Chip stepped out into the yard, yawning, and pulled the hunting horn from his pack. It was early morning, still, and likely to be a fine day. While he’d once more considered making another quick trip to Riften, he’d calculated the phase of the moons and decided against it.
They’re almost full. And for whatever reason, it feels important to me that I meet the challenge Lord Hircine has set before me as a man, not as a beast. There will be plenty of time for me to spend with my family once I’ve learned what he has in store for me.
I need to finish this.
He knelt reverently for a few moments. He was doing this thing for himself, that was true; but it was also a task he undertook to honor Hircine, the only being greater than himself who had challenged him, given him a sense of purpose. He satisfied his need to acknowledge his Lord, and rose to his feet.
The horn’s heroic blast still echoed in his ears when he arrived in the summoning circle to find that, while it was still ruddy, the light was abundant. Perhaps it was simply the time of day. Perhaps it was the phase of the moons. Regardless, he was grateful for the chance to take a deep breath and get his bearings visually. In fact, standing on the summoning circle he could nearly see the ritual shrines in their clearing.
Something tells me it won’t stay this bright, but I’ll take it.
He didn’t bother trying to stay hidden, this time. Instead, he trotted down the path and through the trilith to the west, heading for the junction. What began as a small smirk on his face grew into a full grin as he ran past the harvest of his previous trip: a hunter; a werebear; another hunter; and then werevulture after werevulture, their great feathered corpses littering the sides of the trail in a silent tribute to his skill as a hunter.
Or to my sheer, dumb luck. Whichever it was, it worked out in the end.
He arrived at the junction clearing and checked his bearings. The bodies continued toward the path to his far left. Ahead of him, just beyond and slightly to the right of the great central stone, was the one remaining unexplored region, mostly shrouded in darkness.
Of course it is. It would be too easy to have all this nice red light shining down on the one place that is guaranteed to have enemies in it. Ah well. That’s what challenges are all about, isn’t it?
He spent a few minutes scouting around the area near the entry arch, hoping to spot any rock shelves or ramps up the cliffside. They’d been indispensable to him before, and he was sure they would be so again if he could just find them. But he saw nothing. Instead, he poisoned his bow and started down the deeply-forested path.
These should be werebears, if I’m to believe the empty shrine. I can handle werebears.
He hadn’t gone very far before he spotted movement, quite a good distance ahead of him. There was definitely at least one enemy ahead; but he thought there might possibly be two others as well. He took careful aim at the shadow. It turned, and the light caught its eyes for a moment, revealing it as a living creature. He loosed the shot and waited for that long, breathless heartbeat until a roar told him that he’d found his mark. He quickly shot a second arrow at the same spot, but did not wait to see whether it struck home; for even as he had pulled the bow back he’d seen more bears heading for him. He turned and fled back to the shadowy edges of the junction, waiting for them to come into view.
And he waited.
It was long enough with no sounds of pursuit and no signs of movement that he poisoned his bow again, and then crept slowly, silently, along the edges of the cliffs and stones and behind the great trees, back toward the place he’d been. He spotted it – a single large, humpbacked form that could only be a werebear – and released the arrow he’d been holding at the ready.
This time he heard it strike the bear, heard the “whoof” of air expelled from the creature’s lungs. He also heard a human hunter, loudly and incongruously asking whether someone was there. Again he whirled and scurried back out of the lane, back to the edges of the clearing. Again, when he turned to take stock of the situation, there was no pursuit.
Can’t draw you guys out into the open, eh? Well, I guess it’s time to get creative.
He’d given the staves some thought, while trying to rest in his cabin. There was a part of him that felt uncomfortable, maybe even a bit embarrassed, at the idea that he was using magic to defeat his enemies. He was a Nord, after all – or at least half Nord, like his uncle, and that Nord half shrank from the idea of using magic. He’d convinced himself, though, that he was wrong. He had some small natural ability with magic, enough to heal himself and to conjure a familiar if he needed one; and why should he not use all of the talents he’d been born with? And these various pieces of equipment he’d picked up along the way were gifts of Hircine himself, to the humans of the Hunting Grounds. Because of that, he’d decided to use the staves, still, when it made sense to do so. This was one of those moments. He needed to flush out his prey.
He fired the staff at a point well in front of himself and nodded with satisfaction as it produced a loud, angry bear. The bear roared, and reared up onto its back legs, looking around. There was still no sign of the werebear. The conjured bear roared again, in frustration, it seemed to him.
