Chapter 2 – Hunting

Callum was vaguely aware of the statistics on the people who went missing all over the country every year. Before his encounter with the supernatural he hadn’t thought about it overmuch, willing to believe it was mostly people being stupid. Someone who didn’t know what they were doing could easily get lost and starve to death in ten square miles of forest. He hadn’t really thought too strongly that there was some agency involved, snatching people or disappearing them.

Now that he’d had some contact with the supernatural he was far more willing to believe in malicious intent. Vampires obviously contributed to the numbers, but they preferred the cities, so people who vanished in the countryside fell victim to something else. He didn’t see people like the Langleys or Chester being responsible, but it seemed they didn’t represent all shifters.

While he knew now that most of the legends surrounding the fae were just that, it was getting on toward Halloween. Or rather, Samhain. It probably didn’t matter, since it wasn’t like mana or vis changed with the year, but fae magic was a bit weird and maybe the holiday was important somehow. Either way, the Wild Hunt was one of those enduring ideas that seemed not to be a complete invention.

Callum was not a fan of it.

Following was an absolute risk, but if he’d just stayed in his tent for fear of being caught, it’d be the same thing as being under GAR’s thumb. They wanted to control him, to remove his freedom and his self-determination. If he did that to himself for them, he wouldn’t be a man, he’d be a wretch.

Since Callum wasn’t a wretch, he followed.

He wasn’t a stealthy tracker, and besides which, there was no way that he could keep up with the fae horses and shifters as they went haring off into the woods. Instead of running around in the dim predawn light, he transferred himself after them, staying well away from the bulk of their forces.

With a range of six hundred yards, nearly two thousand feet, he could stay at least a thousand feet back or to the side at any given time, with something solid between him and the hunting party. Even with that he made sure to stay downwind, not knowing exactly how keen the senses of the fae or shifters were. In truth he was more worried that they’d notice his teleporting around, since he didn’t have time to scrub his presence with every single shift, but they were generating so much disturbance in the local mana that his impact was a falling leaf to their thunder of hooves.

He still kept a sharp eye on them for any reaction to his stalking them. They were supernatural entities and he was just an unskilled mage, so if they caught onto him he’d be running. Fortunately, his perceptions were so long-range and omnidirectional that it was basically impossible for anything to sneak up on him. Unless they could hide their magical signatures too, which he didn’t totally discount, so he watched for any of their number suddenly vanishing.

Callum reflected it would be a lot easier to follow and hide in the dense forests of the Appalachian mountains, instead of the lighter scrub and pine of the Midwest, but at the same time it meant he had plenty of open space for teleporting around. The hunting party headed deeper into the mountain and forest, covering the rough terrain far more easily than any normal person, displaying a chilling amount of grace and dexterity. He definitely would have no chance if they got anywhere near him.

While they moved, he considered exactly what he was going to do about them. The pistol magazines held twelve bullets each, so he had at best twenty-four kills, split between the fae and shifters. That would actually mostly take care of the warband he was following, but he had to assume that he couldn’t be as efficient and there were others he needed to deal with besides. Someone else had blown that horn.

His primary goal was actually to rescue any people who might have gotten caught up in this supernatural nonsense. Though this time he wasn’t going to be calling in Chester to clean up, that was for sure. These fae and shifters had decided to prey on humans, and there was no abiding predators on humanity. If he was forced to let them be in order to save lives, so be it, but Callum didn’t want to have to make that choice. So he started considering ways and means to dispatch the perpetrators.

Unlike other mages, he couldn’t attack directly. Even if he could he was pretty sure that’d be useless against so many fae, some of whom were clearly quite powerful. Which was fine, because using the environment was more powerful anyway. Callum was pretty sure there was some Sun Tzu quote about that.

He began sweeping the terrain around him for ideas. They were heading into an area where there were sharp slopes, if not actual cliffs, and he entertained the idea of a rockslide or the like. Unfortunately there just wasn’t that much loose scree, and considering the extraordinary physical abilities they had, falling rocks probably weren’t all that much of a threat.

The same objection applied to dropping fallen logs on top of them, aside from the fact that there were a lot of them. What Callum needed was something broadly and instantly lethal, or at least untraceable. This wasn’t like ambushing vampires who were asleep in their beds.

With the constant sweeping through every direction of his perceptions, he noticed something in a direction he normally took for granted. Underground. He hadn’t really been looking directly below his feet, but with the slopes rising ahead of them he had shoved his perceptions through solid rock and found, a few hundred feet below the surface, an open space.

