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"Did I say something wrong?" Aiden asked.

I croaked and groaned and rubbed my face. "No… it’s just… you can’t just become an athlete in a few days. Unless you got some serious magic… you won’t get anywhere. It’s safer for everyone to just rely on us."

He responded with the same expression I likely had when Lithco told me the same thing. But instead of stomping around like a spoiled child, he just asked, "How did you do it?"

I shrugged. "As I said," I turned to Kline, who was sneaking up on Aiden from the side. "I got lucky. This little guy’s taken care of the fighting. I haven’t been able to do anything until recently."

"Oh…" Aiden studied Kline with a skeptical expression. Kline apparently didn’t appreciate that lack of confidence because he turned invisible in front of the poor guy’s eyes, then blinked out of existence and returned behind Aiden’s back, nudging his leg.

Aiden screamed and tumbled.

I let him fall and didn’t chastise Kline as he cut his invisibility and trotted off like a little shit.

I don’t care who you are—no one gets to question my cat.

"He’s pretty amazing…" Aiden said. "I couldn’t even follow his speed."

"Not many do..." I said, closing my eyes. "Give me a second to think."

He did.

After a few minutes of thought, I came to a conclusion. It would be a good test. See how he reacts to killing. If he mans up, I’ll do what I can. If it traumatizes him… I opened my eyes and looked at the blue ward around us. I can leave ’em here… God, I’m such a bitch.

My plan was pretty simple. I would take him hunting and show him the forest—the real forest—and see how he reacted. If the hunt numbed him to killing and he didn’t freeze up due to the dangers, I’d help him out. If it traumatized him, it would be easier to leave him at the river while I made the trip back.

It’d be better than having to stop halfway to the alchemy station when he broke down.

He needed a reality check.

It just… sucked. Just a few months ago I was going through the exact same that Aiden was. I was feeling useless that I was relying upon Kline, I was questioning my humanity and lamenting that I was in this forest—fighting for my life—instead of studying plants. I hated this system, this lifestyle, these gods—all of it—so I empathized on a deeper level than most people could understand.

Aiden was just like me—but he was just starting his journey. And that was extremely inconvenient.

I nodded. "Sure."

"Sure… what?" Aiden asked.

"I’ll take you hunting. But… do you have anything to actually kill these things? I’m pretty sure a normal bullet wouldn’t puncture these hides."

"Wait, what?"

I nodded.

"You serious?"

"Uh huh."

"Uh… no. I looked through my skills, and there’s nothing I can learn in the next day that’ll let me fight these things… I’m pretty sure that most people can’t."

"I suppose not…" I thought about it for a little and then looked back to camp. "I think I have an idea."

2.

Aiden followed Mira’s footsteps carefully, avoiding the plants she warned him off and stepping on ground cover only if her feet smushed it in. He didn’t touch the trees or look ahead or do anything else. He was on parole, so far as Mira was concerned, and she would send him back into that blue prison by the waterfront if he took the wrong step.

Assuming he didn’t die.

It was a great day.

"I’m gonna warn you," Mira sighed. "This’s gonna get super messy."

"I would’ve never guessed," Aiden replied, bouncing an axe up and down in his hand. It was a wood-cutting axe, but it had runes up and down the handle and blade.

Mira was stoked by how useful the axe was, considering that it was just one of many tools that Aiden delivered to her. Aiden wasn’t so excited. He was only glad that Mira opted for the machete.

Mira chuckled at his sarcastic reply, but the brightness in her voice dimmed. "But seriously. It’s gonna get messy, and… just know… There’s no other choice. None that I can find anyway."

Aiden could tell by the way Mira’s voice trailed off that she didn’t want things to get messy, and she was already remorseful. That left him with a deep sense of worry but also hope that she cared. They pressed on.

The group hiked through meadows and thickets, brambles, and trees, stopping to pick herbs and strange fruits with sour and bitter flavors that left Aiden’s pallet twisted in knots. Mira loved them and looked at Aiden like he was an uncivilized savage who only ate hamburgers and unseasoned chicken.

They walked on.

