“You’ve been training,” Fawkes said.

  It wasn’t a question. It was half-observation, and, for some reason, half-accusation.

  “Yeah,” Hunter replied, wiping sweat from his brow with a damp rag. “Couldn’t just sit with my thumb up my butt while you looked for a way to fix that damn hand. I’d go nuts.”

  “Let me rephrase. Someone’s been training you – I can tell. My best guess? Some Wellenmer mercenary drill sergeant. But if there’s one of those anywhere near here, I’ll eat my tricorne with a side of sour cabbage.”

  Hunter chuckled at that, but said nothing.

  “It’s Transient stuff, is it not?”

  “It’s Transient stuff.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “I’ll explain later, once we get some time to ourselves. As I said the other day, I actually need your help with some of it.”

  Fawkes sighed, nodding slowly.

  “Of course you do.”

  Hunter and Inago spent the rest of the morning meditating and cycling their Essence. Across the Sacred Training Grounds, Yuma and Tayen continued sparring, Wroth barking instructions at them.

  “Let him run them ragged lugging pointy sticks around all day,” Fawkes said. “Focus on your cycling. It’ll do you far more good.”

  If Fawkes said so, Hunter figured she was probably right. He sat down on the ground to cycle, slipping one of the half-spent Aether Marbles into his sleeve. He wasn’t about to miss a chance to absorb more Aether, but Fawkes had warned him to be discreet about it.

  As for Fawkes, she sat down and began poring over a stack of weathered journals and ledgers, occasionally jotting notes in her own notebook.

  Around noon, Onatah, Inago’s mother, arrived with their lunch packed in straw baskets. She was a sweet woman, and Hunter had grown quite fond of her. She told him she’d been praying to the Ancestors for his recovery.

  Hunter and Inago offered to help her fetch water, build a fire, and warm up the food.

  “No, no, you don’t need to help me,” Onatah protested, her cheeks flushing. She’d noticed Wroth was still drilling Yuma and Tayen across the Training Grounds. “Go on, do your training – I can manage just fine on my own!”

  “Ma, it’s alright,” Inago said with a smile. “Elder Fawkes has us working on something different today, Hunter and me. She said we could take a break.”

  It wasn’t hard to guess why she was worried. Yuma and Tayen were the alderman’s firstborn son and his promised bride. In contrast, her own son held no notable status among the Brennai. And for Hunter, he was a Transient and an outlander – which meant that his presence was only grudgingly tolerated. It made sense for her to worry that her son might end up being treated as less important.

  “Have no fear, Onatah,” Fawkes told her. She’d overheard her concern and came to put her worries to rest. “Wroth knows how to work the lads hard; I know how to work them smart. Inago will be ready when his time comes.”

  ***

  When they all gathered around the fire to eat lunch, Hunter excused himself and logged out. He returned a couple of hours later, ready to pick up where they’d left off – but Fawkes had other plans.

  “I was thinking we might take the rest of the day off, go somewhere quiet. Talk about the things you said you wanted to talk about.” she told him. “Let Wroth train the others however he sees fit.”

  Hunter was more than happy to oblige. They took off early in the afternoon, the lot of them – Fyodor padding alongside, the ravens circling above.

  “It looks like rain,” Fawkes said. “There’s this little grotto upstream from here. It’s as good a place to stay dry as any.”

  The grotto turned out to be perfect: a small cave at the base of a rocky outcrop, hidden behind a cluster of fir trees. It looked like it had been used often by Brennai hunters and trappers in the past, though not recently. Hunter and Fawkes settled near its entrance, making themselves comfortable. Fyodor took off to explore the surrounding woods, excited by the opportunity to stretch his legs. Biggs and Wedge followed, hopping from tree to tree, their caws echoing in the quiet.

  “I think it’s about time you let me in on those Transient secrets of yours, lad,” Fawkes said, pulling a flask from her coat and taking a nip. She passed it to him, and he took a taste as well – cognac.

  “That’s what I was thinking, too.”

  “Begin with where you got glaive training.”

  That was easy enough to explain. Hunter told her about Mortimer, his Shard, and the martial arts manuals they’d been working through.

  “I’ve heard of something similar before,” Fawkes said thoughtfully. “It’s a technique used by the followers of Saint Aimeric down in Usdeneau. They call it the Mind Palace. Clever thinking, Hunter.”

