Chapter 157 The Hunt

Francisco loved The Hunt. He loved the speed, the wind in his hair, the thunderous sound of hoofbeats, the screams of Climbers, the feel of his mount imposing its will on the terrain, and the shiny black fur of the hunting dogs sprinting alongside them, nearly as big as the horses themselves.

He loved the fear of death when they clashed against the Climbers who didn’t run. The joy of vanquishing the brave…and the malicious pleasure of punishing the cowards for years.

It was better than sex.

Every monster in The Tower had instincts baked into them by the omnipresent miasma. The instinct to find and tear apart those who didn’t follow the flow of the miasma.

 but Fae were a little different. They could, for a time, muscle down that monstrous instinct. Express it in other ways. Unlike Climbers, the fae, as a species, were not animals. They were rational, thinking beings, capable of exercising logic.

Many of them assigned a great deal of pride to that logic, and what better way than to prove their wit against Climbers? By and large, they were a dull lot, who knew they should simply keep their mouths shut, but like cattle lows when it is prodded, so too did Climbers forget their silly strategies when they were faced with superior beings.

Kincaid understood that those instincts to tear and bite were natural, and not to be repressed, nor were they to be given into entirely. They were to be harnessed and unleashed when necessary.

Francisco had been tormented by the soft, weak humans visiting the castle for years now, and had been nearing his limits.

So when Lord Kincaid learned that a rare caravan had arrived on their Floor, he had given Francisco his long-awaited release, and a gift: The Lord’s Favor.

It felt as though the wind peeled back his lips into a half snarl, half grin, exposing his fangs to these hapless Climbers.

He could picture it now, the first thing they saw after their thunderous approach would be his gleaming smile in the darkness. Or perhaps they would see the ivory badge of honor his Lord had placed on his breast.

Francisco nearly shuddered in pleasure.

They were almost there, now. In a matter of seconds, the first sift would begin. The brave ones would stay and give him that brief thrill of fear, while the others would scatter and save themselves for the stewpot.

The Hunt burst through the treeline, spotting the caravan ahead. He could make out…singing?

“My lover went up, up up, my heart went down, down, down~”

Something’s wrong, a tiny portion of Francisco’s mind whispered to him. There were no wagons. Large groups of Climbers needed their supplies.

There were no runners. That was odd.

In fact, the prey all seemed unconcerned with their approach, sitting around fires, singing in various states of undress with practiced nonchalance like the sirens of ancient myth. In fact, all of them seemed to be beautiful young women, unusual among Climbers.

Rather athletic ones too, with short jaw-length brown hair and-

They all had the same face.

That last observation cut through the bloodlust and brought Francisco up short. He yanked on the reins of his mount, causing his warhorse to cut furrows through the loamy soil as it struggled to halt its awesome momentum.

Francisco lifted the whistle to his lips and blew a rapid chirp, causing the massive black hounds to come to a halt, waiting for their master’s next order.

“Good evening, ladies,” Francisco said, the other six members of The Hunt skidding to a halt and forming a semicircle around the odd campsite.

“Good evening,” The closest girl said, glancing up at the assembled Hunt, without any particular concern in her expression.

Fracisco motioned for the hounds to search out their prey. The hounds put their noses to the ground and began spreading out but none of them caught any scent leaving the area aside from the young girl. It seemed as though none of the caravan had left, and instead been transmuted into this young woman by unknown means.

Fled to the sky, perhaps? Francisco thought, glancing up, spotting nothing before he turned his gaze back down to the sirens.

“I don’t suppose you young ladies happened to see a caravan full of Climbers?” Francisco asked, leaning forward on the saddle horn.

“I wouldn’t lie to you, sir. So I’ll simply refuse to answer.”

Ah, too bad. A lie would’ve put her in my Debt. It seemed as though these women were watching their words, like a typical Climber. The ruled out a trick by Mordaine…probably. You never could tell with that one.

 Francisco tugged on the miasma around him, silently telling his bretheren to prepare for battle.

In that moment, he felt a vibration returning to him from a weak fae buried about thirty feet beneath the surface of the earth. The only way a fae would be that deep underground…

So that’s where they’re hiding, Fracisco thought. “Since you don’t seem to understand the script, I’ll give you another chance to flee, Climbers.”

“Flee?” a hundred voices asked as one, soft if taken apart, but together, they had a strange omnipresent quality. The edges of the words blurred slightly due to distance between speakers.

The voices came from beyond the clearing. All around them. That niggling doubt blossomed into delicious fear.

“Do you really think we’re the ones who should flee?”

Rustle.

More of these women dropped from the tree-branches, their skin changing from bark to ivory. They were everywhere.

This is a trap.

Francisco felt a grin blooming. This was going to be the greatest Hunt in hundreds of years, and he was the leader, sure to survive with his Lord’s Favor. He was already fantasizing about the respect he would garner as the sole survivor. The embellished tales he would tell.

He might even have to kill some of his brothers to cinch that ‘Sole Survivor’ title. This young woman didn’t look that strong. And if the rest of the caravan was cowering in a hole, they couldn’t be any more of a threat than she was.

“If you leave now and do not return, we will-“

Francisco dug his heels into his mount’s side and it lunged forward. They called them horses, but they were nothing of the sort. A monstrous creature in the shape of a horse that enjoyed the flesh of Climbers as much as the Fae.

The massive hounds followed suit, leaping forward with ravenous hunger.

With a whooping cry, Fracisco unsheathed his saber as he passed by, his horse reaching out for a little nip of the nearest girl’s flesh.

Her hands rose to clasp around his steed’s head.

CRACK.