Callum had almost forgotten about caves.

The entire area was riddled with them, along with old and defunct mines. While he had focused more on commercial buildings, he’d studied such things back in college and was aware of the dangers. It didn’t take much to realize how damn dangerous just teleporting into a closed cave could be, since it was as likely as not that the air there wasn’t breathable. That was ignoring the potential of collapse from people disturbing things that had been quietly eroding for millions of years.

The extra hundred yards of range helped a lot there, as it massively increased the volume of the earth he could sense. Five hundred yards was already some very deep caverns indeed, and the extra range he’d gained was like putting a twenty-story building below even that. He was tempted to just start picking off members of the warband as soon as he had the chance, but he had to be patient. That could come when he knew more.

Callum teleported ahead, anticipating the fae’s line of travel, and a second warband appeared in his range. That one had little flitting things that he could reasonably call pixies, rather than giant treefolk, but the small fae weren’t any less savage. The things carried bone hooks and had breastplates made out of what seemed to be teeth. The way they darted about reminded him less of hummingbirds and more of wasps, though that was probably just his own bias.

The two hunting parties converged, high and inhuman laughter as well as the unnatural bark-growls of shifters reaching his ears even as far away as he was. He stayed crouched behind a jut of rock on a ridge above them, eyes not looking at anything in particular while he watched them form up again. The shifters arranged themselves into a loose wedge, and behind them the riders formed a parade triangle. The one with the fanciest uniform and most decorations was at the front, with the rest of them behind, while pixies buzzed around as outriders.

One of the fae made some gestures with his clearly magic sword, probably some kind of speech, and suddenly the shifters all bayed. The sound sent chills up Callum’s spine, the noise both creepy and clearly bloodthirsty, and the whole thirty-some strong assemblage took off along the valley floor. For a moment Callum had second thoughts, seeing what he had to contend with, but then he considered the severed ears and steeled his resolve. It was an aphorism that all it took for evil to triumph was to do nothing, and doing nothing just wasn’t in his nature.

The problem was finding whoever they were hunting. He sure as hell couldn’t track faster than they could, but he could move faster than them and probably had a better perception range. If he were quick he could range ahead of them and maybe find whomever they were after, though there was the risk the hunt would notice his presence.

He was actually a little surprised they hadn’t noticed already, what with all the stories on the superiority of supernatural senses. Those were fiction, and it was clear a lot of the fiction was wrong, but they did have better than human reflexes so it wasn’t complete bunk. Admittedly, keeping a distance of several hundred yards and making no sound of footsteps because he wasn’t walking probably made him hard for anyone to detect without active senses.

Callum followed the fae for a minute or two, making sure they were headed along the narrow valley, further into the mountains, and then teleported ahead. The valley made it easier for him, since it wasn’t likely whomever they were chasing would have climbed the steep walls, and he didn’t have to scan as much area. He popped ahead six hundred yards at a time, taking a second to scan the area before moving onward, walking his way back and forth across the valley floor. He made sure to probe the ground around him as well, looking for handy caves for when things came to a head.

It took longer than he thought. Fortunately, it seemed the time off from doing heavy teleportation hadn’t dulled his abilities. If anything he seemed to have more magical stamina than before, since he didn’t feel too strained by dozens of rapid-fire transfers across the length of his perception. Though the distance had never seemed to actually matter.

There was a couple maybe five or six miles ahead of the fae, two young hikers who were panting and puffing as they scrambled along the valley, heading for god only knew what. Callum suspected it was more a matter of getting away from the things behind them than looking for somewhere in particular.

He quashed his first impulse to immediately teleport them out of harm’s way, trying to consider how he wanted to do things. There was still some time before the fae got there, but not that much time, and they’d know there was a mage around if the trail ended in the middle of nowhere with lingering vis trace around. If he wanted this to work, he needed to finesse it a little.

There were actually two likely caves in the five mile stretch that he could use, one of them small but completely enclosed, the other one sloping down past what he could actually sense, and both of them over fifteen hundred feet below the surface. He couldn’t have even reached them before, which would have made his plan pretty much impossible, but since they were comfortably within his range now he was confident in using them. The issue was that both of those were behind where the couple were, and to the south. It wasn’t much likely the fae would get near them, not if they followed the current trail. So he formed a very small portal, the size of a dime, between himself and the pair.

“I can save you, but you’ll need to follow my directions.” His voice came out a little hoarse, but that was not a bad thing under the circumstances. Unfortunately it seemed to scare the ever-living daylights out of the two, the woman actually screaming and the two of them jerking backward. Callum had more than a little sympathy; they clearly knew they were being hunted and that would strain the nerves of anyone. He’d been there.