  “Thanks. The alternative was sitting around moping. Not much good in that.”

  “No,” she agreed. “Never was one to mop either. Tell me more about your training, then. What was it that you wanted to discuss?”

  That was trickier to explain. Hunter had turned it over in his mind countless times. He’d decided it was better to follow his friend Packman’s golden rule of explaining things: show, don’t tell.

  “Say, can I have that notebook of yours?”

  Fawkes reached into her left sleeve and pulled out a notebook and what looked like a sharpened stick of solid graphite – essentially a woodless pencil. The notebook’s cover was made of stiff, coarse cloth, and its pages were yellowed and rough to the touch. It was blank, brand-new.

  “Are these expensive?” Hunter asked.

  “Writing supplies? No. But I doubt you can get them anywhere near here. Don’t worry – I have a stack of those squirreled away. You can have them.”

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  “I see,” he nodded. “Thank you.”

  Hunter pulled up his character sheet and began meticulously copying each section into the notebook. He started with the basics: name, race, and class. From there, he moved on to Skills, Abilities, and finally, Traits. Fawkes watched him scribble with growing curiosity, her interest piqued with every line he wrote.

  “Alright,” Hunter said when he finished, staring down at his chicken-scratch handwriting. “Damn. Writing by hand sucks.”

  “As compared to…?” Fawkes asked, one brow arched.

  “Not the point,” he said, waving her question away. “Can you read it?”

  “Compared to old Ghorval’s, it’s practically calligraphy.”

  “Good. So, where do I begin…”

  He tried his best to explain the System to her, which proved more frustrating than he’d expected. There was a lot he didn’t know himself.

  “The way I understand it,” he concluded, “it’s an abstraction of sorts. A way to quantify things – skills, strength, abilities. Like bookkeeping, but for everything I can do.”

  Fawkes listened intently at first, her expression serious as she tried to piece together the strange concept. Then, once Hunter was done explaining, she leaned back slightly, shaking her head and letting out a low chuckle.

  Hunter stared at her, his expression blank with confusion.

  “What?”

  “Grimnir’s beard, lad. This is Exemplars. All this time, you’ve been playing Exemplars in your head.”

  “Care to elaborate?”

  Fawkes smirked, shaking her head as if he’d asked the funniest question in the world.

  “Exemplars is a scholars’ pastime,” she said. “I never saw the appeal myself, though Reiner used to love it. It’s a sort of exercise in imagination and strategy. You create a character – a hero, usually – and decide their strengths, flaws, and talents. There’s a whole library of books and rules for that. Then you set them loose in a world of your own making, solving riddles, fighting battles, and facing whatever trials you can dream up. The point is to think, to plan, to test yourself through the choices your character makes.”

  Hunter blinked at her, trying to process what she’d just said. She tapped the notebook, pointing at the different Skills and Abilities.

  “It’s make-believe for learned folk, really. A way to sharpen the mind while indulging in a bit of fun. And here you are, living it out like it’s real life.” She chuckled softly. “If that’s not the most Transient thing I’ve ever seen, I don’t know what is.”

  He leaned back, scrubbing a hand over his face.

  “You mean to tell me, you have Dungeons and Dragons over here too?”

  “Dungeons, yes,” Fawkes said, clearly missing the reference. “Though dragons have all supposedly died off long ago. What does that have to do with Exemplars?”

  “Never mind. Let’s just focus on the fact that these Skills and Abilities and whatnot are not something completely alien to you.”

  “Reiner spent a considerable amount of time trying to convince me to play with him, so yes. I do have a passing understanding of the fundamentals.”

  Hunter tilted his head, curious. There was quite a bit of nostalgia hiding behind those words, he could tell. It wasn’t like her.

  “Did you ever give in?”

  She gave him a small smile, though her gaze turned distant.

  “Once or twice. For him.” She paused, then shrugged. “It’s a game for bored scholars in stuffy study halls. Not much use for it when you’re living out of a saddlebag, blade at your side night and day.”

  “I guess that’s true. So, wanna take a look at what I’ve got so far?”

  They went through his character sheet together, line by line. Hunter explained each section or read out Skill descriptions from his HUD when Fawkes needed clarification. She nodded along, her brow furrowed in concentration.