Mira had some tough love. There were times that she would speed up and then slow down, going the hard way through things. She made him buy a gold book on poisons in the Areswood Forest and then forced him to identify certain plants that caused acute paralysis, necrosis, and other lethal ailments. Despite that, she’d just move on, making him climb high rock bluffs and never offering to take a break. And at some moments, when he felt exhausted beyond measure, she would claim there was a beast and make them run.

She was testing him—trying to see if he would break—and he almost did.

Yet he always reminded himself that Halten risked his life to save his, and he needed to repay that favor. So he trudged on.

An hour later, they were walking through a section of forest that was webbed with thick vines around all the trees. They looked like old-school telephone lines, moving from branch to branch with slackness in the bottom.

It was like a jungle.

They had been walking through it for about fifteen minutes when Mira’s body suddenly stiffened, and she yelled, "Kline!" frantically.

Suddenly, the cat materialized a few hundred feet, looking at her in confusion.

"Don’t move." She said nervously and then turned to Aiden. "You too. Stay still."

Both of them stayed still as Mira approached. Then, she gestured, and Kline came to her slowly. He jumped into her arms as she erected a golden barrier around her body, took twenty steps back, and walked back to Aiden.

"What’s wrong?" he asked.

"What’s wrong with this place…" Mira looked at him with a sardonic smile. "Everything."

She picked up a thick stick that would double as a club and threw it into the forest like a javelin. Before it even landed, strange looking vines that were slightly different colored shot out at the stick from all directions. A split second later, there was a sickening crack as that large stick that could leave a thick dent into a pickup truck snapped in half, disappearing in multiple directions as the vines came back.

"Welcome to Areswood," Mira said to him, chuckling ominously and pointing north toward the mountains. "Guess we’re climbing."

Watching Mira shrug off nearly dying in a trap like that nearly broke Aiden. He determined that he would never be like her. Never be so strong. At that moment, he wanted to beg her to leave him at the camp with food and gladly accept her judgment.

Yet he remembered that Halten was dying, and he moved on.

Three hours later, after climbing over rocks up the mountain and surviving inclines where the dirt broke under their feet, they finally found a beast.

It looked like a Rocky Mountain Sheep but dark brown and with larger horns. It was standing on a bluff, staring them down, preparing to charge and push him and Mira off the cliff they were standing on.

Kline was nowhere to be seen.

"Okay… um," Mira said. "Can you… talk to it? Like… is that a thing? Or are you communicating now?"

The animal snorted and shook its fur and stepped forward, sending rocks rolling.

Aiden swallowed. "I can try."

"Then I suggest you do it now."

He nodded and activated the Mental Projection spell that allowed beings like Halten to speak without needing to create a projection. It was one of many skills that he had bought.

Once he activated he said, Hello, very awkwardly.

The beast narrowed his eyes.

I was… uh… wondering if you wanted to make a deal.

It snorted and took a few steps further and said something that roughly translated to. What the fuck are you?

What am I? I mean. I’m a… um. Beast tamer.

What did you just say?

Aiden’s heart started drumming in massive beats like it was a Chinese battle drum. It’s not what you think, he quickly clarified. I trade services and items to spirit beasts in exchange for services.

"Deals, Mira," Aiden said aloud.

"Right." Mira casually unclipped her backpack on the cliff, as if she weren’t concerned with dying and pulled out a bag. "It’s a willamore. They need medication for their teeth ’cause they eat rocks…" She pulled out a certain root, and the hairs on willamore’s back raised up.

Give it to me, the willamore demanded.

Uh… it doesn’t work like that. I will, but you need to do something for me.

Do what?

I need you to let me ride you to—

Ride me? You? Ride me? I should kill you for suggesting such a thing. Now give it to me, or I actually will.

What’s he saying? Mira asked.

"He says he’ll kill us if you don’t hand it over."

"Thought so… Translate this for me."

"Okay."

"We’ve tried bargaining."

Aiden relayed it.

"But you didn’t. That means you’re just a mindless beast to us."

"You can’t be serious."

"Translate it."

