Noon was approaching and I had much to do before setting out on the journey. I finished packing my traveling clothes, food for the road, and a map of the mountains. Being on good terms with the cartographers in town was always a wise decision when the hunters kept dragging you out into the wilderness, especially since they never liked to share the details of the trip. 

After finishing packing, I made sure to spend some quiet time beseeching my god’s blessing. Teara, by virtue of only having their name and symbol known, was a fairly easy god to follow, since any rituals or observations were really left up to my own judgement. I sometimes would feel a slight warmth when worshipping that I took to mean my actions were appreciated. And sometimes I felt a chill when I misstepped, though thankfully that was a rarity.

After spending time specifically devoted to Teara, I made sure to light the candles at the altars of the other gods, showing them the respect they were due. The pantheon did not meddle much in the affairs of mortals, but they were known to offer blessings here and there if you treated them properly. Felgran was the stuffiest of the gods, having rituals and rules for what felt like every occasion but only required you to follow those rules if you were one of his priests or adherents. The priests in the capital worshipped him for this reason, preferring the structure compared to the freedom I was drawn to with Teara.

It was noon by the time I finished, so I figured I had better set out now if I wanted to get to the Hunter Hall before they came looking for me.

I stopped by the library, picked up the books from Maple, and continued along to the Hunter Hall. Rivermist is a middling town, neither large nor small, but it sprawls quite a bit. My small temple is located in the center of town, near the library. The Hunter Hall however? A glade at the edge of town.

Why was it at the edge of town? Isn’t the point of these guys to be available to defend the town in times of danger? I grumbled internally yet again. The hunters hadn’t always been this way. According to generations before mine, there was a time when they took their duties seriously and theirs was a position of respect and duty. But I suppose any organization that gets to wield violence with little to no oversight will start lording it over the ones they are supposed to protect.

I really don’t know what came first, the machismo or the entitlement, but your average hunter had both in spades. Most of the town put up with their demands of free food or special privileges because at the end of the day, the hunters did keep the monster population down. That being said, it felt like every year the hunters got more and more obsessed with their own legend. They tended to talk about themselves like they were the only ones who understood their mission, and everyone else took them for granted or actively undermined them. I knew a few otherwise nice fellows who joined up who only months later were joining in the harassment I faced.

I shook my head a bit to clear out my thoughts before I got too angry. I’m not by nature a very wrathful person. I tend to be generous with others when it comes to mistakes and most people seem to respond in kind. But I suppose I couldn’t be blamed for a little bit of frustration towards a group that seemed to think I was the perfect target for abuse. I felt the magic at the core of my body heat up a bit at the thought and I quickly conjured up thoughts of the river that ran through town (and gave the town its name) to calm down again. I felt the fire in my chest fade to the pleasant warmth it gave off when my feelings were balanced.

Magic was a comfort to me. I had eagerly volunteered for lessons as soon as I was old enough to, around age 12 or so, and excelled quickly. Magic was a nice alternative to the more rough and tumble pursuits the other boys seemed to enjoy so much. Physical health was important for some disciplines of magic, but magic at its core was about intuition and passion. Anyone could, with enough practice and training, cultivate a core of mana that could be molded to produce a variety of effects, from forming into water or sparking fire to moving small objects with your mind. Complex effects could be done via spell formulas and diagrams or by achieving specific mental or emotional states. I sometimes came across fragments in my reading that talked about even more methods that could be used but details were lacking and I remained self taught with the limited resources we had. I surpassed the other mages in town relatively quickly as they were content with a few reliable spells here and there and had little interest in exploring further as I did.

There was a freedom to magic that I found wonderful. Trying new methods or learning new techniques was one of the few times I felt truly at peace with myself. It was like daily life was washed out, dull, and using magic let me tap into some vital piece of myself that brought colors into focus and sounds into clarity. Even my quiet observances in service of Teara touched on this feeling as it was a form of magic. I liked to picture my core as a blue flame, providing a comforting warmth that calmed and soothed me.

I was pulled out of my pondering on magic by a sudden obstacle in my way, which I verified the existence of by smacking my face right into it. Ah, I had arrived at the Hunter Hall and walked right into the front door. Way to go, me. This certainly won’t give the hunters ammunition. I rubbed my nose to ease the sting and looked around. I saw that Henrik and Otto, Abel’s senior hunters, were chuckling softly to themselves at my pain.

