The Hunt in Fayette

Turning the peak of a far mountain, Renard arrives in Fayette.

Different from most cliff settlements, with castles perched like watching eagles to spy on neighbours below, Fayette is deeply cloistered between the jagged spines of peaks and claustrophobic walls of rock. It insists that no world exists except that cupped here, a secret garden between the mountains.

Nestled in those mountains is the small, forested village of Fayette. Upon a bluff overlooking the town is its magnificent castle.

Experience tells Renard that in small settlements like this or Verdanheim, prompt introductions between himself and the lord is prudent. Unlike kings whose lands are too vast for them to traverse in a day, small lords make business of knowing every tiny thing that happens in their fief, and respond to even minor incursions with dramatic speed and intensity. The formality of the visit is usually an annoying bump between Renard and a dead ghoul, but this time he is glad for it.

Renard rides to the castle, and with joyful bravado announces that he is here to slay the ghoul.

Servants buzz at his arrival. The face of a curious woman in silver peeks from a balcony over the throne room.

The Lord of Fayette, too, welcomes Renard with an attitude less businesslike than bubbly: The good Sir Renard! You’ve my blessing and then some. Enjoy your time here in Fayette, when you are not occupied.

Renard unwinds with relief that he is not too late to take the job. Curious to confirm, he asks, not very subtly, the age of Fayette, as he has seen its symbol on houses in other kingdoms. Did Fayette once own the territories on which those manors are placed?

The Lord furrows his brow, but easily answers no. Those manors are not holdovers from another era, but holiday homes with attached lodgings from which Fayette’s merchants can trade. So, it’s the other way around — Fayette has been on the mountain so long, God himself must have placed its first denizens here, and those forefathers cut the road down, not up. Renard’s interest in the history flatters him, though he didn’t expect it. Is he curious?

Renard explains with serious alarm that Fayette, being isolated and enclosed, is a massive hazard zone for ghouls in that case. It speaks to either incredible luck, incredible efficiency, or incredible skill that they have suffered no major incidents with ghouls in the time they have been here.

Shaken by Renard’s urgency, the Lord sombres somewhat. Of course they’ve had ghouls before, but none that were ever great problems, or that swordsmen like Renard could not fix…

Renard snaps that Fayette is doomed if the Lord establishes no countermeasures to ghouls. Shelters, or evacuation routes — these must be higher priority, else when comes the day a colossus barricades the mountain pass and reams through the village for sport, the questions you call of, where is Renard!, will be answered by the dread silence, for he is twelve days away under the mountain, and your courier is cleaved into pieces.

As he finishes this screed, Renard’s face flushes in shame. That was genuine backtalk at a man with whom he wishes to earn favour – and now who must wholly hate him, rendering Renard’s plan in coming to Fayette, pointless. Cold terror locks in his throat and clunks in his chest.

Straining, sighing, Renard softens himself. Else, Fayette ought invest in dedicated census-men, to keep an account on where the souls in the town are and ensure none slip by and mutate into ghouls unaccounted. This all being said, where is the haunt of today’s ghoul?

The ghoul is quite deep in the forest, the Lord explains with burgeoning worry. But Renard should be careful… now that Renard has said this, the Lord fears it may be a more formidable creature than he initially thought. Particularly, the previous swordsman he sent after the monster still hasn’t come back…

What! Renard interrupts. When was this?

Oh, only two days ago, the Lord answers. We hadn’t thought too much of it… in the past it has taken weeks to properly rout such creatures…

If the creature is of an especially problematic constitution, campaigns against ghouls can indeed take some time. That being said, after scouting its constitution, and discerning the tools needed to counteract it, a hunter would typically return to civilisation so to amass his resources and arrange his plan. That this hunter has not done so sits badly in Renard’s gut.

Renard’s gaze drifts to the woman watching from the balcony. Her brow is knit and mouth is pursed – but the prospect that the previous hunter could be in active danger strikes him as more urgent. Waiting here even another second is another second things could go wrong, when, if he moved now, Renard maybe could stop it.

So being, without sparing to even investigate the Lord’s intelligence on the ghoul, and abandoning the course he came to Fayette for in the first place, Renard breaks away from the discussion.

Ah, wait! Calls the Lord. He beckons, and a nervous boy totters in from a side-wing. I was hoping, Renard, while the opportunity is here, that you might show my son how you hunt and handle a blade in the field…

Renard stares. A thread of golden possibility twangs in his chest: if this may curry him to the Lord… but as soon as he thinks it, Renard rolls his eyes at himself in exasperation and loathing. What an absolute, stupid joke was this! Bringing children to what could be an emergency zone, and turning a serious situation into one to preen and showboat! This Lord doesn’t understand an inch of what this business can be like!

With a spiteful and contemptuous chuckle, Renard bites back: No.

Not even bothering to watch the Lord’s indignation, Renard mounts his horse and departs.

Urging his horse faster, Renard dashes into the forest. When the birds stop twittering and the wind hangs still, he knows himself close to the ghoul. Renard dismounts and draws Kingslayer.

