Large glowing snowflakes fell from the sky. Each was composed entirely of light, fading as it descended to the ground. Naturally, the upper platforms for most of it, while the people on the ground level only saw the sparkles as faint stars visible in the day. The local mage must have put in a lot of effort into this. Dallion had only been in the city two days, but based on everyone’s reaction, he could assume that it had been going on for a while. There was no doubt that the Archduke was getting worried, either due to the wars up north or the rise of Countess Priscord, presenting subtle spectacles to his subjects to demonstrate that he was still in charge of the province. For the masses, it probably worked. For those in the know, which Dallion had become, it seemed like the first stage of desperation. The way things were going, conflict in the province was inevitable. Win or lose, the countess had set things in motion and soon enough one of them would be dead or banished.

As Dallion made his way towards the hunter’s den, he thought of his grandfather. The similarities between the old man’s life and his own were piling on. The man had also gotten involved in a war for dominance of the province. The sides were different, but most of the players were the same. The scary thing was that despite backing the winning side, Dallion’s grandfather had ended up stripped or rank, delevelled, and banished to his home village. Would the same happen to Dallion? It was starting to look that whichever side he chose he’d lose in the long run either way.

Wetie province has always been a volatile area, Nil said. It’s changed Archdukes more often than all of the other provinces combined.

That’s not reassuring, Nil.

I didn’t say it to reassure you, dear boy. I want you to be prepared. The south has always been like that. Some say because it’s far from the imperial capital. It’s the reason most people end up being banished here.

The true and tried method: when hiding something, put it as far away from the capital as everything else. Of course, Dallion knew that wasn’t the entire truth. The banished cities happened to be always located near sites of ancient cities. In the case of Nerosal, the city ruins were directly underneath.

I should have left an echo with Aspan, Dallion thought.

The copyette would have been able to assist tremendously. Instead, he was going to rely on the questionable guardian of the hunter’s den. If there was a race that knew most about the world, it was the copyettes. Arguably, their civilization had seen the pinnacle of the world. Some argued that the nymphs had been more advanced, given that they were patroned by the Moon of magic, but Dallion had yet to get any information from them. Harp outright refused to discuss the topic, and Onda—who was extremely chatty, in principle—was no better.

Careful, a voice said, coming from one of the trees in the area. There’s a group of people waiting for you.

That was one of the positives of being one of the few empaths of the current age—guardians tended to remember Dallion. The same was in effect for plants, ten times as much.

What weapons? He asked, acting as if nothing had happened.

They’re resting two crossbows on me.

Using a crossbow for city combat was a brave choice. There was no way that such a weapon wouldn’t be discovered by the overseer or the city guard. That suggested that the people hired were amateurs at best, sort of the same thing Dallion’s group had been back when they were hunting the Archduke’s sword. At his current level, Dallion felt pretty confident that he could handle them. In a way, he pitied the unfortunate souls. They had been sent to fail, just to send him a message. It was equally possible that they were hired by the Archduke’s son, or some other local noble. Dallion was going to find out soon enough.

Calmly, he split into two dozen instances, each doing the exact same action. The lack of response suggested that his attackers weren’t awakened, or if they were, they couldn’t sense splitting. A few moments later, Dallion started whistling. This time, things changed.

There was a series of clicks, followed by the sound of hundreds of bolts splitting the air. It wasn’t just two that had been aimed at Dallion, but three times as many. Normally, such an attack would be enough to kill all but the particularly nasty creatures of the wilderness. Not a high-level awakened, though.

Ruby, stay close, Dallion ordered as all of his instances dashed in various directions. His layer vision allowed him to see all the bolts heading his way, the level of his reaction trait—to safely evade them. Using one of his instances, Dallion tried to grab a bolt from the air. While the action was successful, it still shredded the skin of his hand as he attempted to hold it. Apparently, he still had a way to go in terms of strength for such extravagance. In several of the other instances, he merely tapped the bolts, changing their path. The outcome there wasn’t ideal either. Due to the high number of bolts directed in his general direction, and their explosive nature, the vast majority of instances were left dead or wounded. Three remained completely unscathed, however, and that was all that mattered.

Gleam, Dallion said. As he split again, waiting for the dust to settle.

The whip blade thrust out of its scabbard, darting in the direction of the closest attacker.

How many people are out there? Dallion asked the plants of the area.

A chorus of replies came in, almost flooding his senses. Four trees in total had felt the crossbows, but no one seemed to be sure regarding the people. As far as most were concerned, they hadn’t seen people in days. Others insisted that there were still people in the area.

There’s no one here, Gleam said as she extended the whip blade. Just crossbows.

