We stood behind the house. There was a field with a few vegetables and a hut with some tools. In between was an open space where we would deliver our prey for Jericho to start preparing the meat. I had dumped most of my storage, excluding the Thaumonomicon, my wand, and my money. Alex stood ready to be our referee.

“Okay, you two. You’ve got two hours to hunt as much as you can and bring it here. Once again, only meat that humans can eat. Three points per kill, five if it’s larger than Fio. When I give the signal, you’ll fly to the starting point together and then begin at your leisure. Any questions?”

“Nope”, Yria grinned.

I shook my head.

“Alright, then. On three: One. Two. Three!”

The harpy pushed off the ground with powerful legs and spread her wings. A few flaps and she was quickly rising. I moved much more silently, simply following her.

She looked back to see if I was keeping up and then accelerated. We quickly left civilization behind us while the landscape turned more and more rugged. The yellow limestone slowly gained some streaks of red and brown, sometimes even black. The only vegetation visible from up here were a few hardy shrubs.

Yria turned her head to me.

“We gotta go down into the caves for big stuff”, she shouted, “There are some underground rivers and lakes.”

I decided to connect to her with [Telepathy].

“Thanks”, I sent, “Any limit to the area or just everywhere around here?”

“Ooh, you can do that thing! Let’s just go with wherever. You gotta make it back in time. That limits our range enough.”

“Good. Ready?”

She grinned.

“Let’s go!”

With a blast of air, she was off. There was clearly some Skill involved judging by the pale yellow swirls around her wings. I saw her get some distance and decided to turn the other way after spreading my [Sgiathan Dorcha]. After a few seconds, I slowed down and looked for my first target.

Yria was right about life on the surface. There really was very little. I spotted a few holes here and there that might be burrows for rodents or reptiles but that was it. A single mouse slept in the shadow of a shrub. It was far too small to be considered food for humans.

“Let’s go down?”, Catori suggested.

I heeded her judgement and found a promising rupture to dive into. My eyes quickly adapted to the darkness and I found myself in a damp cave. Only the small slit I had dropped in from gave any light but that was more than enough for us. I made sure to have [Mingling] hide me from magical senses and [Sneak] fully active before listening for my first target.

The tiny tipper-tapper of feet alerted me. My head swivelled and I found a decently large lizard rushing along the wall. With a quick flap of my wings, I pushed my talons into its head. It died instantly. I quickly dropped it into my storage.

“Nice!”, Catori said, “We might actually be able to use a second body for scouting down here.”

I blinked.

“True. If we find something…”

Just as I said that I made out the tiniest noise down the tunnel. A heartbeat accompanied by slow breathing. I rapidly closed in, activating [Winged Dream] without even trying to see what it was. The ordo and vacuos attack sunk into my target and I felt its life stop. A quick prod told me I could not activate [Distant Dreaming].

“Must have been awake…”, I mused.

“Eh, whatever”, Catori commented.

I looked at what I had struck and it was a mole. Somehow. The digging claws looked much stronger than usual with some kind of metallic sheen to them.

“Can you eat moles?”, I asked.

“Maybe? Let’s just take it, for now.”

A quick activation of our Skill and I was off again. I continued with another good hit on a snake which was sadly poisonous. We shoved it into our [Owl’s Stomach], the one that devours. Then, Catori took control. She was a little more clumsy than me and missed her first target simply for us to swap back immediately.

It took a little for us to fall into a rhythm. I got two or three kills before missing one or getting a non-viable target. Then Catori took over and did her best. After half an hour, she had gotten three kills, at least. Two of those were mice.

Just as I was wondering where the bigger prey was, we found another gap in the ground. Below, a huge cave opened up. Stalactites and stalagmites formed pillars and spikes covered in glowing moss. It was large enough I could spot two separate nodes giving off a light glow. They were only minor nodes but still. I had thought the Church would have scoured the land clean. Maybe it was difficult to get down here?

Our eyes and ears easily spotted plenty of wildlife. A lot of it was mushrooms and insects but there was a decent amount of rodents, some tortoises and what looked like a small herd of blind rhinos. The cave itself had plenty of interesting topography with corners and tight passes making it difficult to really fathom the extent of it. And yet, the ceiling was practically dead. Only a few vines and some ivy along the walls and the occasional blotch of moss could be found there. Not even bats hung from it. The devastation of whatever the star shard was had reached all the way down here. Or maybe, this was all that could be reclaimed since then.