“Me too, buddy,” he murmured, lifting his bow into position again and creeping forward. He knew the werebear was there. He could smell the creature, knew it was bleeding, and yet it didn’t want to come out of the shadows.
As he passed the conjured bear it faded out of existence. He turned right, just as the moonlight shifted a tiny bit. It was just enough added light to reveal the hunter – an armor spell of some kind making him glow – and, beside him, the werebear. Chip grinned and pulled out his staff.
“Try, try again,” he said, firing the staff to place a bear directly beside the hunter. He reached behind his back to swap out the staff for his bow and turned back to find cover. That’s when he heard a sound he’d hoped never to hear again: an angry werebear directly behind him, its heavy breathing far too close for comfort.
“Oh crap,” he yelped, and then howled as the werebear’s claws raked down his back. He started running, trying to remember where he’d seen the nearest boulder. The werebear clawed him again, and the pain nearly blinded him for a moment. He began healing himself, using both hands to cast the same spell in what he prayed was not going to be a vain attempt to stay alive. He ran into what he thought was simply deep shadow but was actually the sheer rock face of the cliff; and when he turned back to the open found himself face-to-face with the werebear. He shrieked and cut left, past the beast and down along the edge of the junction.
He spotted the rocks he was looking for – a ramp he’d used before, while fighting the werevultures – and sprinted for them; but he tripped at the last moment and the werebear got in one more slash. Just as he was afraid he was going to black out, his feet found purchase and he leapt up onto the ramp, away from the beast’s claws, his heart pounding. He whirled, casting healing on himself as quickly as he could, and listened to the werebear retreating. He could hear faint sounds of battle, including what sounded like a human scream; so he wasted no more time on himself. Instead, he drew his bow and worked his way back to where the enemies had been.
The sharp scents of fear and death alerted him to the hunter’s corpse, leaning up against a tree, opened wide by the conjured bear. The werebear that had clawed Chip nearly to death was a good bit farther down the path.
I’ll never doubt the wisdom of using my staves again. If not for that bear, I’d be dead by now.
He spotted the next group of adversaries before they saw him. One arrow brought down a human hunter. Another human, alongside another werebear, moved toward Chip as Chip stepped behind a huge tree for cover. The werebear’s heavy breathing gave away its position, which was far too close for comfort. Chip didn’t hesitate a moment; instead, he fired the staff again. To his surprise – for he had expected another large cave bear – what emerged from the sphere of magic was a wereboar.
Go, brother, go!
The sounds from just beyond the trees were horrifying. Werebeasts roared, the human hunters shrieked. Flesh tore. Chip could smell blood. He readied an arrow and stepped sideways into the open just in time to see his wereboar fling a hunter backwards into the bushes; a second later that man returned to battle, joined by a second and a werebear. It was the boar’s turn to fly backward, to land on its back at Chip’s feet just as Chip fired an arrow into the head of one of the men.
He faded backward out of sight and started dashing for the stone elevation once more, and heard the pursuit close behind him.
“Come back here!” the hunter yelled at him.
“I don’t think so!” he yelled back.
This time, Chip knew his adversaries were nearby. He dropped an arrow into the clearing to draw their attention; and this time, it worked. Both the werebear and the hunter ran to the spot that arrow had landed.
“Where are you?” the hunter said.
“Right behind you,” Chip said quietly, sending an arrow that pierced the man’s temple and dropped him to the forest floor. The werebear ran out into the clearing, into what was by the standards of the Hunting Grounds brilliant light. Chip took a single step forward onto the rocks for the best elevation he could achieve, and downed the beast with a long, deadly, poisoned arrow to the neck.
He took a moment to get a sip of water and collect his thoughts before hopping down off the rock to proceed. That had been the closest he’d come to perishing here in Oblivion. Not even the first trip here with its frantic dash headlong into darkness had been that close. He felt himself smiling slightly as he considered it.
I was frightened, yes. I yelled in fear, yes. But I didn’t panic, not this time. I knew what I had to do and I just did it; I ran for the high ground and healed myself and kept going.
He made his way to the forest floor, feeling fairly comfortable walking at the edges of the path rather than trying to slog through the heavy undergrowth. The light was at a fairly good angle for once, so he spent some time scanning the cliffs for potential escape spots as he went. He was making good progress, swiveling from side to side briskly, when what had initially looked like a dead tree stump near the center of the path moved.
