Book Five, Chapter 87: The Hunter

~Hawk Kippling: Monster Hunter~

Back home, monsters were simple.

Ancient witches, sorcerers, and priests defeated beasts of unfathomable power using magic they didn’t understand. The magic was mostly lost to time, but the monsters were not, not really.

These creatures had their own ironic form of immortality. As the great beasts were scavenged and broken down, their genetic code worked its way through the food cycle.

The insects got their meal, then the birds, that sort of thing.

Every living thing feeds off something else, passing this invasive genetic material along. It eventually makes its way into humans or other animals, occasionally latching on and binding itself to human DNA—creating a ticking time bomb.

This process began eons ago.

That’s the theory, at least.

Vampires, werewolves, heck, even those putrid ghouls called zombies could all be explained by this phenomenon. There was a good chance that I myself was walking around with some combination of ancient genetic code that might one day result in a mutation in my descendants—growing fangs or claws, being able to see in the dark, breathing underwater, or even lusting for blood.

It was all in our DNA. My people were an interesting bunch. Our shadows had monsters in them.

As time went on, the emergence of these phenomena slowed, and my world forgot about them.

They became legends.

Vampires? Those are just scary stories.

Werewolves? It must have just been a bear.

If you tried to discuss any of this in your thesis at university, your advisor would threaten to drop you.

I would know.

But if you were one of the unfortunate souls who discovered these weren’t legends, that these monsters still crawled on the dirt, I was the type of person you wanted to know.

I’ve killed them all—hunted them down. Vampires, werewolves, hags, all sorts of undead. I’ve tracked and studied pretty much everything there is to study.

In fact, there’s only one thing I’ve hunted that I didn’t manage to kill. I tracked it all the way to Carousel.

Once I’ve killed my ultimate prey, then I can die for real.

The werewolves of Stray Dawn were a popular breed in Carousel stories. They were smart enough, theoretically, to take part in even complex plots.

Most of the time, the werewolf virus in my world resulted in degenerative mental function. They were good at killing, but after a while, they stopped being good at anything else.

Carousel didn’t like that, so they were rarely used.

But these Stray Dawn wolves? They were practically humans with superpowers. After a bit of practice, they could shift back and forth—even without the full moon. They could think, they could plan—assuming they had a pack leader who ordered them to.

Fascinating creatures.

Their mutation wasn’t really a mutation at all; it was a curse. The magic of my homeworld worked differently and could never produce something like this. Unfortunately, I’d never been in a position to study this type of magic. I always got cast as a monster hunter, not a magic scholar.

At least I could appreciate the exercise I get in this role.

This was shaping up to be a good one.

It was daytime. Antoine had shifted and run off into the woods, and I had a trope just for this situation, a perfect way of tracking him down—by following his blood trail, disturbances in the leaves, whatever was there.

It was all I was permitted to do. I wasn’t allowed to lead the players to victory, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t help out.

The other Paragons and I had devoted our eternal lives to helping the players win the game, even if that meant playing demeaning roles or joining the likes of Silas Dyrkon or the Proprietor just to keep an eye on them.

Because the players were the key, it had to be them to beat Carousel.

I leaned against one of the stone walls in the fort, watching as hundreds of gallons of nitric acid were hauled into the courtyard in plastic jugs. Nitric acid, distilled water, copper scrap, and all the silver from every pawn shop within a hundred-mile radius, it seemed.

Other players had discovered rolling silver before, but none had taken the next step and realized that it was the act of purifying silver that hurt the wolves. Many assumed it was silver vapor, and that was a pretty good tactic, too, but purification won the blue ribbon.

Here I was, thinking Andrew Hughes must be the smartest player to ever run Stray Dawn. He certainly figured out the science part of it pretty quickly, but it turned out it was all the Film Buff’s idea.

Riley Lawrence.

He wasn’t much to look at.

And yet, he was our best shot to beat the game—if we even had a shot. He may not have been the man for the job, but he was the man with the job.

What qualified him for this honor? Hell, if I knew.

With fewer than a dozen players left, they had to pick someone to hang their hopes on.

As I saw him excitedly help sort supplies and bring in a load of empty glass bottles from a nearby soda factory, wearing that dumb smile on his face, I had to wonder how much he even knew.

The kid was still wearing the suit from when he arrived at the dinner party. He had proper clothing to change into, but he liked his Luggage Tag so much that he would rather look like a fool.

Why did that bother me so much?

They were making bombs—or something similar—that could purify silver chemically. I knew how powerful rolling silver was against these cursed werewolves.

Carousel was going to love it.

The werewolf curse wasn’t a vague hand-wavy magic concept. Instead, it was literally in the air like radio waves, connecting them to the pack, to their pack leader, and maybe even further than that.

I had no idea—no one had ever gotten that far. I wondered how much Riley and Andrew understood.

Purifying silver drew the curse out of the air and temporarily disconnected the wolf from the magic source that allowed it to exist. Without the magic of the curse, the werewolf’s anatomy was not compatible with life—or at least, a comfortable life.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Yep. If they could use that weapon well, they might just win.

But they likely wouldn’t. They were outgunned.

I’d seen so many player wipes that I could almost call it before First Blood.

Unfortunately, despite being a fine planner, Riley Lawrence had one major flaw: he was a sacrificial character. He must have already known this, but I could see it plain as day on the red wallpaper. He was next on the list. He would die for Second Blood.

That was his lot. That was his role.

Damn shame.

It didn’t matter how good of a weapon he and Andrew were building. If he was next on the list, he was going to die, and no matter what he hid behind, the wolves would get through it—because the script said they must.

From what I’d seen, he already knew this. He was likely prepared to sacrifice himself to ensure the survival of the group. I heard he’d done that before.

We just had to hope they could get through the finale without his quick thinking. Who knew?

They finally finished unloading the supplies and were meeting up for a group talk.

The surviving players were Kimberly, a fine actress; Michael, a great fighter who was unwilling to take initiative; Andrew, a brilliant mind but a poor healer and not exactly one to endear himself to the audience; and Riley, the only one of them who seemed excited about what was going to happen—even if he tried to hide it.

I walked closer. I had to stay in character, but maybe I could find some way of nudging them in the right direction nonetheless.

“There’s going to be a big fight,” Riley said. “I don’t know how many werewolves there are, but I expect Second Blood is going to save Kirst a lot of money on mercenaries…. Unless he paid upfront. We just have to find a way to control it—to make sure that we don’t lose our strongest pieces on the board.”

They quieted their voices so the nearby NPCs couldn’t hear. How cute.

“When you say strongest pieces, are you referring to yourself?” Andrew asked, not angry but amused.

“No,” Riley said. “Right now, we have Kimberly because her plot is gaining a lot of momentum. And we also have rolling silver, and we’ve devoted so much time to that, it’s got to have a big impact. I’d hate to waste it on Second Blood.”