  “So, let me get this straight. Your Exemplar – your Class, that is – is Mystic. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what in Grimnir’s name are you doing lugging a glaive around, lad? From what I gather, you’re supposed to be more of a warlock than a warrior.”

  “You have to understand,” Hunter flushed, tried to explain, “that there’s no such thing as warlocks or magic where I come from. Not outside of make-believe. So when I found myself lost and alone in a big-ass forest, the first thing I instinctively did was grab the first pointy stick I could find and hold on for dear life. And, for the record, it’s not like you ever discouraged me or anything.”

  “I didn’t know you were a bloody warlock!”

  “Weren’t the raven familiars a dead giveaway?”

  “With you bloody Transients, who knows what’s what?”

  “Anyway, you know now.”

  Fawkes took the notebook in her hands, studied the lists of Attributes and Skills and Qualities for a bit.

  “Tell me about that spirit,” she finally said. “The one the bear godling smelled on you. The one whose mark you bear.”

  “Herne?”

  “That's the one.”

  Hunter frowned. He had a feeling Fawkes wasn’t going to like what he was about to tell her, but he did anyway. He told her about the great white owl that had led him through the woods, about Lormenheere, about the standing stone and the circle of bones. He told her how he’d been all but forced into an accord with the great spirit, and how it had unleashed its ghostly entourage on him when it claimed he’d failed to uphold his end of the bargain.

  Fawkes’s face darkened as she listened, and her lips were pressed into a thin line.

  “Grimnir’s beard, Hunter,” she muttered when he was done. “Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”

  “You never asked,” Hunter shrugged.

  “I figured you were just ae-mai, marked by a spirit! How was I supposed to know you’d made a pact with a great spirit of the hunt?”

  “As I said before… You know now.”

  Fawkes closed her eyes and massaged her temples for a moment. Her worry lines looked deeper than ever, etched by years of hardship and burdens she rarely spoke of. This was why Hunter had said so little before – because he hated seeing her like this, carrying the weight of his own troubles.

  “First things first, then,” she finally said. “This accord of yours. It’s not like you aren’t getting anything out of it.Take a look at those Skills and Abilities of yours. A good number of them are directly tied to – or at the very least themed around – the Hunt, with a capital H.”

  “Yeah,” Hunter said. “And I haven’t even shown you the other Abilities I can learn. There’s a few Hunt-themed ones in that list, too.”

  “My point is,” she went on, “I’d rather you hadn’t accepted that accord, but now that you have, you might as well double down on it. But you should renegotiate the terms.”

  “Meaning?”

  “From what I gather, this Herne is a Raequir. They are powerful spirits, remnants from ages past. There are two things you should keep in mind about them. First, they are single-minded beings. Their nature doesn’t change, no matter what. And second, they cannot break their word. If you can persuade this Herne to amend the terms of your accord to something more favorable, he could become a formidable ally indeed.”

  It was Hunter’s turn to frown.

  “How do you suppose I do that?”

  “You need something to bargain with, of course. Something valuable, something that the Raequir wants. Think. What does Herne want?”

  “Trophies from hunts?”

  “You’ll need something to bargain with, of course. Something valuable, something the Raequir desires. Think. What does Herne want?”

  “Trophies from hunts?” Hunter guessed.

  “Indeed. Don’t ask me why – it likely fuels his power in some way. The bear godling all but spelled it out when he asked if you’d taken a trophy from that monstrosity down in the Halls of the Cor Ancestors.”

  The Essence of It That Whispers. He’d thought of it before, of course – presenting it to Lord Herne at some point. But using it as a bargaining chip to renegotiate the terms of their pact? He’d never thought of that.

  “It’s no more than half a day away,” Hunter said, thinking out loud. If we get on the road early enough, we could be there by noon.”

  “No,” Fawkes shook her head. “”There’s no rush to do that yet, as far as I can tell. You should be at your absolute best before you attempt to commune with the Raequir again, especially if you mean to strongarm him into amending your accord.”

  That made sense.

  “I see,” Hunter said.

  “Which brings us to your training,” Fawkes went on. “What you should be focusing on. Isn’t that what you needed my help with?”

  Hunter nodded, grabbed the notebook and the pencil again, and began to write.

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