He froze. The werebear didn’t seem to have noticed him; so he turned and walked quickly back the way he’d come, just far enough to reach a huge tree that he could duck behind as soon as he fired. It was, surprisingly, a perfect shot; the bear was taken by surprise and dropped dead. Chip wasn’t surprised, however, to see more movements just beyond the furry corpse. Those to its left revealed two glimmering points of light as the werebear’s eyes caught the moonlight; three quick arrows took the beast, still a safe distance away from Chip. Another werebear loped toward him, stopping at each of the carcasses. To his intense annoyance, Chip’s first two shots at it went wide. The third, though, caught it solidly in the head and it went down just shy of the distance at which Chip would have turned to run for cover.
It was very quiet, then; no more heavy breathing from the shadows and no hunters shouting taunts at him. He pushed forward, moving from side to side of the canyon, looking for good vantage points. He found a broad, sloping section of fallen rocks that led up to a spot easily a full-grown man’s height above the forest floor, and grinned; this would be the best kill spot ever, if he needed it. He jumped back down and kept moving.
As he had suspected might be the case, only a minute or so later he began to see rocks directly in front of him, albeit at a distance. He’d almost reached the end of the box canyon that was the werebears’ home territory. His heart started beating a bit faster; only a few kills to go and he would have satisfied Hircine’s challenge.
It seems like it’s been years. It’s only really been a few days. Please let me finish this. I need to know that I am worthy.
Something caught his attention, far off in the distance. He peered through the ruddy light, toward the end of the canyon, and thought he saw the rounded shape of a still werebear. It was absurd to take a shot at this distance – it could very easily be nothing more than a large boulder, or a stump, and the shot was pretty close to impossible regardless of what he saw out there. But he raised Hircine’s bow anyway, and lined up the shot.
If it’s not a bear, it’ll draw those that are out there away from my position. So it won’t be wasted effort.
When he released the bowstring, Chip swore he felt something else, some added energy coming from the bow. Or maybe it was from his own body. He didn’t know. But he watched in awe as his arrow flew out from the path, out of the forest, and across the wide expanse of grasses toward its target. He heard a loud grunt as it struck home – and the shape slumped to the ground. Chip clapped a hand over his mouth to keep himself from whooping aloud.
How did I do that? How did I possibly make that shot? I wasn’t even sure I was aiming at something alive!
He wanted to dash for the kill, to take its pelt as a trophy of the best kill he’d ever made. He even started in that direction, the euphoria of success welling up in him. But he forced himself to breathe, to slow down, to think. There were more out there. There had to be.
There were a number of large trees and boulders at the end of the corridor, blocking his way. He was forced to his right, toward the trilith marking the entrance to the grassland territory beyond. As he approached the arch he froze, glad that his hunter’s instincts had helped him to slow down and think. There were at least two werebears just beyond the stone structure.
He poisoned his bow, took a quick shot at the nearer of the bears, and then immediately turned and walked quietly back to where he’d found the stone ramp. He jumped up it, taking a position at the highest point, and waited. Soon enough, he saw the two bears; they’d followed back down the path but were on its far side from him, leaving Chip in the perfect situation. It took several minutes of patiently picking away at them, but neither bear spotted him up on his rocky perch, and neither of them escaped being felled.
Chip’s nose led him to the carcasses – at least those that were nearby. He still ached to claim the pelt of the bear he’d dropped from so far away, but somehow he felt certain there were still more foes to contend with. On the near side of the stone arch was a flat-topped boulder that he used to get a bit of elevation. Looking out through the trilith he saw another werebear, standing quietly in the grasses but very much alive; Chip nodded to himself, happy that his instincts had served him well again.
He drew, and lined his shot up carefully. It was a long one, not as long as the first arrow he’d fired into this grassy canyon but still a feat if he was able to make it. The arrow flew silent and straight and connected cleanly with the target; but in spite of the growl of pain and surprise that came from the beast when it connected, it was not a killing blow. Chip immediately jumped down from the boulder and scurried back into the shadows to wait. Soon enough, the huge beast came through the archway, scanning from side to side but not seeing Chip in the darkness. He waited until it paused for a moment and fired again. The first shot had done considerable damage to the creature; this one finished the job.
