“Unnnngghhh.” I groaned as a particularly painful bump in the road caused my head to bounce against the floorboard.

“Praise Solaris, he does live!” A gravelly voice chuckled. It should have sent me immediately on guard, but guarding was painful. Hell, at this point living was painful. Someone had frozen my eyes, and tiny gnomes were chiseling their way out from the back of them. Little bastards didn’t even have the decency to strike accurately with their picks. Trying not to hurl, I slowly started the process of picking myself up and assembling myself so that my ass was on the seat and I was somewhat upright.

“The ladies told me you had problems with your magic, that’s a pity. If you could heal yourself, life would be so much better.” The voice said. I hadn’t looked at him yet, because having my eyes closed hurt. Opening them felt like I was staring into the sun. Something he said though tickled my memory. Lady? Ladies? Who were, WAIT!

“Ugh, what happened to Katy and Catherine?” I groaned.

“Damn son, I’ve heard of hitting the bottle hard, but you outdid yourself, didn’t ya? From what I heard, you three were having a very fun night. The girls paced themselves, but you were downing drinks as fast as they could fill ‘em. Anyhow, the ladies got called away on urgent business. Eight out of ten bronze ranks and above are being pulled for some massive mission, but that’s all I know. The rest are in charge of us wood and coppers.”

“Huh? What are wood and coppers?” I asked, finally managing to pull myself up into a seat.

“Oh man, you know next to nothing, don’t you? Alright. Hunter basics. Wood and copper are the two lowest ranks, and in skills we are similar to a squire. Bronze, silver and gold come next and they are like knights. If all goes well, Katy and Catherine should be upgrading to silver soon. Anyway, platinum and electrum are the next ranks, and are knights rampant. They have leave to pretty much go where they please and do what they need to. Ruby rank is top, and they are like paladins.”

I winced, saying, “I appreciate the explanation, but there is no way I’m remembering it right now. Can we not try and teach me anything today? I’m in a boatload of pain.”

“Sure thing, man. Sure thing. Oh, by the way, I’m Gareth.” He said, sticking out his hand. I gave it a very weak shake in return, still not bothering with trying to open my eyes.

I heard Gareth lean back, and I let out a small sigh of relief. It probably wasn’t his fault, but just hearing his voice was annoying as hell. As we sat there, bumping along, I wondered if his comment about healing myself was true. Ennarion said I had access to holy magics, and healing is one of those things. Who knows, maybe I’ll have a bit of luck doing it inside me instead of imbuing it into an arrowhead? To that end, I took a slow breath to center myself and concentrate on the feeling of Solaris. This time I sent the power gently toward my head, the pain spiked.

“AAAAAHHH!” I practically screamed, grabbing the sides of my head and slumping down into the bottom of the wagon.

“You ok?” I heard Gareth asking, worry in his voice as he had a hand on my shoulder. It took a few moments, but I nodded. The thing was, my head did feel a bit better. Maybe part of healing a hangover like this is that I have to live through the same amount of pain? Mentally shrugging my shoulders, I spent the rest of the day sending a trickle of magic into my head. The pain steadily grew, as if there was a pressure there behind my eyes. Figuring that was the issue, I started focusing my mana on that exact point.

“You gonna grab a bite to eat?” Gareth interrupted me, startling me from my work.

“Yeah, be right back.” I grumbled, unnaturally annoyed for some reason. Something was bothering me about everything, I just couldn’t put my finger on it. As I picked up my canteen, I noticed a slip of paper sticking out from between my two backup canteens. I slipped it out, but every time I tried to focus on the words, my headache would come screaming back. Fed up with that, and all the weird shit going on, I sent a massive surge of mana straight into where the pain was. I felt something shatter, and I remembered.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Seconds after getting the unknown powder in his face

He had to be a mage, and whatever he blew into my face burned! It also prevented me from doing nearly anything aside from blinking, swallowing and breathing, and even swallowing was difficult. As my head lolled to the side, Katy came up and stared into my face.