“Are you alright, Priestess?  We saw you heading right for the door but thought you might be in contemplation with the divine and we didn’t want to disturb you lest we anger the gods.” Henrik always had a puffed up idea of his own cleverness. The ‘priestess’ dig was one of the hunter’s favorite jokes. Sure, I wasn’t exactly a shining beacon of masculinity or anything, but they didn’t really care about the details. They just found the idea of being a woman to be unpleasant and lesser than them, so they hurled it as an insult directed at me frequently. I suppose it didn’t help that my traveling vestments were more of a tunic and a skirt than a more masculine robe like the town officials wore, but I found them comfortable enough and didn’t mind. They had been a gift from the county monastery and it would be rude to turn down a gift... even if they seemed to have strange ideas about what a priest of Teara would wear.

“I’m fine, thank you for your concern. I’m here to see Abel about the dragon hunt. Is he in his office?”

The hunters looked at each other and back to me, their faces twisting into the expressions of a predator that just found a new toy to play with.

Otto responded. “Chief Hunter Abel told us to wait here for you, since he assumed you would be running late as usual. The expedition set out at noon and he expects you to catch up with them by nightfall. We remained behind to serve as your escorts, to make sure you didn’t get into any trouble. Wouldn’t want our favored priestess to trip over her skirt and twist her ankle, would we?”

I sighed internally, careful to not let it show, when I realized exactly what the game was today. Abel had purposefully told me the wrong time so his chief minions had a pretense to make me miserable, knowing I was required to attend the expedition. I thought about going home, consequences be damned, but I wasn’t about to let him win. Also, this might be my only chance to see a dragon and I wasn’t going to pass that up.

“Alright then, I apologize for my tardiness. I was in communion with the divine, you know how it is.” I felt the brief warmth of my god’s favor at this statement; they often seemed pleased when I was snarky with the hunters. “Lead on, oh valued hunters.”

The men hoisted their packs on their shoulders and set out on the path leading out of town. Henrik was tall, lean, and swift so each stride of his devoured ground as he set a brutal pace. He knew I would struggle to keep up. I was surprised to see Otto match it, for he was closer to my height and much stockier in build. But Otto showed no signs of effort and he grabbed my pack as soon as I started to falter.

“Oh, I forgot my manners. It isn’t polite to make a lady carry things when a gentleman is present,” he said with a sneer.

I faked a grimace while secretly pleased. Unlike the hunters, I felt no need to defend my manhood and thought the constant jokes of being a woman to be the least bothersome of their barbs. After all, while they might view women as weaker or lesser, I had never understood that position. Barb the baker was as strong as most of the hunters, if not more so, from all her kneading and Maple had seen wonders and terrors that would have broken all but the most resolute in her time as an adventurer. But for whatever reason, the hunters had associated their order with a puffed up form of masculinity and found it necessary to view anything outside of that as pathetic.

We passed the rest of the afternoon without incident, which I was grateful for as that allowed me to ease my mind into the contemplative state I used for prayer and quiet the constant rush of my thoughts. We passed swiftly through the Stonewoods, a large forest that covered the foothills and eventually ran up to the Dusky Peak. The woods were used for travel frequently enough, so we had good roads and no monsters to speak of on the way. As night approached, we caught up with Abel and the expedition who were camped out along the banks of the river in a natural clearing.

“I see you found our healer and kept him out of trouble. Good work, boys.” Abel seemed happy to see us but also resentful that my presence was required. I never knew what it was about me that rubbed that man the wrong way, but he never hesitated to make his dislike of me known. “I had some of the junior hunters set up your tents, Henrik and Otto. His Divine Majesty will have to handle his own arrangements however.” Abel smirked at this, happy to have a chance to frustrate me further.

This suited me just fine however, as it left me free to scope out the safest place to set up my bedding. It was a pleasant night and I had no need for a tent. I crossed the river with my magic, using it to turn the water to ice beneath my feet and melt in my wake, as I knew that few if any of the hunters would be able to cross in the same manner. Any attempts to ford the river would be loud enough to wake me up and hopefully prevent any night time pranks at my expense. I grabbed a nearby rock and used a little trick to sculpt it into a bowl before washing it in the river. A little fire magic, my core heating up in kind as I shaped the mana, and I was able to make some tasty soup from my supplies. I smirked to myself as I looked over at the hunters’ camp and saw them struggling to chew through tough strips of dried meat and hard bread they had brought. Thankfully I was too far from them for them to see my smile or I might have paid for that one later.

Pleasantly sated, I rolled out my bedding and settled in for the night. The stars twinkled merrily in the sky and I drifted off to sleep while counting them. As my eyes slowly closed, I thought it odd that for a moment something large blocked a portion of the sky from view, but it was gone in a flash and I was close enough to sleep to let it pass.