Francisco’s steed flipped upside down and for a brief instant the Fae was seeing the world with an entirely new perspective. An instant later, the horse’s dead weight crashed down into him, crushing him against the hard-packed earth of the campsite.

“GAH!” Francisco gave a cry of rage and shoved his dead horse off of himself and flowed straight towards the culprit.

His saber crashed against the girl’s lengthening claws. Her eyes widened as the force of his blow sent her tumbling through the air like a kicked pebble, skipping off the ground and one of his hounds before she slammed into a tree.

“I must thank you for delivering me such an interesting Hunt!” Francisco said, stalking forward as the battlefield erupted in violence, the sirens tearing into the hounds, their claws growing long and razor sharp, matching the beast’s feral intensity ounce-for-ounce.

He could feal the Miasma tightening around him as he expressed his Debt to them.

It was a risky gambit, but you could establish a connection to a Climber by indebting yourself first, then use that connection to eventually flip the script. Even the connection of a Debt was more useful than nothing at all.

The sirens surrounding him cocked their heads, as if listening to some distant voice.

“It’s only fair, since you delivered us so much blood.” They said, returning their gaze to him with unnerving synchronicity.

Francisco scowled as the Debt withered and died between them before it could even form something he could grasp.

“Kill them!” Francisco shouted, expecting the cries of the rest of the Hunt as they charged straight into the trap and out the other side, bloodied and vivacious, energized by their brush with death.

What he heard was…nothing. No. A faint buzz, like the wings of a swarm?

Francisco turned his head to peer at his minions.

They were gone, horses and all, without a trace of Charge, barely a ripple in the miasma around them. Just a slight buzz.

I see what’s going on. These girls are their hounds. My hounds are gone. They took them away. There’s a symmetry here I can use to create a Debt.

Francisco cackled with joy, rushing forward and swinging at the nearest of these sirens.

She blocked, but her light body still bounced into the distance. The other one he’d knocked back was rising to her feet. Completely unharmed. There were hundreds more. Waiting for him to slip.

“The fox raids the chicken coop, thinking itself clever. It will make a nice coat.” The soft voice echoed from everywhere. It was her voice…but the words were coming from something else, whispering into the girl’s ear.

“Lovely. Is this Mordaine’s doing?” he asked, clashing against another and another of these sirens as they approached him with hunger in their eyes.

“You have the honor of sacrificing yourself to Loth the Luminary.”

In the ancient stories, this was where the doomed sailor saw their beauty crack away to reveal an immaculate row of sharp teeth, designed to carve flesh.

Francisco tumbled backward to grant himself space. As he came to his feet, he sliced deep into his hand with his saber.

He smeared the blood thick across the curved blade…and flicked it forward, creating a spray of fine droplets Each droplet contained a portion of his essence enhanced by the blade’s Affixes, which would help him bypass any resistances they had to his magic.

They’d willingly stolen away the lives of his hounds at no expense to themselves. Now they owed a Debt.

The scales of Debt would allow him to name his price. And that price would be obedience.

I wonder what will happen when I turn the hounds against their masters…

A crescent swath of the sirens were spattered with his superior blood, which sank into their skin in an instant, acting as the catalyst for his Ability.

Debt like chains settled around the blood-spattered girls.

“HALT!” he shouted, seizing the ephemeral chains with his mind, causing the affected to freeze in place as the miasma tightened around them.

“Excellent.” Francisco said, straightening as he scanned the battlefield. “I see that you’ve killed my hounds. You owe me a replacement. Thankfully, you’ll do.”

He tightened his grip on the Debt and yanked on their ephemeral leashes. In a matter of seconds, the sirens began to twitch, hunching over as their limbs deformed, black hair sprouted from their bodies.

Wails of pain flickered between human and beast as they writhed in pain on the ground, bodies shifting under his direction, and a moment later-

The chains broke as the half-transformed Climbers died. Every single one of the sirens he’d taken control of went limp and collapsed, eyes glassy and staring.

I suppose their controller cut them off.

The sirens he hadn’t caught with his gambit scattered in every direction, getting out of range of his Abilities, leaving Francisco alone in the center of the clearing, surrounded by the corpses of his hounds and dozens of half-transformed young women.

His palm and saber dribbling his blood into the packed earth, surreptitiously claiming the land around him.

Though his feet, Francisco could feel distant vibrations of the rest of his Hunt battling their prey.

“I’ve had enough of your hounds. Come out and face me in person, Loth the Luminary. Let’s decide the fate of your caravan between the two of us.”

The ground in front of him rumbled, sending up a plume of dust that shadowed the form rising out of the earth. Whatever it was, it was rather small, wearing a simple cloak with a rather large satchel on its belt, and…

The dust settled enough for him to make out the face of his adversary.

“BAHAHAHAH!” Francisco cackled, doubling over as his body was wracked with laughter. “A Kobold? Bring out the real one. This was amusing, but I don’t have time to-”

The newly claimed earth warned him about a loop of steel wire travelling through the ground, prompting Francisco to lift his foot an instant before the snare would’ve snapped around it.

“If you think-“

SSSSS!

A finger-thick length of steel wire broke the sound barrier against Francisco’s forearm, mangling his arm and sending him tumbling to the side.

He slammed into a tree, which burst with inward-curving blades, trying to draw him deep into the hollow of the wood.

As he struggled to wrench himself out of the trap, a lance of Charge shot out and tried to plant parasitic eggs in his body. He shoved a wave of miasma out, barely diverting the Ability away from his body. The tree was hit instead and massive wasps began boiling out of the wood.

Alright, this kobold might be the real thing.