“You sure this will work? This one has a lot of potential and I would hate for him to hold a grudge against me.”

“I’m sure.” The mage said.

“Seriously, he does. He can’t coordinate his footwork for shit, but he doesn’t seem to be aware of his strength. Right now he is almost as physically strong as a Master Vampire.”

“I thought he was just turned?” The mage asked.

“He did, which is why I am worried you could have made a mistake, and it really is our lives on the line. He has no idea who you are.”

He stopped packing up his tools and sighed, “Look Katy. You’re strong, but you need to get over this distrust of everyone. That powder? I guarantee it will work. Ginkgo ash to strike at memory, activated argentum and rowan dust to fight his vampiric healing, along with a few special ingredients. He’ll be lucky to remember yesterday at all, let alone anything that we did. You just need a convincing lie for Gareth to spin about that scar on his navel.”

“I’ll go with the traditional. Boy gets drunk, boy thinks he is invincible, boy does regrettable action. Getting a tattoo of the symbol of Solaris isn’t that far out of normal.”

“Very well. I have a few men on standby so you don’t have to lug him all the way back. He’ll be out for several hours, so probably best to just pack his stuff up and leave him in the wagon. It’s a mild night, he won’t have any issues with exposure.”

Katy finally got bored of examining me and turned to the man and said, “See? That little bit right there is why I love working with you. You tie up all the loose ends, and think of all the contingencies. Most of your rank don’t care how we would return him, or more often get rid of the corpse. Isn’t that right Catherine?”

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Rage filled me as the memory cut off, and I slowly uncrumpled the paper that was in my clenched fist. It wasn’t a large note, but I was interested in it anyway.

I don’t know if you will ever remember, but I can’t apologize enough for what I’ve helped do to you. I hope one day you can forgive me. – Catherine

Well, that answers at least a little bit. Not all hunters are assholes. As Catherine had honestly looked uncomfortable the entire time, I was willing to cut her a bit of slack. Katy would be lucky if I didn’t try and take her head off the next time we met. Fucking bitch. Unfortunately, I was also going to nix going into the hunter wing. There was no way I was going to trust my life to an organization that wasn’t about to trust me in return. Not only that, they kidnapped and branded me in the middle of the night and went so far as to try and block my memories of that night.

Honestly, it took everything I had not to smash Gareth’s face in when I saw him as I sat down. I spent the rest of the afternoon avoiding the hunter, and trying to come up with a plan. By the time we made camp for the night, I had roughly settled. I wouldn’t allow Gareth or anyone near my blood supply, that was obvious. If there were poisons to knock out a vampire, there were poisons to kill one and I was close enough that it counted. I had to walk a fine line with Gareth. I couldn’t get too close to him, but also didn’t want to look like I was trying to keep my distance. Even if they were evil, hunters still had skills that I could use. Teaching me a bit wouldn’t absolve them of what they had already done, but it was a start. We only had six more days until we made it to the capital, and I was going to play the one card all teenage boys had. I’m not excited to be working with a man when I was previously working with two beautiful women. After I made it to the capital, I would need to deliver Laura’s gear to her family and see about joining the army, hopefully with a caveat that someone somewhere teach me magic. I knew I could do at least something with it, even if it was locked within my body. The next six days were going to be rough. Oh, and I couldn’t forget about my training on night guarding.

With a plan for dealing with Gareth, I settled in to a rough life for the next six days. We would only stop in one more town on the way in, as things in the interior of the kingdom weren’t necessarily set up with caravans in mind. That was fine, as guarding in the middle of fields wasn’t that difficult. My problems with the hunters served to provide a wonderful motivation, and I was starting to pick up some of the fieldcraft that Carl had been trying to teach me. My limited healing magic also worked wonders on sore muscles and fatigue, though it would never be a substitute for actual sleep. I also started keeping my strength in check, as I was rapidly learning about secrets.