“Father truly oversteps. To think he’d enlist a... *guest* for a hunt of all things. Are we so incapable?”
Lady Lyra’s voice carried a theatrical huff, though a playful glint danced in her eyes. Not for her the stiff silks of court. Today, she wore a tailored tunic of deep indigo and sturdy breeches, practical for the day's grim business.
She flicked a dismissive hand towards Silas. “Ah, not a slight against you, of course, Master Silas. Merely father’s incessant fussing.”
“To call the Lord of House Valerius ‘fussy’ is hardly appropriate, noona,” Lord Kael, her cousin, interjected, his tone a low, dangerous growl. His eyes, the color of polished obsidian, locked with Lyra's for a tense beat.
Silas watched the subtle shifts in their postures, the flicker of challenge. A familiar discomfort settled in his gut.
Lord Kael turned, a practiced smile easing onto his sharp features. “A pleasure, Master Silas. I am Kael, of House Valerius. May our hunt be swift.”
“Likewise, Lord Kael.” Silas offered a curt nod, his gaze already drifting past the two nobles. Twelve retainers, clad in the silver and emerald of House Valerius, stood ranked behind them. Their faces were taut, hands gripping weapon hilts. This was no leisurely outing.
They marched, a somber procession, towards Veridia’s northern gate. Residents, hunched and gaunt, knelt as the Valerius banner passed, heads bowed low. Only the City Guards, armed with dull iron and tired expressions, merely dipped their chins, a silent, weary acknowledgment of a power they could not hope to rival.
Silas observed them, these commoners tasked with a fragile order within the decaying metropolis. Their swords were props, their armor thin shells. He understood the unspoken hierarchy. A seasoned noble, even one like Lyra, could carve a path through a hundred such men without breaking stride.
Beyond the city walls, the grand brick road of the old empire stretched north, cracked and overgrown. A chill wind, carrying the scent of damp earth and distant, untamed wilderness, ruffled Silas’s dark hair.
“This needs to be done. Quickly. I want to be back in the warmth,” Lyra muttered, kicking a loose pebble that skittered across the ancient paving stones.
Silas, a few paces behind her, found his eyes drawn to the distant treeline, a dark, hungry maw on the horizon. He avoided conflict, but the quiet tension of the wilderness held a different kind of stability than the city’s hollow grandeur. A rough, honest stability.
Kael fell into step beside Silas. His voice dropped, a confidential murmur. “Tell me, Master Silas, do you find my noona... interesting?”
Silas immediately shook his head. “No, Lord Kael.”
Lyra’s casual flirtations over the past few days felt like a performance, a noble’s game. Her frivolous nature grated against his quiet disposition. And to marry into her line, to be bound by another’s bloodline, was anathema to him. His own blood pulsed with a different, older rhythm.
“A relief.” Kael’s lips curved into a genuine smile, the tension visibly easing from his shoulders. Silas offered no further explanation. It seemed his denial was sufficient.
---
An hour passed. The cracked road gave way to a muddier track. The air grew heavier, thick with the smell of damp earth and unseen things. Then, a dark stain against the grey dirt. A broken merchant’s cart, its timbers splintered. Blood-soaked rags, torn and scattered, lay like discarded skins.
“The beast, then?” Lyra’s voice lost its playful edge, hardening with purpose.
“Most likely. We’ve sealed the northern routes. These must have come from beyond,” Kael replied, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword.
Silas knelt, brushing his fingers over a fragment of shattered wood. The metallic tang of blood was faint, suggesting the attack had happened hours ago. The rags, ripped with brutal precision, pointed to sharp claws or teeth. Then, on a larger splinter of the cart, a dark imprint. Five wide, splayed fingers, disturbingly human-like in their configuration, but grotesquely oversized.
He had seen illustrations in ancient texts, carvings in forgotten crypts beneath Veridia. “A Grave-Ape.”
“A what?” Lyra frowned, perplexed.
Silas pointed to the handprint. “Its mark. Monstrous, yet familiar.” He hadn't truly *seen* a Grave-Ape, only read descriptions of these subterranean-dwelling creatures, driven to the surface by hunger or a disturbance in the deep earth.
“It attacked, then retreated into the forest. We can follow its trail,” Silas concluded, rising.
Lyra tapped a finger against her chin. “Tracking… not my strongest talent. Kael?”
“Nor mine. Perhaps one of the retainers—”
“I will try.” Silas stepped forward, his eyes already scanning the forest edge.
“Oh, you possess such a bloodline talent?” Lyra’s interest was piqued, a flicker of genuine curiosity in her gaze.
“Merely… accustomed to sensing the earth,” Silas lied, the words feeling dry in his mouth. He closed his eyes, drawing a slow, deep breath. The raw earth beneath his worn boots vibrated with a thousand unseen currents. He reached, not with a spell, but with an instinct, a quiet awakening of something ancient within him. The scent of spilled blood on the rags intensified, coalescing into a faint, lingering echo in his mind, drawing a subtle thread of disturbed earth towards the left.
“This way,” Silas announced, his voice low, and led them off the road.
The forest floor was a tangled mess of roots and fallen leaves, but the Valerius party moved with effortless grace. The nobles and their retainers, bodies honed by ancestral power, leaped over fallen logs, scaled steep embankments in fluid bursts of strength. Silas moved differently, his gait economical, his steps finding purchase where others slipped, a quiet communion with the unyielding ground.
Thirty minutes later, the trail dissolved into a rushing stream. Deer, startled from their drink, scattered into the undergrowth like wind-blown leaves.
“The scent ends here. It cleansed itself,” Silas murmured, a faint frown creasing his brow.
“A beast that washes its tracks?” Kael scoffed, disbelief etched on his face.
