-Ari-

[An Alten word meaning

“To slice,” or, the shortened form of Relari,

Meaning “sword.”]

“As mentioned before, this is going to be a teamwork exercise,” Pyrse began his instruction, “As usual with first-time Training Hunts, this will take you through the entire process of a Hunt; accepting the Hunt, investigating the target, deciding threat levels, and if determined necessary, taking down the target.” I had been kinda slouched down in my seat, which I corrected as he spoke. Hunts were a lot more complicated than I thought. I had the impression they were just “go here, kill this thing or person.”

“You won’t be involved in the Posting process until you become a White Cloak, most likely anyway,” Pyrse continued, grabbing a marker and turning to the white board and drawing a circle and writing ‘Rumor Starts’ in it, “But it’s important to know it nonetheless. I’ll draw the entire process from the ‘Rumor Starts’ stage all the way to the ‘Target Neutralized’ stage on the whiteboard.

“‘Rumor Starts’ is typically the first step for Restless, Necromancer, and Criminal Hunts. As the name suggests, this step happens when the first pieces of evidence begin showing up, and rumors begin spreading about a potential target.” He drew a line leading to another circle, this time with ‘Incident Reported’ written in it. “This next step is when either a civilian reports the rumor to an official, or an official takes notice of the evidence or rumors. If there is enough evidence, they’ll begin the next step immediately, otherwise, they’ll let the evidence and rumors pile up until there is.

“The ‘Preliminary Investigation’ step,” Pyrse didn’t miss a beat as he drew, wrote, and spoke all at once, “Is the local officials launching their official investigation. This investigation can lead to two options.” He had been drawing horizontally across the board until now, but this time he drew two lines, one across and one down. At the end of the line going down, he wrote ‘Independent Solution,’ and across he wrote ‘Tsumi Clan Involvement.’ “Sometimes, the problem isn’t actually something that they need us to take care of. In these cases, they can take care of it themselves, hence ‘Independent Solution.’ These cases typically consist of petty crime, or false alarms, or just situations where there isn’t enough danger to get us involved. ‘Tsumi Clan Involvement’ means exactly that, they determine through their own investigation that they need to get us involved. And at that point, the next step begins; ‘Request Submission and Review.’”

He drew yet another line and circle, writing in the next step as he went. “At this point, it is still in the local officials’ jurisdiction, but this is the last step where that is the case. The locals will submit a request, with all evidence, findings, situations, and rumors attached. Once received, the Posting Committee, half of which are White Cloak Hunters, the other half being hired-on officials at HQ, will review the information, and determine if the Clan should get involved or not. There are a lot of factors that go into that decision; estimated threat levels, volume of active Hunts, number of available Hunters, and the one that usually causes rejections: is it something they need us for.” Pyrse looked very annoyed when he got to that last point as he continued, his voice noticeably agitated, “The sheer amount of requests we get where they definitely don’t actually need us, and are just too lazy to fix it themselves… It drives me crazy! Like honestly! You don’t need Hunters to come all the way out to the Royal City just because you got robbed, that’s a job for local officers and the Incol Clan!”

It seemed like he realized he was ranting about it, because he stopped and took a deep breath, which when he exhaled, it sounded like a defeated sigh. Oroske explained after the meeting that Pyrse is a member of the Posting Committee.

“But I digress,” he continued, “That step involves a second preliminary investigation from us, though we don’t actually go out to the location and gather our own evidence and such. If the Committee decides it doesn’t require our involvement, we bounce it back to the person who submitted it and give our formal rejection. If they decide it does, we move on to the next step.”

He drew the next step, titled ‘Determine Variables.’

“This is the last step before the Hunt gets posted. Here, the Committee decides various things, such as what is the estimated difficulty level, how many Hunters should be assigned to it, is the investigation going to be a separate Hunt from actually resolving the issue, stuff like that.”

After explaining that step, he drew the next few steps, ‘Hunt Posted’ branched into ‘Investigation Hunt’ and ‘Neutralize Target.’ The ‘Investigation Hunt’ had a line going into the ‘Neutralize Target’ as well. He then drew a line from both of those to one final step, ‘Conclusion.’

“I momentarily explained the next three steps, as it’s what we’ll be focusing on today, but to explain them a bit further,” he explained, pointing towards Hunt Posted on the whiteboard, “Hunt Posted includes both the actual posting and accepting of the Hunt. Typically, the Hunters who are accepting the Hunt will write their names on the paper on the Hunt Board, then wait for the list to get filled. Sometimes you can skip that step, depending on the type and difficulty of the Hunt, but once the list has been filled, the group would take the paper to our lovely receptionist, Venn, or whoever is filling for her, and will officially be assigned to the Hunt, and receive any extra instruction or debriefing if needed.”