While Catori decided on our first target, I pulled up our memories of the star shard. They were a little hazy. I had only read about the object once or twice while going through my research. It was not very well understood and mostly a myth in the dwarven libraries. Here, while its existence was not confirmed, it was the accepted explanation for the crater.

Apparently, several hundred years ago something released a huge amount of energy. What that was, nobody knew. The core of the explosion was said to hold the star shard which exuded an extreme amount of vis but not the slightest bit of flux. That was the only reason I still remembered it. If something could have that much magic but not warp the world, it might help with containing the hungry node or taint. But going by the current situation, it was not without side effects. If it still existed, the most likely place was the Church. Maybe even the Crimson Heart. I would definitely ask about it once I got to talk to some Clerics.

“Damn it!”, Catori complained, “I almost had it.”

I looked at the TV. She was just jumping off the wall, one of the blind rhinos running away with a few drops of blood on our talons.

“My turn!”, I smirked and pushed into our body.

We swapped places like a well-oiled machine. Our wings never even faltered, keeping us in the air and perfectly silent.

I decided to follow the rhino. We maybe had thirty minutes left so the big kill would be worth it. The animal was making a lot of noise as it trampled through the cave. I used my superior speed to quickly catch up with it before slipping around and sliding my talons across its hide. I just barely managed to hook them under a bone that felt decidedly like an eyehole. Then, I swung around and cut through its neck with a wing of void and destruction.

The momentum carried the dead animal forward as I pulled up the severed head. I quickly opened my storage to put it away before watching the corpse slide to a stop.

There were a few seconds of complete silence in the cavern.

“Okay, that was kinda cool!”, Catori said, “I’m not even mad I missed the kill.”

I smirked.

“Thanks.”

It took a moment to pack the meat away. We continued our hunt for a few more small targets to fill our storage a little more. It would be impossible to cram it completely unless we got another rhino but that was not worth the points.

Ten minutes before we had to return, I turned us around to find the exit. Catori panicked until I spotted the gap in the ceiling. We made it through and followed the air to reach sunlight once again. With only a minute to spare, we rushed back on our wings of darkness, silently dropping into the backyard. I quickly dumped our kills into a pile. Jericho was already working on Yria’s prey, having dismantled a good few larger rodents and lizards. When the man saw the rhino, he froze.

“Where did you find that?”, he asked.

“Down in the caves.”

“Down…? How deep did you go?”

“Pretty far. I stuck close to the exit but it wasn’t that deep.”

“I see. Well, these things fetch one flux of a price. The hide and horns especially. I want to as how you cut the head off so cleanly but I’m not sure I want to know…”

Yria took that moment to come back, dropping another two bodies on her pile. A mole and a rabbit.

“What the…?”, she croaked between breaths.

“Yup, that’s a lot”, Circe said, “We should count, right?”

Alex nodded and walked forward.

“It’s another twelve seconds, technically, but I’m just gonna stop it here, right?”

The harpy and I nodded.

“Okay. Yria has no large prey. In total, you caught 24 animals for 72 points. Now, Fio… I gotta get to it.”

We stepped aside, the harpy smiling happily as she chewed on a rat too small for our competition.

“You’re good!”, she said between bites, “Didn’t expect that from an owl.”

I compared our piles. Mine was clearly larger but a lot of it was the rhino. It was unclear who would win. Just as Jericho picked up the next animal to skin and dress, Alex got up, wiping the blood from her thaumium arms.

“Okay. I counted 22 without the rhino. Looks like you’re one point short, Fio.”

Circe groaned while Yria gave me a smirk.

“Shoulda stuck to the small food.”

“Not really”, I said, “That was one strike. Couldn’t have done it much faster.”

“Oh…”

The hunters stilled.

“You’re strong”, the harpy said after a bit.

“My Class does not come from [Hunter]. It comes from [Assassin].”

Yria made a noise of understanding.

“Cool!”, she said, “So, do I get a massage?”

Hera nodded primly.

“Whenever you wish, Missus. I am ready.”

“Then, right now!”

Jericho laughed.

“Wash yourself, darling. You’ve got blood all over.”

“Oh, right! I’ll be right back.”

With a flap of her wings, she jumped into the air. I heard a distant splash, probably in one of the rivers that still ran above ground here.

“Anyone want to help me with this?”, Jericho asked.

“Sure, Circe can learn something”, I smirked.

The girl groaned.