It was red.
Everything was red – or at least bathed in a hazy red light that gave the place an ominous atmosphere. He stood in a shrine of sorts; the wall directly behind him held the same carved symbol that adorned the front of Hircine’s altar in Solstheim. He’d arrived on an elaborately-carved summoning circle between a pair of carved hawk effigies, all nestled in a semicircle of walls and trilithons – the familiar ancient, square-topped archways common to Tamriel’s northern reaches. Sheer cliffs stretched out behind the walls, at least as far as he could see before forest obscured the view.
Over Chip’s left shoulder Masser hung low and full above the mountains, its ruddy light coloring the skies and everything around him. He peered up at it and blinked.
It’s like the blood moon I saw when I went to find Sinding. This is definitely Hircine’s domain.
He tasted the air. It smelled like…
The Hunt. It smells like the hunt. I sense human, and animal, and bird, and… blood.
The part of him that was wolf wanted to grin and howl. But he felt none of the urges that suggested the extremely full moon was about to turn him, only excitement and wariness that had him drawing his bow and dropping into a crouch before he proceeded. Down from the summoning platform he moved, and forward into a thick, dark forest. A path led through the trees and beneath a series of moss-laden triliths toward a clearing; at least he thought it was a clearing, because it seemed brighter ahead. When he reached the end of the forest path he gasped.
It was a clearing, and a fairly large one at that. The brush and low growth that spread out on both sides along the path gave way to soil and dropped needles, completely open and barren of growth. On the far side of the clearing were five altars, each in a niche topped by a carved replica of the horn that had brought Chip here. He couldn’t quite make out what lay atop each of them, but he was certain that was the source of the blood he’d sniffed out. It was going to be risky, crossing that expanse of open ground; but it was the fastest way to get to the shrines. He could neither hear nor sense any enemies nearby; so Chip rose from his crouch and dashed across to investigate the offerings.
As he neared the shrines, Chip slowed and stared at them in awe. These were no simple animal sacrifices. Or, rather, they were – the first altar he approached at the far right, for instance, held a common bristleback boar, and the one to its left displayed a saber cat – but at the front of each altar was a tall, sharp spike. At the far left he saw what looked like a bird of prey, and next to that was a bear. It was when he neared the center-most shrine that he understood the aura of energy he’d felt from this place. It was a timber wolf; but impaled upon the spike was an enormous, fleshy heart.
Chip walked back and forth before the shrines, considering the implications. It could be that this hunting ground was full of wild beasts like those before him. If that was the case, he had only to hunt as he had been hunting, and take down the trophies as they appeared. But he didn’t think that was what these represented. Merely hunting saber cats would prove only that he could do here what he did back home.
If the tales of Hircine are true, he commands more than just werewolves and werebears. These could all be just symbolic.
He paced before the altars once more, again coming to a halt before the wolf’s altar with its impaled heart. He could sense that this had been the heart of an alpha wolf, strong and fierce; even in death it radiated raw power.
I’m a wolf, come here to prove the strength of my own heart to my lord Hircine. I’d be willing to bet that if I had come here as a werebear, like those I killed on Solstheim, there would be a heart on the spike before the bear, instead.
If I’m right, that means I have my work cut out for me, hunting werebeasts. I’d best be careful.
He backed up into the center of the clearing to get his bearings. There were more triliths leading to forest paths, in addition to the one he’d come from. He turned around twice, to be certain he knew which one led back to the summoning circle, and then tsk’d at himself.
Spinning around like a lost rabbit right here in the middle of the opening. What a good way to become the hunted. I’m an idiot.
He chose the opening to the right of the beast altars, and crept toward it. The moonlight illuminated the path well, but not very far; he’d only walked a few paces before the forest was as dark as Falkreath Hold at midnight. It was also silent, a fact that worried him. Oddly silent, without so much as a bird chirping or a wolf baying at that moon. He relied on all his senses to hunt, and right now two of them were basically useless. He took a moment to poison his bow, for any advantage he could give himself might turn out to be crucial.
His head swiveled from side to side as he crept along. It was important to find high ground, if he could, but the corridor of forest was contained between sheer cliffs. There were large rock outcroppings here and there, nestled in the dark; but they didn’t give enough elevation for him to see any movements. With every moment that passed, Chip felt his tension mounting. He tried to breathe deeply, but didn’t want to make noise and give his own position away.