If nothing else, the attackers were well prepared. All of them had blocker rings, rendering them invisible for guardians and plants, it seemed. It remained unclear why the crossbows were visible. Dallion was going to inquire about that. His leading theory was that the weapons were massive enough not to be affected by the blocker items. Either that, or the people had made it deliberately to let him know that they could get at him at any point.

Cute, Dallion thought. If it hadn’t been for the tree’s warning, he might have ended with a serious wound or two. Even then, it was unlikely he would have gotten killed. Crossbows weren’t stealth weapons, making a distinctive sound when used.

Get the crossbows and come back here, Dallion told Gleam. He fully intended to make the attempt cost his attackers something, even if it was the price of the crossbows.

The order was reluctantly obeyed. Annoyed that there were no enemies to fight, the shardfly would have preferred to slice up all four crossbows, but knew well enough that Dallion wouldn’t permit that.

Taking them along, Dallion continued to the building. The door creaked open as Dallion approached. While the guardian didn’t have the strength to open the door completely, he could affect the lock and leave the draft to take care of the rest.

“Hi, Hawk,” Dallion said, dragging in four crossbows.

It must be some hunt to have four of those, the guardian commented. What are you hunting?

“Nothing. I was the target on this one.”

The den was almost empty when Dallion got in. A single fury was in the space, reading a scroll. The dwarves—and everyone else for that matter—were nowhere to be seen. Looking at the hunter boards, Dallion saw that most of the hunters were on missions. Several of the remaining were marked as “assisting” which meant they were helping some noble with something—most likely forging jewelry or weapons. That was far from ideal. For one thing, Dallion really disliked the fury.

“I thought you said you won’t be coming back here,” the fury said in a mocking voice. It was safe to say that he didn’t like Dallion either.

“I’m here for work,” Dallion replied, placing the crossbows on the nearest table. “As you’re aware.”

“Difficult not to be.” One of the crossbows floated through the air, to the fury. “No guardian,” he noted. “That means you can’t tell who it belonged to. Mirror pools use them a lot.”

“Someone tried to kill me on the way here. They left these behind.”

“All the way here? Interesting.”

“You’re not worried?” Dallion had expected a somewhat different reaction. Even if they didn’t like each other, attacking a hunter in front of a hunter’s den wasn’t to be tolerated.

“There’s nothing I can do. Vela might do something when she gets back. You’ll be safe here until then.”

“I’ve already got a place to sleep. I’m just here to check the records.”

“You can’t do that without her around.”

“The old records.”

At that, the fury let out a mocking laugh.

“Sure, go ahead. Let me know if you find anything.” Just so as to mock him further, the fury used his air currents to get the tomes from the records’ room and pile them up on one of the free tables in the main section.

Twenty books piled up. Each had thousands of pages containing information from the first hunt that had taken place in the city to those ending five years ago. Everything more recent than that was kept by Vela.

There were no dates on the outside of the times, just a volume number written on the spine. Dallion took the latest and started reading back.

In theory, every mission contained the name of the hunters, the basics of the mission, the amount of money involved, and sometimes the client. Finding anything there was a feat in itself. Initially, Dallion tried splitting into instances, but he soon stopped. There was no cheating boredom.

On average, it seemed that a hunter did between three and seven missions per year. Skimming through the descriptions, all of them were significantly more massive than anything Dallion had done so far. Apprentice missions like finding artifacts, or catching small creatures of the variety Dallion usually did weren’t even mentioned.

After an hour Dallion, all the missions started to look the same. Through the descriptions, he got a basic idea of what had happened throughout the empire. At one point, a lot of the hunters had been sent to the northeast, where there seemed to be a chainling problem. Given the prices on paper, it was understandable why Archduke Linatol had preferred to send his own hunting party to deal with the one in his lands. Going further back, even stranger things started occurring. Names were disappearing with increasing frequency, eventually leading to pages in which the entire hunter column was blank.

“All the names are gone,” Dallion said after seeing that for seven pages in a row.

“Why do you think I wished you luck?” the fury asked, and just to prove his point, opened a few of the older books with his air magic. There were no names there either. “Hunters always get involved in things that are touchy. Just like the mission you’ve chosen. I’d say that the lucky ones just die, but there are ways of erasing a name after death. It’s safe to say that almost every hunter that’s done anything important over fifty years ago has been erased. If you’re searching for something like that, it’ll take you years to find it based on mission descriptions, if at all.”

So much for finding a pattern.

“Jiroh’s mentor,” Dallion said. “I’m looking for his missions.”

The smile on the fury’s face suddenly vanished.

“Bad choice,” he said, closing the books with a slam.