He knows nothing to expect of his quarry – which simply means he will find out. Cautious as he creeps through the forest, Renard strains his senses for signs of its presence. Odd noises, queer smells, distinct tracks, abnormalities: such are a ghoul’s calling cards. A pungent smell of soap soon wafts to Renard from upwind.

He follows the smell to a clearing. There, a slimy green gel like a massive amoeba is puddled across the ground and upon fallen logs. In the centre of the puddle, there sprouts a large, white, fleshy frond that tilts mildly to and fro. At the head of the frond is a cavity from which the amoebic gel is divulged.

Renard idly tosses a stick into the gel puddle. Slowly it sinks into the slime, and slowly, indeed so slowly that Renard must wait minutes to confirm this is what’s happening, begins dissolving and flowing up to the frond. The frond wiggles as if perturbed, soapy bubbles frothing and popping at its base.

So Renard intuits the creature’s anatomy. The gel seems a digestive sac that draws food into the mouth of the frond, which is the body holding its vital organs and magical processes, with rudimentary ability to extend itself to grasp food. Apart from being a nuisance dissolving the plant life and trees in this spot, the particular ghoulishness of this creature may be in a concerning process its waste inflicts on the land, or it may simply have a strong diet for humans despite being anchored here and apparently slow. As ghouls go, this one is not too threatening.

Like treacle, the gel inches towards Renard’s feet, hungry to suck him up, but so atrociously slow that a couple steps back is all it takes to outpace it.

Not too threatening — but, it is always good to give these monsters their due respect. If it has some secret, magical weapon, well, Kingslayer will shield Renard, but another hunter could have been taken off-guard.

Case in point: several arrows protrude from the side of the frond, and there is a brown stain creeping up the gel towards its mouth. A bloodstain. The previous hunter, if not fully dissolved (for the stain seems not nearly big enough), was at least injured here deep in the forest.

Renard purses his lips as he considers his approach. Instinct tells to return to town for oils and torches, to perhaps burn the gel, but with worries of the other hunter’s state rattling in his mind, to turn back breeds guilt and anxiety, as though it would mean abandoning the man. Renard pokes Kingslayer into the gel. It urgently parts and retreats, and the frond waggles in ferocious protest, but its corrosiveness appears not supernatural. Dragging Kingslayer through it could dull the blade.

Renard wipes the gel, already crusting into a grey scab, off Kingslayer. The frond angrily farts a cloud of caustic gas, but this dissipates and reflects to bother the frond by one easy slash of Kingslayer.

While the frond waggles and chokes in its own altered mist, Renard settles his solution. He fells a bridge from young trees, traverses the gel, and just stabs the frond. It thrashes – the logs underfoot undulate as the frond wildly sweeps to whack Renard, threatening to shove him into the gel. Rather than dodge, he commits to the cut, slicing through the frond, and severing the top from the bottom.

The frond slumps still, defeated. Already the green gel hardens grey, confirming the creature is dead.

Simple as Renard makes it look, there are many ways the encounter could have gone wrong. He bends over to inspect the arrows lodged in the corpse, case in point. Their fletching feels familiar, but Renard cannot place from where.

To act is more important than to waste time in memory. Renard so trawls the area for signs of the previous hunter. If the man was injured, he probably has not gone far.

Rewarded, a smeared trail of blood leads out of the wood to a cave gaping on the mountainside. Though relieving to think that the hunter reached shelter, Renard can feel only wary, hand closed for reassurance around Kingslayer’s scabbard, as he creeps up to the cave’s mouth.

A silhouette sits against the wall of the cave, identity mired in the dim. On Renard’s approach, the figure jolts, and with joyful recognition, as though meeting an old friend by chance at an inn, shouts: “Sir Renard!"

As Renard peers into the cave, and his eyes adjust, he too recognises the figure.

“God, I didn’t think I was out that long. Hauhh, haaauh," he wheezes heavily, but alert and alive. His head cranes against the wall as he eyes Renard, his mouth cutting into a sly, reptilian grin. “You poached my kill, didn’t you?"

It is a fellow ghoul hunter, a spirited younger fellow known as the Black Arrow, though Renard distantly recalls his real name to be Marion. An accomplished marksman from a faraway kingdom with the true soul of a mercenary, Renard’s only interaction with the young man — insofar as they’re interactions at all — is occasional sightings of him in traveller's inns. They’ve so seen each other, but never talked.

Even so, that basis of passing familiarity proves solid enough for Renard to, surprised at how strong his investment in this career acquaintance actually was, be deeply alarmed at the boy’s state.

“You poached my kill — didn’t you!"

The boy snarls, rage flaring in his repulsive, slit-pupiled eyes, and a crocodilian tail rising to thrash at the stone behind him. Thick black scales cover his arms, which end in wicked claws. For the boy’s hostility, however, he does not lunge at Renard. He is too weak to.

“Good god, Marion. What has become of you…" Renard says, truly dumbfounded.

Mortality rates are not low in this occupation. Not a year goes by without someone of note passing. But here is something else utterly.

