,” Grímur muttered.

  “Let it think we’re still on the run until the very last moment,” Blake countered. “And we’ll catch it by surprise.”

  A wave of dirt rolled along behind them. It knocked over the mangrove trees and smashed through the foundations of an old gas station that had half sunk into the mud. Two glowing orange eyes pierced through the mud, staring right at Blake. It had picked him out in particular.

  “Almost there…” Blake whispered. Neither him nor the recruits showed any sign of exhaustion, but they wouldn’t make it out of the mists before the monster attacked them. Blake could’ve gotten away by using the Serpent’s Cloak, but from what he’d seen, none of the recruits had anywhere close to as powerful of an Augmentation technique.

  A snake’s head emerged from the mists. Its jaw opened as wide as Blake was tall, and a network of scales covered its flesh. They were all different sizes, and none were shaped like actual scales. It reminded him of the pattern that dried mud made.

  Then the snake pounced. Its head snapped forward, moving almost too quickly to comprehend. Blake whirled around, striking it in the side of the head and channelling a Black Palm. It arced up from the ground and struck the beast in the side of the head, then wrapped around. Tendrils of void lightning hovered in the air, wrapping around the snake’s head, and Blake used his control of them to slam the beast’s head into the mud.

  It hissed in surprise, but it didn’t relent. A hundred-foot-long tail whipped out of the mud and raced toward Blake. He triggered the Serpent’s Cloak to brace himself, and he was pretty sure he could have deflected it, but Grímur jumped into action, triggering an earth-manipulation Smite technique. The mud formed a wall, blocking the snake’s tail before it could hit.

  Sara clenched her fist, using a Smite technique of her own. The nearby roots of a mangrove tree curled up out of the mud and slithered toward the snake, moving on her command. They formed sharp tips and jabbed into the snake’s side. It didn’t do much, but it distracted the beast.

  Its tail pushed through Grímur’s wall, and it wrenched to the side, shattering Sara’s vines, but before it could attack any of them, Blake slammed his staff down on the back of its neck.

  It coughed out a gasp of fiendsmoke, but that didn’t matter. With all his techniques triggering at once, the snake’s scales cracked on the back of its neck. He flooded his meridians with Honour and used the Lightning Fists half of the Serpent’s Cloak, and the Snake’s head buckled, reaching upward. He drew in more Honour, keeping the technique active as long as he could.

  Bravery didn’t seem to do much, which he deduced meant the snake wasn’t as strong as he thought. Loyalty—to these recruits and because of his newly forged bond with Mingel—gave a far greater source of Honour.

  He struck twice more until the snake fell still. It collapsed into the ground, unmoving, and Blake said, “Well. Gather its scales, and we’ll take its fangs. I don’t know what’s valuable here, but the Silk Fans will want something. When we get back to the compound, we’ll debrief.”