Chip approached the carcass and was surprised to find, by its scent, that this had been the alpha werebear. He smiled and eagerly harvested the creature’s heart.
Yes! Here it is. Your final trophy, Lord Hircine. I’ve done it!
It seemed almost anticlimactic to have gotten the alpha so easily after the trouble he’d had beforehand. In comparison to the miracle shot on the bear whose body still awaited him, it had been nothing at all. And yet, he thought as he cautiously moved out into the grassland to check for any remaining creatures, it was still an accomplishment.
There was nothing else there, aside from the den full of dead stags and rabbits where the werebears stored their food. Chip harvested what he might feasibly use from them – for there was no sense in wasting good meat – and then carefully skinned the werebear he’d shot out in the middle of the grasses. As he rose to leave, a huge yawn caught him.
No doubt the adrenaline is catching up to me now. I’m going to sleep for a year when I get home. But it’s time to present the last offering, now.
He stretched, and grinned up at the red moons, and started trotting back toward his destination. He stopped to check the corpses along the way, to be certain he hadn’t left anything valuable behind; but they were brief stops. He was anxious to get back to the offering shrine.
The shrine’s clearing, when he reached it, was deep in the shadows. He took the great, beefy heart of the alpha werebear and forced it down onto the one remaining spike, at the one empty shrine.
“Here you are, Lord Hircine,” he said loudly. “I’ve done as you asked. I’ve met your challenges. I’ve defeated your hunters and your creatures and offered you the hearts of their leaders. Please, show me a sign. Tell me that I am worthy of you.”
He heard a sound behind him, and whirled. Standing in the deep shadows was a man; or a spirit, most likely. Unlike the aspects of Hircine that he’d met in Skyrim – one a stag, the other in the likeness of Sinding the werewolf – this was nobody he recognized. The figure was dressed in fur armor, his chest bared to the moonlight. He wore a mask or a helmet adorned with the antlers of a stag. And he was wreathed in a golden glow.
“You’ve done well, my hunter.” The disembodied voice came from all around him, from the directions of all the hunts he’d experienced here. “I told you once that perhaps you were my champion. And so you have proven yourself to be.”
The golden stag-man raised his arms, and looked at the ground at his feet. A ball of noisy conjuration magic appeared, and expanded, and Chip could see something in the deep shadows just in front of the man. Another sphere of magic exploded; and then, where the man had been, there was nothing but a staff, stuck into the ground.
Chip approached the spot, casting a lighting spell since he was certain it was safe to do so. The staff, in the ground at an angle, was adorned by a skull the likes of which Chip had never seen. It had antlers like a stag, great fangs like a werebear, and huge tusks protruding from the sides like the wereboars he’d fought. At the back of it was a cluster of feathers, like those on the unsettling arms of the werevultures. It was both like and unlike the adornment on his bow; and as it had been when he’d first picked up the bow, Chip felt the great magical energies coming from it.
“Take my boon, my champion. You have grown in strength and wisdom, and have earned my favor. Use this staff to call forth the spirit of the Wild Hunt, when the need arises. Use it well…” Hircine’s voice paused for a moment, and lowered. “Until such time as you become the prey to a hunter greater than yourself.”
Chip winced. He’d been ready to bask in the delight of having earned Hircine’s favor. But as he should have expected, Hircine had reminded him that the dance of hunter and hunted never ended, and that all things would come to an end someday, as they should. He nodded, and reached out a hand to take possession of the totem-staff he had earned, and earned well.
“I will use this in your name, Lord Hircine,” he said proudly. “Thank you for allowing me to prove myself to you.”
And to myself, he thought as he walked quietly back toward the summoning circle.
He smiled as he pulled out the hunting horn once more. He wasn’t sure whether he would ever come here again; but he was truly grateful to have been put to the test the way he had been. He blew the horn once more, and watched the sphere of magical energies expand around him.
Chip had just a moment or two for a couple of very distinct impressions to imprint themselves on his mind, when he arrived back in his yard.
It was very, very dark.
The moons were very, very full.
Beyond that, he was aware of nothing aside from the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears and the briefest sensation of you’ve got to be kidding me before the wracking pain of transformation seized him and doubled him over. The cracking and reforming of bones and the stretching of skin and teeth blotted out anything else happening in his mind, as it had done every other time he’d changed; and when he raised his muzzle to the sky and howled there was a moment in which there was nothing even remotely human going on inside him.