He moved on, pointing towards ‘Investigation Hunt,’ “These next two steps will sometimes be combined, like they are for today’s Training Hunt. But when it comes to the official flowchart of steps, they’re separate. So the Investigation Hunt must happen before the actual Neutralize Target step can happen, and typically the way it happens is the investigation team will return to HQ and report their findings, then the neutralization step will be posted as well. Sometimes, however, things are more dire and urgent than previously thought. Your mentor may have told you already, but Hunters are given the right to make decisions in the field, and that includes deciding the target needs to be neutralized immediately. Some Hunters abuse that power, which is unfortunate, but unavoidable. But to give more detail about the investigation step, the objective is simply to confirm the target’s identity, location, and strength, and find any extra evidence and information possible.

“Then there’s the Neutralize Target step. This one is very simple, simply go in, and take care of the problem. Whether that's to kill someone or something, capture someone or something, or just generally take care of the problem.” He explained, before quickly moving to the next step.

“And finally, Conclusion. This step is a generalization of all the wrapping up. Any extra things needed to be done in the locale falls here, reporting completion, and finally the collection of payment,” as Pyrse finished, he took a deep breath before sharply exhaling, “And that’s it. That’s the entire process, from initial rumors all the way to us getting paid.

“Any questions?” Pyrse’s question was met with a somewhat awkward moment of silence. “Fantastic, then let’s begin the debriefing.” He grabbed a small stack of papers from a satchel before handing a copy to everyone, “Go ahead and read through that, it’s written up the same way actual Hunt postings are written, and includes all the known details.”

The paper read:

-Restless Rumor in Tsumi’din-

Rumors of Restless activity in the South East Quadrant of Tsumi’din have been reported by a few residents the past few days. Location of activity varies by report, there’s a good chance of multiple Restless. Chance of a Necromancer has been determined to be low. The rumors indicate the Restless involved are moderately weak, but aggressive.

Report to the contact in the Southeast section of the central plaza.

After a few moments, allowing everybody to finish reading the passage, Pyrse spoke up once again, “Alright, let’s break this down. This is a very simple posting, as a lot of Investigation Hunts have, with only the essential information. To see if you understand the posting, let’s quiz you on what everything means.” He pointed to Fyr, the other table’s Navy Cloak, “What kind of target are we after today?”

“Yes, sir,” Fyr started, standing up, “Our suspected target is one or multiple Restless.”

He sat back down and Pyrse fired the next question to me with a dramatic point, “You, newbie, what is the estimated strength of the target?”

I stood up, and mimicked Fyr, “Yes, sir, the target is expected to be weak, but aggressive.”

“And you, Ari,” Pyrse had already moved onto the next person and question before I even sat down, “Is there any chance of Necromancer involvement?”

“No, sir,” Ari said timidly, “the report indicates the chance of a Necromancer to be low.”

“Very good, very good, and finally, you,” he continued without missing any beats, pointing at Jarou, “Where are we to report to begin the Hunt properly?”

“Sir,” Jarou stood up in a very dignified and confident manner, “we are to report to the Southeast section of the central plaza.”

“Good!” Pyrse said with a loud clap, “Any questions?” He allowed a moment of silence for everyone to think, and continued after no one said anything. “Fantastic, then with that the initial debriefing is done, and we can report to our contact. In actual Hunts, the contact would be waiting in an official building somewhere in the same city the target is in, unless there’s a special case, in which it’ll tell you where to go.”

He motioned for everyone to get up and follow him. We walked outside the headquarters building, and crossed diagonally through the plaza, which was nowhere near as crowded as it was earlier, to the Southeast edge. We stopped in front of a building with a sign that read “Lyen’s Hunt Supply.” Once we were all standing next to the door, making sure not to block the path inside at Oroske’s instruction, Pyrse stood in front of the group and cleared his throat. “We were short people today, so I’m also doubling as the contact for this Training Hunt. So, shall we begin?”

We all nodded and Pyrse opened the floor to questions, instructing the mentors to demonstrate what questions to ask for things like this. Oroske spoke first, “So, tell me some of the details of the rumors.”

“Of course,” Pyrse began, “The first rumor comes from an old lady on the corner of 15th South and 6th East streets. She said her garden on the Edge got ransacked, plants pulled up all over the place and flower pots smashed. At first it sounded like teenage hooligans getting up to no good, but similar stories with different motifs popped up in a few different locations.