Aiden grimaced and conveyed the message. The willamore instantly flew into a rage and charged. Aiden stumbled back, thinking he might fall off the cliff, but Mira caught him and pulled him back up just in time for him to watch all four of the willamore’s legs get sliced off, as if by a powerful gust of wind. It wasn’t just in one piece like it was hacked through by a scythe either. Each of the legs` fell apart in four pieces as if they were chopped green onions, and blood gushed out of the stubs in this thick flood that created waterfalls down the rocks.

Aiden stepped aside to prevent it from running into his boots. It was sick.

"I know it’s unpleasant, but translate the rest okay?" Mira said.

Aiden grimaced and looked at the blood and body parts and then back at her and then back at the beasts, unsure where to fix his eyes. Then he nodded. "Okay."

"As I was saying, you’re just a mindless beast," Mira said coldly. Aiden translated, and she continued. "That means I don’t give a fuck what happens to you. I’ll do this all day until you give me what I want." She pulled out the river water and splashed it on its wounds. It closed them but the limbs didn’t grow back. "And we can do this all year," Mira said. "This’ll replace your blood and keep you conscious, and I got a whole lot of it."

"Mira. I’m here to kill it, not torture—"

Mira whirled around, putting her back to the beast, and hissed. "We’re not! Now say it!"

Aiden looked at the beast and repeated the sentiment.

Just kill me! the beast said.

Mira picked up what the beast said, knelt next to it, and spoke to it directly. "I’ll kill you—but I want to know one thing. What will it take for people like us to ride creatures like you? What type of contract?"

The willamore snorted and looked at her and then Aiden.

"What did he say?" Mira asked.

Aiden bit his lip and nodded. "He says… I would’ve taken you anywhere for that water. But me? He said he would rather jump off a cliff than let a timid child ride him."

Mira’s eyes widened. "It’s that extreme?"

The willamore snorted.

"He says… he can smell it."

The beast cackled on the ground, and Aiden bit his lip. "He says… animals have always respected the strong. Not because they want to—but because they have to. If he had a choice, he’d kill you for the water or leave. But he had no choice. But against me? He’d rather die."

Mira stood and turned at Aiden. "Do you want to become strong?"

Aiden took a deep breath and remembered asking Brexton to help him become stronger. He remembered why—remembered that people had screwed him over and robbed him of his ability to work with animals—drugged him and used him, and threatened Halten’s life.

He thought of all of those things as he channeled mana into the enchanted axe. The blade lit up with golden runes as he walked up to the willamore.

"Okay…" Mira understood his answer and let him join her in front of the beast. "Kline."

Suddenly, the willamore’s body froze as if there was a great weight bearing down upon it. It was the perfect setup to safely kill the beast.

Aiden said a prayer to the beast and gave thanks. Then, he swung the axe.

3.

Aiden and I hiked back to camp in an awkward silence. That was natural. He probably hated my guts, and I was pleasantly surprised by him—for something I would never admit to being proud of.

Still, it was hard not to. He passed my tests and gave me hope. I hiked him mercilessly through the woods, passing through the roughest parts, making him weave in and out of trees in complex patterns. I sped up and slowed down and asked for total silence. And when I finally found a trap plant—and a seriously messed up one at that—he didn’t shut down and fall victim to a panic attack like I was expecting him to.

Something was driving him, so much so that Kline and I threatened to torture an animal, and he still killed it. It gave me more faith in him.

Still, I was cruel to the willamore. I didn’t want to be, but I need to know if I could trust Aiden not to side with beasts during a battle. I needed to make sure he wouldn’t whine and plead for me to save things and get us all killed. The Migration was starting tomorrow. There wasn’t a choice.

None that I could find, anyway.

Still, it was eating at me, so I asked, "Do you resent me?"

Aiden shook his head. "No. I’m grateful."

"That’s hard to believe." I paused and sat on a fungi-riddled log, stopping him. "If someone did that to me, I’d probably fear them."

He smiled weakly and made sincere eye contact. "I can’t be afraid of you."

"Why not?"

Aiden turned to Kline, who had jumped onto the log and sat next to me, staring our guest down like a guard. "’Cause you can tell a lot about a person by their pets, and yours… loves you a lot. Not out of pride or pack loyalty. No, he loves you. He would die for you."

Kline’s eyes widened, and he jumped off the log, turning invisible.

"Oh yeah?" I grinned. "What else does he say about me?"