As he emerged from a stand of particularly large trees he caught the moonlight illuminating an angled section of carved stone. He’d seen the huge pointed arches near ancient ruins in the southernmost parts of the Rift; this looked like the lower part of one of those. He moved ahead, pushing through the thick brush, eager to see whether his guess had been correct. In his hurry, he gave himself away. Suddenly there was the unmistakable sound of an armor spell being cast.
Chip froze for a moment, his heart pounding from the surprise.
Not just werebeasts. I’m to hunt man as well? Just as it was with the hunt for Sinding, it seems.
He slipped backward into the undergrowth again, drawing out his bow and straining to see anything at all in the ruddy gloom. He found one of the boulders he’d passed and hopped up onto it; it wasn’t much, but he might be able to shoot over the tops of the bushes from here and that might save his life. He caught the sounds of movement, branches brushing against each other, and his nose picked up the scent of a man. Then there was nothing, for a moment, except for the sound of his heart in his ears.
“I guess I was just hearing things,” a distinctly Nord voice said.
Chip swiveled to track the man, and readied an arrow. His eyes hurt from trying to part the gloom with his gaze. Finally he caught the shifting of shadows between two of the great trees and loosed a shot toward where he thought the man would be.
The shot missed, the arrow likely burying itself into one of the trees; but the hunter was alerted and started moving around less carefully. Chip was able to track the man’s passage by his sound. As he neared, Chip hopped down behind the boulder and readied another arrow.
“Anybody there?” The voice was right in front of him, and yet he couldn’t see the man in the dark.
He’s probably a werebeast, just like me, otherwise he wouldn’t be here. I have to be careful.
He shifted position, wincing as his boots crunched atop the needles and sticks underfoot. The hunter moved closer; and Chip was just about to release the shot when his heart caught in his throat. A pair of glowing amber eyes emerged from the darkness just in front of him, the sounds of heavy breathing revealing their owner to be a werewolf.
Gods, no! A werewolf too?
He turned right and then left trying to track the werewolf, his bow extended and ready, his arms beginning to burn with the exertion of holding the shot.
“Is someone there?”
The voice just to his right startled him. The arrow leapt from his control, hurtling through the woods to strike a tree trunk and clatter to the ground. The hunter turned and ran toward the place he’d heard the arrow; but Chip heard the werewolf turn to face him and fired once more in the direction of the glowing eyes. The beast growled, and Chip saw the shadows shift as it dropped to the forest floor. He couldn’t tell whether he’d killed it or merely wounded it gravely; but he didn’t have time to worry about it as the hunter ran out into the open near him.
This time the man was close enough that Chip could see the magic of his armor spell glimmering on his bare midriff. Chip shot over his head, toward a patch of open ground, drawing the hunter’s attention away again; once his back was turned, Chip felled him with a single arrow through his chest.
He almost relaxed. Almost. Raspy breath sounds alerted him to the presence of a werewolf near the hunter’s body; and with his heart pounding in his throat he fired and heard the beast snort loudly and move away.
Chip poisoned his bow again and peered out through the trees towards the few shafts of moonlight. There it was – no, that was just the top of a spruce sapling. He thought he heard movement back in the direction of the beast shrines, and turned in that direction, waiting. After a few moments, he hopped back down off the boulder he was on and moved in closer to the sheer cliff face. It wasn’t the smartest move in the world for him to make, but it was the only one he had.
At least nothing can come out from behind me if my back is against the wall.
Rustling and panting sounds neared him. He readied an arrow and held his breath, waiting; and the werewolf came out of the shrubs to pause directly in front of him, but looking in the other direction. It was so near that if there had been light, Chip thought he might have been able to count the fleas on the beast.
How can it not sense me?
He shot, twice in quick succession, and the werewolf fell, limned in the sick green of the poison. Chip froze, and listened; but he heard nothing else in the area. He blew out a deep breath and then used his sense of smell to direct him to the carcasses of his kills: two werewolves and the hunter, who wore an intriguing set of boar-hide clothing and carried an interesting shield as well as some heavy-duty arrows. Chip used the moments it took to stow his prizes to calm himself.
This is going to be much harder than I thought.
