This is an excerpt from The Seer and the Starlit Key, in which the huntress Tiressa faces a giant boar.

Many miles north in a wooded valley near the village of Hallswood, a huntress named Tiressa stared down her prey.

Tiressa’s spear never missed its mark. Some thought it was some virtue of the weapon she bore. Others said it was a gift of the gods that had graced Tiressa since birth. That was why she kept her head shorn bare, they said, or why she always wore a dark coat. It was all so she wouldn’t spoil her good fortune.

None of it was true. Tiressa knew the truth of why her spear never erred.

She simply refused to ever miss, and she had the skill and strength to see that she never did.

This, of course, was to the ultimate detriment of the great boar now charging her. The earth trembled with its attack, but Tiressa stood her ground, a single thought in her mind.

Hold.

The boar shook its head, tearing bark from trees with its massive tusks. Fifteen feet high at the shoulder, it thundered forward, shaking the ground and stirring birds from their nests.

Hold.

A breeze wafted through, cool against the huntress’s bare scalp as it carried the monster’s stench to her nostrils.

Hold.

The hooves pounded the detritus of the forest floor, sending it flying in clumped bursts.

Hold. Ready.

Tiressa saw it all as if every second was an hour. No rush. There was never a rush. Even now as the creature bore down upon her, there was no hurry. She had all the time she needed.

Now.

In an instant, she sidestepped and hurled the spear straight into the beast’s eye. Her aim was true, and the spear, head and haft both, sank unimpeded into the creature’s massive skull. As the snuffing out of a candle, so went the life of the boar, sending it tumbling to the earth in a great shower of blood and debris. Tiressa’s coat flared out as she leapt away to avoid the beast’s plowing corpse.

It came at last to a lifeless halt, its head to the side, the spear protruding from its eye like a flagpole.

Tiressa approached the corpse, climbed the great head, and pulled on the shaft. As always, it came away unmarred and unstained. While it was her skill and not some virtue of the spear that always bore it to its mark, it still held some power in that it had never broken. The steel of its head was as bright and as sharp as it had been when it had first been forged in the halls of Darrag Fyr, and the haft was as whole as when freshly hewn by the peculiar craftsmen of the Argentwood. Neither stone nor iron could turn or notch the weapon, supernal as its craft was.

The spear free and in hand, the huntress stood a moment upon the beast’s head, savoring yet another victory.

“It is down!” she called.

Several men in rough hunter’s garb appeared from behind the trees. Upon seeing the fallen creature, they stood in silence for a heartbeat. Two heartbeats.

Then they erupted into cheers. Hallswood would eat well tonight.

The questions and requests came quickly.

“What do we owe you?”

“Please, feast with us!”

“Stay with us a season. Feast with us every night!”

She refused every offer.

“Please, there must be some way we can repay you,” came the inevitable rebuttal, this from the chiefest of their hunters.

To him, she said, “I only require its entrails.”

“Whatever for?” The man furrowed his brow, confused.

“My purposes are my own,” said the huntress.

Easily, they permitted her to gut the animal. With reluctance, they allowed her to do it without any aid. It was a ritual for her now. A slit in the belly, carve through the layers of fat and muscle. Find the appropriate organs and drag them out, slit them open to explore their contents. Search their length and their width, sift through the folds. Never mind the digestive juices. She’d wash when she was done.

This kill turned up a few stones, smooth from whatever time they had spent in this creature’s belly. She wondered briefly what had led it to swallow these. Likely they were all only incidental additions to whatever the furious boar had consumed.

Not a one matched the stone she sought.

Arising from the kill, she cleaned her knife on the creature’s pelt, took up her spear, and walked away.

“Is that all?” the chief called after.

“That is all,” she replied over her shoulder.

She paused.

“I am grateful to have hunted with such a fine band of warriors,” she said. “Thank you for letting me join your hunt tonight.”

With that, she disappeared into the shadows of the looming trees.

Later that night, her hands clean and her muscles weary, the huntress sat upon an outcropping that overlooked the forested valley, her feet dangling into the empty air. Here and there, clouds of mist broke through the trees, each bearing its silent witness to the world’s gradual dissolution. Above, a broken strand of stars looked on dispassionately through gaps in the moon-silvered clouds.

She touched her belly in a spot just by her kidney. She felt darkness pulsing within, a darkness that crept, seeping like water and smoke into her muscles and organs, reaching for her heart.

Her curse.

Tiressa breathed in the moonlit air, turning her mind toward the curse she bore. The intake of breath pressed into the darkness within her.

Exhale. Pull and stretch the reaching curse. Draw it away from the heart.

Inhale. Compress.

Exhale. Draw it out.

Her mind found the face of a soothsayer she had met six years ago. A dark face marked with dashes of white paint and deep, glittering pools for eyes, like the sky above. The woman’s voice echoed in her mind, and Tiressa almost smelled the incense, almost felt the smooth fingers on her coarse palms.

If you would do away with this curse, then seek you the most dreadful of beasts. In the belly of a great monster you shall find a stone dark and lined through with silver. This shall be the end of your curse.

Exhaling the strength of her curse from her body, she allowed her head to droop. Before her eyelids closed, she saw once more the forest and wondered how many more beasts she would have to hunt before she found her salvation.

The curse in her belly gave a singular pulse, causing her heart to leap. A momentary panic. She fought it down. The darkness could not claim her yet. She would not yield herself.

Her mind slipped into a dreamless sleep, shutting away all notions of surrender.

The Astral Wanderer is brought to you by The Seer and the Starlit Key, out now on Amazon and Kindle! Buy the book, or share this with anyone who is likely to find it awesome. All proceeds go toward helping dour huntresses learn some modicum of humor. Really!