“It simply wanted to bathe,” Silas corrected, recalling mentions of creatures with surprising intelligence, even rituals. He released his subtle connection to the earth-scent, intending to seek a new avenue of detection. As his senses returned to their normal acuity, a wave of pungent, musky odor slammed into him.
His head snapped around. A pair of large, golden eyes, burning with savage intelligence, glared from a tangle of thorny bushes.
“Behind us!” Silas roared.
A guttural screech ripped through the air. The Grave-Ape erupted from the undergrowth, a towering silhouette of muscle and matted fur, easily two meters tall. Its massive, disproportionately large hands swept the forest floor, gathering handfuls of gravel and sharp stones. With terrifying speed, it hurled them, a volley of jagged projectiles.
Each stone whistled, imbued with raw, primal force, cutting through the air like miniature cannonballs.
“Aagh!”
“Move!”
Silas twisted, a burst of surprising agility, diving behind a thick oak as the barrage tore through the space where he’d stood. When he looked back, he saw Lyra and Kael, each having pushed a retainer forward, using their bodies as living shields. The retainers crumpled, cries of pain ripped from their throats.
Lyra’s voice was sharp, devoid of its earlier lightness. “Attack!” She gestured, tossing the injured retainer aside like a broken doll. The eight remaining retainers, blades glinting, surged forward.
But the Grave-Ape was already melting back into the trees. It moved with impossible speed, a blur of grey fur, leaping from branch to branch, covering immense distances with each bound. Its bulk belied its agility, a fleeting shadow in the green twilight.
As the retainers faltered, stunned by its speed, Silas reached down. His fingers closed around a fist-sized river stone, smooth and heavy. A spark ignited within him, a familiar, ancient warmth. He poured raw force into the stone, an elemental breath of earth for weight, a whisper of fire for speed. With a flick of his wrist, he sent it hurtling through the air.
The stone became a missile, a blur of grey that curved through the branches, bypassing trees, seeking its target with uncanny precision. It struck the Grave-Ape’s waist with a sickening thud. A shriek of agony tore from the creature’s throat as it tumbled, crashing through leaves and branches, landing with a sickening thud.
It writhed, unable to stand, its spine surely shattered.
“Die!” Lyra screamed, her hand outstretched. From her fingertips, an inferno erupted, coalescing into a serpent of pure flame, thick as a tree trunk. The fiery maw bit into the fallen ape, incinerating it in a flash, engulfing a dozen meters of surrounding forest in roaring fire.
Silas recoiled from the heat, the sheer scale of the attack dwarfing anything he could have conjured. This was the Pyromaniac Bloodline of House Valerius, unleashed.
*Such overwhelming power…* He understood now. His own nascent control over flame was a flicker compared to this raging conflagration.
Kael, not to be outdone, conjured a dozen flaming spears, sending them raining down, reducing the already burning beast to a heap of glowing ash. A collective sigh of relief swept through the retainers.
“Hah! Those stones truly gave me a fright, noona,” Kael boasted, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow.
“Scared, were you, little lord?” Lyra retorted, a smirk playing on her lips. “You shrieked louder than I did.”
“I did not!” Kael bristled.
While the two cousins bickered, Silas moved towards the fallen retainers. The air still shimmered with residual heat.
“My arm… it’s broken,” a retainer groaned, cradling his limb.
“His head… still bleeding,” another muttered, dazed.
Silas quickly assessed the damage. “Apply this ointment. Pressure on the wound.” Fortunately, none had succumbed. The retainers who had served as shields were the most grievously injured, but alive. A wave of cold disgust washed over Silas. Noble bodies, far tougher than these common men, yet they had sacrificed their own. His mother’s words echoed, stark and clear: *To them, retainers are but expendable dogs, to be sacrificed for a fleeting moment of comfort.* His gaze lingered on Lyra and Kael, a subtle contempt stirring within him.
Kael, sensing his stare, looked at him. “Something amiss, Master Silas?”
“Nothing, Lord Kael.” Silas dismissed it, his face a mask, but his jaw was tight.
Lyra, oblivious, waved a hand, beckoning. “Master Silas, quickly! Time to absorb the magic!”
“Yes, Lady Lyra.”
Side by side, the three nobles stood over the smoldering remains. They extended their hands, a pale green light emanating from the ashes, a wispy stream flowing into their outstretched palms. Silas felt the familiar rush, a jolt of pleasure as the raw essence of the Grave-Ape seeped into his being.
It felt potent, a surge of latent power. Stronger than the smaller forest beasts he’d encountered, yet less than the more ancient, deeper creatures he’d glimpsed in his mind’s eye. The shared absorption was remarkable; the surge of growth undiminished for each of them.
*The power does not divide, even with multiple takers. Up to four, they say.* The ancient texts held true. It was why noble houses often hunted in small, elite groups, never wasting a precious fragment on a lesser being.
“Ah, no more for me.” Lyra sighed, a faint green glow beginning to leak from her fingertips, dissolving into the air.
“Likewise.” Kael too, began to disperse the excess, his innate capacity for growth temporarily sated.
Silas, still far from his own limits, continued to draw the remaining power into himself. The last tendrils of pale green light streamed towards him, sinking deep. Lyra and Kael watched, faint envy clouding their eyes.
---
On the winding path back to Veridia, Lyra and Kael, their earlier bickering resumed, recounted the hunt with dramatic flair. Their bravery, they insisted, was unparalleled. The Grave-Ape, a truly formidable beast, had been vanquished by their hands alone, a glorious tale fit for the High Lord’s ears. Silas walked a few paces behind, listening to their boasts, a silent observer. His arm still tingled from the strange connection he’d felt to the earth, to the stone, to the spark of fire. He was an outsider, always. Yet, in the wild, amongst the primal forces, he felt a resonance he rarely found within the crumbling walls of Veridia.