“Don’t worry, I’m on your side,” Callum assured them through the portal. “I need you to turn left and head across the valley floor. Your target is about two hundred yards back up against the escarpment, that scraggly pine that’s right on the slope.”

“How,” the man spluttered. “What⁠—”

“Hurry!” Callum snapped. “The sooner you get there the sooner you’ll be safe. I’ll warn you if the hunting party gets too close.”

The two of them glanced at each other, then started off in the appropriate direction. Callum could hear them gasping for breath through the portal, and had to firmly step on his empathy. He needed them to lay a trail for the fae so he could get rid of the entire hunt, to ensure they wouldn’t kill anyone in the future. The couple wasn’t actually in any danger anymore; he could teleport them away just fine. He had an excellent sense of direction so he could get back the pitstop, too, given the time.

He popped back over to the escarpment in question, where he could see further than he could sense. It was a weird sensation, considering that most of the time his spatial sense rendered his sight practically useless. Peering over the edge he could spot the movement in the distance, even if he couldn’t hear anything.

It might actually be a fairly close race, though if it got too down to the wire he’d just get them out of there. The pair were definitely doing their best, though they had to be absolutely exhausted. They had proper hiking clothes on, but no backpacks or anything, so they’d probably been captured and released somewhere nearby.

For some reason, Callum doubted that the fae wanted to give anyone a chance to actually win the Wild Hunt. Assuming there were win conditions to begin with; he was well aware his vague notions weren’t reality. For all he knew the story came first, and the fae thought that sounded like a grand lark. He popped back to within range of the pair, keeping them between himself and the fae in hopes that none of them would smell a rat. Or a mage.

“A little to your left,” he sent to the couple, and got a groan in response as they labored across the rugged, wooded floor of the valley, or really something more like a defile or a ravine. It wasn’t more than a mile across, either way, but on rough ground that took some time to cross.

He helped by steering them away from the worst of the underbrush, providing running directions while he recovered some of his vis. Callum wasn’t any good at gauging it, though he knew there was a standardized unit and various tests to figure it out. He didn’t think he was down by much even after all the rapid-fire teleports, but he’d need every bit to deal with the fae.

The tiny portal didn’t take much effort to keep up. The fact that the expense was based on size and nothing else was a good incentive to keep things minimal and precise, something Callum felt he was pretty good at relative to other mages. It was true that some aspects of his control were terrible, but from what he’d seen of Gayle’s mana control most mages used ropes where he used threads. He wasn’t completely sure of the full implications yet, but it did mean his minimum size of construct was smaller.

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By the time the pair reached the area Callum wanted, where the caves were in easy range of his perceptions, they were totally done in. Not that he blamed them; even though he did his best to keep in shape, running flat out through wilderness was exhausting. As they lurched toward the tree he teleported them from below in the valley to the far end of his range up on the escarpment, putting them almost a thousand yards from their original position.

“Oh, god⁠—” The man’s exclamation was cut short by the sounds of nausea, which took Callum by surprise. Though, he hadn’t really followed up on the other people he’d teleported. Apparently the process wasn’t as smooth for everyone else as it was for him. Another point toward his control being actually kind of terrible.

“Just lie there. You’re safe now. I’ll lead you back to civilization soon,” he sent through his portal, keeping his voice hoarse to disguise it. Though he’d have to caution them about mentioning their experiences. Considering what happened the last time GAR got ahold of normal folk it was clear that it was better to pretend nothing had ever happened.

“Thank you,” the woman said faintly. He hadn’t really been expecting it, but those two simple words affected Callum more than he’d anticipated. It didn’t totally wipe away his concerns, but it certainly soothed some of his anxiety.

“Can you tell me how you got into this?” He asked them, while he waited for the fae. There was still time before he committed, and if there was a chance the situation was not all it seemed, he wanted to know.

“Hiking,” the woman replied, gasping for breath. “Walked under a tree, everything was different. Said, we make it to sunrise, we live.”

That was enough for Callum. Nobody should be playing games with human lives. There was only one way to deal with that, and it was a permanent solution. One that Callum was willing to provide.

He didn’t dare poke his head above the ridge to spy on the fae, and they weren’t quite yet within his perceptions, so he formed a portal in front of his face and another high up. This gave him a better vantage than he would have had otherwise and he mentally berated himself for not thinking about such an application before, even if he wasn’t all that comfortable with having a potential attack vector so close to his head.