“The second report came from a retired Hunter, who had spots of their yard dug up mysteriously. They have a locked fence, otherwise we would have thought it was a stray animal or something like that. Their house is the third house on the West side of 13th East, between 8th and 9th South, going South.

“And finally, the last report that was deemed to be part of the same series of events, various items, from both of those houses and a few others, all turned up in the same spot, thrown in a big pile. This pile was found in the park at the Edge, near both 15th streets.” Pyrse finished, exhaling sharply in a sigh.

Xeron asked the next question, “How long ago did all of this start? And how much time passed between each report?”

Pyrse nodded, “The first report came in yesterday, around mid-day, from the old lady, though she said that it had happened the previous night. She went out to water the plants in the afternoon, and when she went out to check on them before bed, the garden had been ransacked. The second report came a few hours later, and was suspected to have happened yesterday morning. And finally, the last report was made earlier today, when a Hunter spotted the pile in the park.”

“Interesting…” Nadred murmured, then spoke up more, “You mentioned there are items from houses outside the two mentioned in the reports, would that mean there are other places the target may have ransacked?”

“Yes, that’s what we believe to be the case. However, until they are reported, there isn’t much we can do,” Pyrse explained. There was a somewhat awkward moment of silence as we all processed the information. After a minute or so, Pyrse broke the silence, “If there’s no more questions, I will leave you all to your preparations.” We all nodded as he walked away with a wave.

“So what do you all make of the rumors?” Oroske asked, signalling for the other mentors and Orun to give the apprentices a chance to speak first. Just as I was about to say something, Ari took the words right out of my mouth, “It sounds like it could easily be some kid or animal causing trouble.”

“It does, however, that last report is pretty common Restless behaviour,” Jarou said, “I can’t think of a reason a kid would make a big pile of things they stole and have it in a park like that, while Restless commonly hoard items they liked in life, and pile them up.”

I supposed now wasn’t a good time to mention I wasn’t even sure what a Restless was.

“I suppose that’s true,” Ari backed down timidly.

Fyr suddenly spoke up, “Ari brings up a good point, for all we know the two events are actually unrelated.” Oroske raised an eyebrow to this, looking amused as Fyr continued. “That said, I think in a case like this, we should prepare for anything.”

I decided to chime in finally, saying I agreed with Fyr and Ari both.

“Alright, well luckily for us, we’re right by the best store for preparing to fight Restless,” Xeron said, “Let’s buy what we need, then what say we split our groups?”

Ranfa had been silently nodding along the entire time, “A good idea. From what I can tell, we have two groups already don’t we?”

“Hmm, yeah. Why don’t we switch it up?” Oroske suggested, “For example, rather than it being me, Kuro, Jarou, and Nadred, my group would be Kuro, Xeron, and Ari. How does that sound?”

“Good idea,” Nadred said, “It’s important to know as many of your fellow Hunters as possible.”

All of us apprentices agreed to it, and we went inside the store to prepare.

Our mentors guided a section of the store that had a large bookshelf, filled with scrolls and tomes. Oroske grabbed nine scrolls from a compartment labeled “Return to Dust,” and handed each of us one of them.

“These scrolls have the formula for the Return to Dust spell inscribed on them,” Nadred explained, “it’s a complicated spell, and the best tool to fight the Restless, as it sends them directly back to the Aetherial Realm. It does have other uses, but that’s not relevant right now.”

We all took our scrolls up to the counter, where a gentle looking lady, a little on the large side with smooth brown hair tied in a bun, and soft green eyes, probably around Oroske’s age, was waiting for us. “Lyen, it’s good to see you,” Oroske greeted her.

“It’s good to see you too, Oroske,” She returned the greeting. Her voice had a small hint of masculinity in it, but I figured it was probably my imagination or something. “So nine Return to Dust scrolls? That’s 10 Venn each, so a total of 90.”

The mentors all pooled together a total of 9 silver coins. They had a large V with a line through the left side on one side of the coin, and the other had a smaller, matching V with a 10 underneath it. When I asked later, Oroske explained Venn is the money we use, and the name means silver. Apparently there’s a gold coin type as well but it’s very rare, so it rarely gets used.

“Good luck y’all! Be safe out there,” Lyen bid us farewell after we paid.

Once we were outside we split into our smaller groups. My group was as we decided on earlier, me, Oroske, Ari, and Xeron, but with the addition of Orun as well. Meaning the other group had Jarou, Nadred, Fyr, and Ranfa.

“My group will go meet with the old lady,” Oroske started, “Once we’ve finished talking with her, we’ll meet up at the park. Whichever group gets there first, just stand by nearby until the other group arrives.”

“Got it!” The majority of the group exclaimed in unison, and we separated, heading to our respective goals.