The moons had shifted enough that light was filtering down into the trees at a different angle, allowing a bit more visibility. Chip moved back down the path as silently as he could, past the base of the broken archway he’d seen before, and around a bend in the canyon. He could see another trilith ahead of him. Something moved near it – or at least he thought that something moved; he backed up quickly and crossed the path to the deep shadows next to the other canyon wall. Try as he might, he was not able to find a place to hop up into the cliffside; but at least there were more large boulders behind which he could hide or atop which he could climb.
He did just that – jump up onto one of the outcroppings – and almost cried out in surprise as a dark brown shape shuffled out from behind the tree just in front of him, into a small shaft of moonlight. It was another werewolf, this one a tawny color that was slightly easier to see than the black pair he’d killed before. The beast was completely unaware of him, moving slowly through the woods. Chip followed its movements, watching as it entered another clearing of sorts, with a henge made of huge clustered post-and-lintel stone structures. He pulled out his bow and readied a shot, but stopped as his gaze caught more motion. There was at least one more hunter out there, moving around in the clearing.
Let’s flush them out, eh?
Chip pulled out one of the wolf arrows and lobbed it into the middle of the clearing, toward the werewolf. The conjuration flared noisily and the wolf emerged, howling. And chaos erupted.
Chip heard the sounds of the werewolf howling and slashing at the conjured wolf. He also heard at least two humans, and something else that he couldn’t identify. He ran back to, and up onto, the nearest stone outcropping he’d found and stopped, his mouth dropping open in awe and horror as two werebeasts ran past him. One had enormous, ugly tusks on both sides of its head. The other was huge, and feline.
Wereboar – and werelion.
He didn’t have time to draw his bow, though, as flames erupted in his face. One of the hunters was also a mage.
“Shor have mercy on you!” the man shouted as Chip began to singe.
Things seemed to move in slow-motion, then; and yet far too quickly at the same time.
Chip jumped backward, reflexively, and found himself blind. He was caught between the rock and the cliff face, his night vision having been ruined by the flash of flames. He turned this way and that, jumping and flailing until he found an opening, and then started to run in a complete panic. Both of the human hunters were shouting at him, and he could hear one of the werebeasts panting just behind him, close enough that he didn’t dare slow down. He couldn’t see, his body was shrieking at him from its burns, and his heart was pounding so hard that he felt sure the creatures after him would be able to track him just by following its sound.
“I’ll carve you into pieces!”
Chip ran, and ran, his vision finally adjusting once more to the ruddy dimness. At last he spotted a sloped surface in the wall next to him that he leapt for.
Whether it was his beast strength or the sheer adrenaline of panic that took him up the side of the rock, he didn’t know; but somehow he managed to scramble up high enough to get out of the reach of the sharp tusks of the wereboar that had been about to gore him. It, and the nearer of the two hunters, ran away. Chip healed himself a bit, panting and shuddering, and took a sip of water.
This won’t do. I can’t be letting myself get surrounded. And where am I?
He’d run from the flames in a sheer bolt for survival, and had no sense of where he’d gone in relation to where he’d been. He thought he could see the stone arches somewhere ahead of him; but were they the same stones he’d seen earlier, arranged in a circle? Or was this the entry to another part of the Hunting Grounds? He didn’t know. He also didn’t know where his enemies had gone. He had an idea, though, of how to flush them out, one that wouldn’t put him in immediate danger. He had just enough magicka left to cast his wolf familiar; and as he’d hoped, it dashed away toward the multiple enemies that had been chasing Chip.
A few moments later three figures moved into Chip’s visual range. The hunter was the easiest to spot, because he was making the most noise. Chip poisoned his bow and caught the man square in the heart, dropping him with a single shot. The wereboar and werelion came close enough for him to shoot at, but were moving quickly enough that Chip’s arrows missed; and they then ran back the way they’d come.
Chip crept down from his rock and followed them to the edge of the clearing, finding that he’d returned to the henge. He still had no idea which side of the place he’d come from, or how to get back to the summoning circle, but he could see the werebeasts running around in the rocks. He shot the wereboar, twice. Then the light shifted and he saw that there were not just two werebeasts there, but three, all coming for him. He turned and scampered back to his high perch. He took a few moments to rest and collect his thoughts before returning to the forest floor.
Think like a hunter. A real hunter, Hircine’s hunter, not a Nord-Redguard archer out after single specimens of Kyne’s guardian beasts. This is a real hunt, a true test.