Marion, panting, pauses as if struggling to consider Renard’s words, then runs his clawed hand over his scalp and slumps back to the wall with a snickering, lizardy grin. His gaze lowers to his leg.

It ends in a bloody stump just above the ankle, tightly bandaged with strips of cloth from his shirt. Sodden through with blood, ugly stains smear the rock underneath.

“That stupid thing got me. Moves so slow it makes you forget the damn thing is moving at all…" Marion sighs a chuckle.

He tells his encounter with the ghoul. While focusing for a good shot on its vitals, the gel seeped up and covered his foot. Realising then that the gel was extremely adhesive, and he could not pull free his foot, Marion panicked, tripped, dropped his bow out of reach, and realised in horror that over the course of hours or days, the gel would slowly encompass his whole body and he would be painfully dissolved into nothing — the kind of insidious hunting method fitting for a ghoul.

Marion went for his knife, to amputate his foot. But already the gel formed a boot that rose above the ankle, and he count not find a way to break his shin-bone so he could cut through the limb, and estimated, even if he cut as far as he could and let the gel dissolve the bone for his escape, he would bleed out long before that actually happened.

It was then that Marion made the desperate choice to become a witch.

Renard is not studied in witches, but he has encountered enough about them through his work to know everything he needs to know. Witches are a halfway-point between man and ghoul; a human who allowed a severed fragment of their soul to rot, and eats the infected fragment to incorporate its corruption back into themself. By this, they acquire the corresponding magical powers while retaining a sense of humanity, consciousness, and identity.

Souls are usually severed through the murder of a close-held relation – but it does not always need to be so. In Marion’s case, he sacrificed his ability to handle a blade.

And fortunately for him, the gamble worked. The ghoul sensed Marion was no longer human, and let him go.

“—And that’s my story," Marion finishes, panting weakly as he leans back against the wall. “It’s not the worst way it could’ve gone… at least, I didn’t actually die," he mutters as uncomfortable consolation. Yes, for a passionate hunter as Marion, who has faced horrible ghouls, there was serious importance in not producing another brainless monster to terrorise the world.

But all that means is he may have, for all his good intentions, produced something even worse: a monster with a brain.

Marion itches his chest as new scales grow in. His gaze lowers weakly to his mangled foot.

“Spare me water? Or a poultice, for the pain? Go back to town, if you need…"

“Whatever could these demands be asking, Marion…"

“Who’s that? I don’t know him!" he snaps, tail lashing, before his posture again wilts. “Please, Renard. I didn’t kill anyone for this — I’m not a murderer. Think about it. I’m not the same as any others," he hisses. “So what harm should I cause to anyone? No, I don’t need to. I don’t need to do anything nearly so vile. I swear it, Renard. I’m not that wicked a person… this will is still strong in me." A melancholy smile rises in his eyes. “I don’t think the folk of this town will let me leave the valley… I’m set to staying here, then…"

“Marion—"

“—Stop using that name!" he screeches. Magic crackles around his arms, but peters out, just as quickly.

“—for how long, in this valley?"

Marion scrunches his brow as if confused, still itching the patch of new scales. He then licks his teeth and glances aside. “Renard, have you ever considered—" Marion’s throat bulges as if stricken with gout. He rubs it, and when he speaks again, his voice has dropped three octaves into a crocodilian rumble. “—that ability is just ability, power is just power, and it’s the will that aims that power that says if it’s put to good or bad use? I could protect this valley… yes, I could protect it! I’m still here enough for that, Renard. No, Renard, have you ever considered? If more hunters like us of the creatures we hunt, became in bodily ways like those creatures, but held strong our hearts, we could so more effectively do our work? So many tens, hundreds of those monsters — finally, destroyed with some quickness! Isn’t that wonderful? What I’m seeing before me is wonderful. Hah, why have we never done it before?"

It’s familiar. The desperation, the pleading, the need for some righteous cause — to Renard, who has heard these words near verbatim before, it’s painful beyond painfully familiar.

Great sadness then sweeps through Renard, who pinches his brow to hold back the tears. Steeling himself, he draws Kingslayer.

“—No! No, no no, plea," though Marion scrambles to crawl away, he is too exhausted to even possibly escape the unerring bite of Kingslayer, which plunges solid into his skull.

Marion soon lies still. In the silence, his soul dislodges.

Renard wipes Kingslayer clean and retrieves the soul. Forks of blackened gunk sprawl against its otherwise pristine surface, like veins on a rotten egg. It has been a long time since Renard last did this, but even more ably than back in Pilamine, he numbs and steadies himself through his revulsion as he brings the soul out of the cave, to the open air, and closes his fists around it with the command: shatter.

The uncorrupted soul disperses into less than dust, and the remainder collapses into a black glop that mucks Renard’s palms. He shakes his hands clean and tamps the splodge of muck under his heel, until anything that could rise from it is assuredly dead.

Once the task is done, Renard’s whole body shakes. With trembling knees, threatening to buckle, he hobbles to a large rock that he may sit upon, and cries.

Surrounded by the forest’s tall conifers, the looming cave-mountain, and the serenely crisp air, Renard is like a lost toddler: small.