Lex, seventy yards off, back by the cave mouth, shifting from foot to foot, his heart going fast.
A rabbit, forty yards away, easing out of its burrow with its nose working.
Birds, twelve of them, then fifteen, then seventeen, every branch and wingbeat and the one diving at a gnat.
Fish in the lake below him, hundreds, turning together.
A deer half a mile east with its muzzle in a stream and its heart slow and calm.
All of it at once, and he couldn’t turn it off.
Hunter grabbed his head with both hands.
The rabbit froze, and the birds went up in one explosion of wings.
Lex’s heartbeat spiked, and Hunter felt that too, the little jolt of fear, and didn’t know if the fear was of him.
“What is this?” he whispered.
[SYSTEM] THAT’S YOUR SPIRITUAL_SENSE!
FOUNDATION PERK + HOST BONUS
RANGE: 1 MILE / DETECTION: LIFE SIGNATURES + MOVEMENT
[SYSTEM] SUPER USEFUL FOR NOT GETTING AMBUSHED!
A mile, then.
He stood up slowly, and the sphere came with him.
It wasn’t sight so much as remembering where everything was, all the time, whether he wanted to or not.
He followed a bird’s flight south, idly.
His attention slid off it and landed on the ponytailed kid, a quarter mile northwest, squatting behind a bush with his trousers around his ankles.
Hunter’s eye twitched.
He tried to un-know it, and he couldn’t.
“I hate you,” Hunter muttered, with feeling.
He walked back toward the cave with the whole forest pressing in on his head.
He didn’t trip once.
Every root announced itself a stride ahead, and every loose stone stood out as plainly as a hazard sign.
That part was almost nice.
He kept his attention firmly away from the northwest.
The three of them were waiting by the fire with the pig, which was charred on one side and alarmingly pink on the other.
They’d set out bowls on a flat stone and stood behind them with their eyes down.
“Sit down and eat,” Hunter said.
They looked at each other, then sat, slowly, as though the bowls might be a trap.
Through the new sense he could feel their hearts hammering and their muscles bunched to bolt, pact or no pact.
Lex kept stealing glances at him.
“What is it, Lex?”
Lex flinched.
“It’s nothing, Master, only…” He swallowed.
“The old master never let us eat with him.
He said mortals turned his stomach.”
Hunter stopped chewing and looked at them properly: filthy, underfed, dressed in hides that were more patch than hide, frightened of being allowed to sit at a fire.
Out here, he was starting to understand, a man who cultivated and a man who didn’t were not the same kind of thing.
He wanted to despise the dead man for it.
Then he caught their smell, and it wasn’t only sweat and smoke.
Under that was something thinner and sourer, faint as milk on the turn, and some new part of him knew it for what it was: weakness, mortality.
He didn’t know if the disgust that came with it was his, or if it came with the upgrade.
He didn’t like either answer, so he changed the subject.
What are your names?”
Lex straightened, glad of a job.
“This is Tao, Master.” The broad one with the red hair and green eyes.
“And this is Xuan.” The lanky kid with the ponytail, who had apparently finished his morning business.
Both of them dropped their bowls and half-rose.
“How can we serve you, Master?” they shouted together, and a good deal of half-chewed pig went into the fire.
Hunter closed his eyes and breathed in through his nose, which, in fairness, was a mistake.
“Sit down,” he said.
“Finish eating.”
They sat.
Hunter stared into his bowl and tried not to sense the bits of meat blackening in the ashes, or Xuan’s pulse still racing, or the deer a half mile off lifting its head from the stream.
He wanted a Big Mac with fries and a Coke with too much ice, and he wanted it with an intensity that frightened him a little.
Across the fire, Tao cleared his throat.
It was the first sound any of them had made without being spoken to.
Hunter felt Tao’s heartbeat pick up, and it wasn’t fear this time.
It was something eager.
“Master,” Tao said, “if you’re looking for work, there’s a village about ten miles east of here.
It’s called Clearwater.”
Lex coughed.
“Bluestone is forty miles south, Master, and Silver Pine City is ninety southwest.
The rest is trees.”