Somehow that realization took him out of himself, and into a place of calm. He stopped thinking about his own fears. It didn’t matter that he’d been afraid, before. Now he was focused completely on the sounds and sights around him. He pushed forward until he could see the henge once more. He heard the human hunter declare that there was no sign of him; and while he couldn’t see the man, he could both hear and smell the wereboar moving around the perimeter of the area toward him. He readied his bow; and as it came into view he loosed the arrow, finally killing the creature. Three figures headed directly for him.
Chip ran to his right, heading for the edge of the clearing, thinking to dive into the undergrowth. Two werelions were on his tail. He turned, ducked down, and rolled back to his left, then rose as the werelions passed him and bolted for the center of the henge. There was another raised, carved summoning circle there in the center, but he didn’t have the luxury of examining it. Instead, he chose a path and ran down it, not knowing which it was. He hugged the wall and froze as two werelions – whether the ones he’d narrowly escaped or a different pair – crossed directly in front of him. He mentally thanked Delvin and his parents for teaching him how to move quietly as he slid past the beasts and behind a tree.
“When I find you, you’re dead.”
Yeah. No doubt. But not if I find you first.
He found his path blocked by the ruins of one of the ancient stone archways, but didn’t know whether this was the one he’d seen earlier from a different angle, or a completely different arch. He vaulted over it and followed the sound of the hunter’s voice. The man was standing completely motionless, right in the middle of a clear portion of pathway. Chip grinned, drew an arrow, and once again dropped his adversary with a single arrow.
The men are turning out to be the easiest prey.
He was about to go examine the body when a sound behind him had him whirling. There was another hunter coming toward him. He scrambled back toward the downed stonework and up onto it, then lobbed a shot at the hunter, catching him in the arm rather than the chest. He drew a deep breath, and another arrow, and then had to stifle the urge to swear violently.
The man was heading straight for him. So were the two werelions.
Whether it was his skill in hiding, or the fact that the three foes were moving out of a beam of moonlight and looking into a very dark corner, or some combination of those, Chip didn’t know; but for the next few minutes the beasts and the man passed back and forth in front of him, sometimes close enough to touch. Then they would run across the canyon, back into the light. Chip took shots at them when they were away from him and froze when they were near. The hunter went down first. A short time later, one of the werelions died when it wandered away to the far side of the canyon. The final lion was snuffling about very near Chip, on the other side of the ancient stone monument; and he was able to catch it by surprise with a clean arrow to the heart.
After a few minutes spent stripping everything of worth from his slain foes, Chip once again pushed down the canyon toward the ruddy glow of what had to be an open area. As before, he stayed next to the cliff face where he could. It seemed to him as though the canyon gradually widened, opening up space for more and more trees, until suddenly the forest stopped at the edge of an enormous, grassy plain.
It was the oddest thing. The place before him was utterly flat, covered in thick grass, and completely devoid of trees. And out in the middle of it were werelions. They hadn’t spotted him; they either wandered sedately or stood still. Chip scanned the nearer cliff face, hoping to find a vantage point; but seeing none he drew aim on the closest of the werelions and let fly. Then he calmly turned and slipped back down the canyon to a place where he had seen a slope in the wall, and climbed up to where he could see everything. The werelions didn’t follow.
Hmm. I guess it’s a matter of not panicking, isn’t it?
Chip conjured his wolf familiar once more and scrambled back around the corner of the rocks until he could see the werelion. He readied a wolf arrow and fired it at the beast, thinking to distract it until he could find a good position from which to take it down. There was a large boulder just at the edge of the grassy field; he climbed up that and began shooting.
Suddenly, where there had been one werelion there were four. They’d been far enough away in the very tall grass that he hadn’t seen them; and they all came rushing ahead to help with the conjurations. Chip settled himself and began firing one arrow after another. In what was an otherwise silent place, the roaring of all the beasts was utterly cacophonous.
Then claws raked down his back in a row of parallel fire. He gasped in pain, whirled, and fired into the snout of another angry werelion, which ran around the boulder to join the others.
Damn, I forgot about the one on the other side of the field! It snuck up behind me!
He took a step back on the boulder, barely out of the claws’ reach, and tossed a quick healing spell on himself. With the minimal amount of magicka he had left he fired flames at the werelions, just enough to back them up so that he could retreat.