Then, from somewhere deep inside, his human consciousness called out. Get out of the yard, don’t hurt the animals. Go hunt, away from the house.
The wolf leapt the fence easily, and turned to look back at the house for a moment before turning east. Prey. There would be prey east, and south, near the lake. There was always prey there. He sniffed the air and headed toward the scent of water, and the fainter whiff of fish. He was in no hurry. He could not control his own transformations, and he would be in this form until the first tendrils of rosy light began creeping up from behind the Velothis. He was the hunter. He would hunt.
It was slightly amusing to the wolf that it was darker here than it had been in Hircine’s realm. He lolled his tongue out of his mouth in a wolf’s laugh even as he swiveled his ears back and forth. What there was here was sound: the breeze whispering through tall grass and tree limbs; crickets near the scattered pools that would eventually feed into the lake; and the scream of a saber cat off in the distance. He could use sounds, even if he couldn’t see very far ahead of himself. He passed a troll, snorting and pounding at the grass as trolls always did, and he wrinkled his nose at its scent. Troll meat was not what he wanted. He climbed into and then back out of a huge circular depression ringed by stone, and from somewhere deep inside that part of him that was Chip mused that it was called a dragon burial mound. But there was no dragon in it, and dragon meat was not something he cared to taste.
It felt like a very long while before the wolf saw rectangular lights that could only mean there were human structures nearby. And that meant prey. Meat. He took a few more long strides and found his feet in water: he’d reached the edge of Lake Honrich. There was the scent of wolves nearby, to his right, as well as the stench of men who’d been far too long between baths even with one of Skyrim’s largest lakes next to them. He padded down the shore until he came to the crumbled stonework that his human consciousness faintly identified as Faldar’s Tooth. It didn’t matter what the place was called. There was prey.
He ran around the back of the tower and up onto the hillside, hearing the wolf inside the enclosure calling a welcome. Come, it said. Come; I am caged, but you may feed.
He was looking for a way up onto the walls when the men inside started shouting. He moved farther down slope again, and was grazed by an arrow; but the arrow hadn’t been aimed at him. It was one of many flying from the walls down toward the path along the shoreline, and the humans on that path were shouting back.
He didn’t care. The arrow hurt. The arrow had struck him because of this woman on the path in front of him. She smelled good; she smelled like prey. The wolf struck her once, twice… five times until her bleeding form sank to the ground and he devoured it.
“I’ll kill you, you monster!”
The wolf laughed. He had been the hunter. Now he was the hunted. It was a fine joke that Hircine was playing on him, this night, reminding him not to be too proud; reminding him that he could never become complacent. He was turning from side to side, trying to locate the man who had shouted at him, when another sound filled the air: a huge, hollow roar that echoed from the lake across to the mountains and back again.
Dragon.
But the wolf had no time for the dragon. There was an Orc to be shredded, and eaten; and men atop the old fortress’ walls still fired arrows at him. He needed to kill, and eat, in order to stay alive. The ring he’d purchased from the werewolves in Solstheim helped, but not quickly enough in the heat of battle. The dragon roared. The werewolf pointed his nose to the sky and roared back, and two of his pack members appeared, limned in red as they always were.
They couldn’t get into the fort. The wolf circled it once more; and this time found a spot on the hillside where the wall was most broken, and where his powerful hindquarters allowed him to leap up onto the wooden walkway at its top. The archer there yelled at him, and fired at him – a missed shot that the wolf’s human mind laughed at, quietly, for it was almost point-blank range – and the wolf swatted the man down off the walls. He then jumped back down, tore the man to shreds, and ate all of him. And so it went.
By the time the light dawned, Chip had made his tired way back to his cabin. The dragon had flown off, or so he thought; the wolf hadn’t had the attention span to track it after it wasn’t an immediate threat. The small group of traders that had been walking along the shoreline had been consumed, and for that Chip felt very bad indeed. But the wolves inside the fort had been freed, and there wasn’t enough left of the bandits inside to bury.
He wasn’t quite certain what lesson Hircine had meant to teach him this night, by giving him the totem and then removing his ability to use it with the influence of the moons. One thing was very clear, though. He may have been the victor in his human form, while hunting other lycanthropes; but he was still at the mercy of his own condition.
And he still didn’t know why.