Once again they did not follow, preferring to stay near their grasslands. Chip found the sloped wall once again and scrambled up it, this time heaving himself as high up the side of the canyon as he could manage. He rested for a few moments and then inched painfully back toward the grassland, where he then began shooting the werelions he could see from his perch. Bit by bit he whittled the herd down, luring them with his arrows and with a wraith he conjured with Queen Frina’s staff, until there were four corpses piled up just at the edge of the forest.
But I don’t have the heart.
He made his way out into the grassland, moving cautiously around the perimeter, sniffing the air for hints of another werelion, or the corpse of a werelion. He even circled the huge, slanted outcropping at the far end of the field, to see whether there might be a den beneath, or on top of it. There was nothing. It was dead silent.
I must have gotten the alpha earlier. I’d better double-check.
He ran back to the place where he’d piled up the werelions and checked them. None of them looked like the alpha or had the aura of an alpha.
Maybe it’s one I got farther down the canyon?
He started to run across the mouth of the canyon to where he could smell another body and then suddenly hauled up to a dead stop as a growl sounded just to his left. He whirled to find one last werelion staring back down the canyon into the forest, snarling but not moving.
The alpha. He was waiting for me.
Clever.
For whatever reason, it didn’t seem to sense Chip. He didn’t understand it; but he took advantage of the situation to move across to the opposite side of the opening and look for a good vantage. In the end he picked the spot he’d been in earlier – just behind the base of the ancient broken arch, peeking out through the gap between its curve and the cliff face. It took him three arrows to finish the beast, which couldn’t seem to figure out where he was firing from.
Chip knelt and opened the werelion to harvest its heart. He breathed a deep sigh. Now it was time for him to go offer the heart to Hircine by placing it on the appropriate altar. That, he was certain of.
He ran back down the pathway this time, away from the grassy field that had been the terminus of this part of Hircine’s hunting grounds. He knew where he was going now, at least until he made it to the henge. It was important that he’d done this, and he’d learned some important lessons. First, he should never let his guard down, or assume that he was in complete control of a situation; for as soon as he had gotten sloppy, he’d almost been killed. Second, it was important for him not to panic. All his panic had done was to confuse him more, get him lost, and put him in greater danger.
He was trotting along, smiling to himself, and looking forward to a bit of a rest, when he reached the last of the triliths opening into the henge grounds. Every internal alarm sounded at once, and he skidded to a stop.
There were at least three werebeasts patrolling the area. They were the ones he’d run away from in his panic.
He dropped into a crouch and swung left, into the near-black in the shadows of the trees, while pulling out his bow again. After waiting a moment or two and listening for sounds of pursuit, Chip used the bulk of a huge pine as cover while stepping to his right, just enough to see a werelion prowling near the henge, walking away from him. Given the other beasts in the area – and potentially a human as well – he decided to place a conjured wolf into the middle of the group as a distraction. He readied one of his wolf arrows and fired at the werelion’s retreating form. As soon as the arrow left his bow, he shifted left, changing position.
A wereboar rushed across the clearing toward where Chip thought he’d landed the arrow. There were growls, but he couldn’t see what was happening; then the wereboar and another shape ran back toward the center of the henge, where a human hunter was firing a lightning spell. Chip continued shifting left, around the edge of the clearing, keeping to the shadows. Once or twice he saw the conjuration magic of his arrow flare up into a purplish ball of light and then disappear; but he was too far away to tell what was happening, and the light level was dropping dramatically.
He reached the far side of the clearing and found himself at what he thought was the path back to the shrines, and decided to take it rather than go back to finish off the beasts. He was exhausted, he was sore, and his armor needed repair after the slashing it had taken from the werelion claws. It was precarious going in the dark, with only occasional glances up at the level of treetops revealing the sliver of clear sky and dark red light that told him he was still on the path.
At last he emerged, unscathed and apparently unfollowed, into the shrine clearing. He approached the offering tables quietly and took the great werelion’s heart from his pack.
“Here, my lord,” he murmured as he forced the tough, muscular organ down onto the spike. “I bring you the heart of the alpha werelion as an offering and proof of my devotion.”
He didn’t expect a response from Hircine, not yet. He still had a long way to go. Smiling, he pulled out the war horn and put it to his mouth, blowing it in a great blast of sound that enveloped him in a sphere of mystic energies to return him to his home.
