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I shrugged. If you want to be.

I see… I will teach you the chant as I did with Kline, but I recommend you wait to evolve.

Why?

Because you’re not yet ready. You’re on the precipice of something… incredible. Wait until it’s time.

The Migration is tomorrow…

Even so. Waiting will make you stronger, not detract from your power.

I hated that answer. These chants took hours, and I would have to evolve in the wild. After all, to my immense feelings of injustice, the first crate contained my illusionary barrier, in addition to the teleportation disks and the alchemy equipment. With Halten under my barrier, once I left the camp, we would be on our own.

I surfaced, took a breath, and returned.

So… how will I know when to evolve?

You’ll know.

Thanks… Really helpful. I paused and thought about it. Okay, so… should I learn to evolve from you or get a technique from my patron?

It’s the same.

It’s the same? How?

Brindle taught me his evolution techniques.

A tribe of raw emotion pierced my heart with spears of guilt in all directions. I wasn’t a guardian, and worse, I was locked into a deal with a god who wanted to monetize the forest, and he didn’t know about that. Accepting his help under these pretexts felt like I was using him and even betraying him. For all my faults, being duplicitous wasn’t one of them.

Yakana, look. I have—

Don’t worry, child, Yakana said, seemingly reading my thoughts. The forest sees all. The forest hears all. Feels all. So I know.

I instantly felt it was a contradiction, considering his response to Aiden’s arrival. But when I thought about it, I realized then that I ordered my equipment and never talked about it. And while Elana would complain that I didn’t have the equipment—and was looking forward to when I did—he couldn’t hear her, only hear me when I spoke to her, which I only did half the time to practice my ability to speak.

Now breathe, Yakana said, for time runs short.

I did, and when I returned, Yakana melded into my soul.

Let’s begin.

Yakana taught me the chant step by step, which was closer to a short mantra than a normal chant, and he helped me get into the trance, circulating the mana and letting me feel what it was like to expand my core.

Again, he said.

I stole a breath from the surface and we went through the process again. And again. And again—making sure it was ingrained in my mind.

The last part will be up to you, he said after we were done.

How will I know what to do?

Remember the feeling from when you built your core and you will find the answer.

I swallowed nervously and nodded. I’ll trust you… Thank you.

Of course.

I started to leave but stopped right below the glistening surface and looked down. One more thing…This dragon… can I save him?

Yakana’s voice lost its warmth and became somber. This guardian’s fighting to keep its soul uncorrupted. He has succeeded at the cost of his total concentration, but he will eventually need to sleep. When it comes, so will the corruption.

I grimaced. How long do we have?

Five days at most.

And what can we do to help him?

With your skills, a soul elixir is your only option. Speak to Brindle. If he teaches you, you can save him. Now go.

I felt a shiver crawl through my body, and I quickly surfaced right into the gates of hell. New souls I hadn’t cleansed had drifted from the south, and their cries and desire to attack me had returned. I ignored them and clambered to the surface, feeling bitter about Yakana’s instructions.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t evolve, as I couldn’t handle the amount of magic I had then. The thing I was bitter about was the "You’ll know when it happens" advice. That concept’s overrated. Sometimes, you hit a fentanyl drip in a hospital, and you know it worked. Other times, you meet some guy who seems nice, brings your mother flowers, and listens to the same music, and your hormones know that he’s the one, only to find yourself divorced with two children before thirty, getting botox injections to stave off the wrinkles your bitterness earned you.

I hated it.

That’s what I thought about when I left the river. So when I left the fog and still heard screaming, I flipped out and turned to the river, screaming, "I got out! Now shut the hell up!" The screaming didn’t stop—but I realized that it wasn’t coming from the river. It was in camp.

I immediately rushed to the campsite where Kline was studying Aiden carefully. The man’s arms and face were webbed with varicose veins, and his body was shaking with tremors.

"Jesus Christ… Aiden!" I ran up behind him and performed the Heimlich maneuver, making him spit out the core he was threading. After that, he dropped to the ground like a log, tears welling in his tight-shut eyes.

Kline meowed at me.

I looked down and saw my half-naked body covered in sand and pebbles. Now, let’s be clear—it was an emergency, so I wouldn’t have cared if I was full-on naked. That said, I knew that if Aiden saw me in a state of undress, he could have a heart attack. So I used Desiccation and Purify to dry and clean myself and then took that opportunity to throw on my new self-repair clothing.

It was an uncomfortable time to try them out.

The Advanced Survival Clothing I ordered came with a pair of black underwear with capabilities that most people wouldn’t want to hear about, a nuclear-grade sports bra that turned my breasts into a solid object, faux leather pants, a tan shirt, and a light brown jacket studded with arrays that kept my body perfectly cool, more so than bare skin. This was the summer collection, with three more seasons packed up, accessories, nightwear, and a special set I really didn’t need in a forest. It was fine, functional fashion, and it suction-cupped to my ass and legs, showing off my curves. It was stunning, the perfect feature for a self-conscious person like me who thrived on baggy clothing that didn’t betray my gym habits.

I would’ve rather stayed undressed.

Aiden was groaning on the ground as I finished. "Aiden!" I yelled, rushing over to him.

"Huh…?" Aiden rolled over, fumbling for the mana recovery syrup. He got it and drank some, and fell limp, gasping with relief.

"Here." I handed him a bottle of Diktyo River water, and he drank. The varicose veins on his skin cleared up, and his chest’s rise and fall became methodic.

"What the hell were you thinking?" I asked.

"What was I thinking? I was following your advice."

"So?"

"What do you mean, so?"

"Look, Aiden. Following my advice is what I need you to do. But…" I wiped my face and turned away. "Don’t jump off a bridge if someone tells you to. Stanley Milgram. Ring a bell?"

He chuckled bitterly. "Yeah."

"Then learn from it. Do your best, but… if it’s gonna kill you… don’t. Got it?"

"That’s… God. That’s a ridiculous request. You know that? Walk a tightrope, but if you’re gonna die, just teleport to safety. Kay?" He snorted. "I’ll get right on that."

I was taken aback by his uncharacteristic pushback. It was kinda nice. Not attractive, but nice. I needed that. We needed that. And at least he was busting ass and getting shit done.

"Okay…" I said. "Let’s do it this way."

I pulled out my container of cores and opened it up in front of him, showing him a galaxy of different shades and sizes. Yellows, greens, and a few teals. There were nearly a thousand, if not above.

"Choose whichever you feel comfortable with," I said. "I won’t judge you."

Aiden sat up and then looked. Then, he stared at the full container for a few seconds before he broke out into this psychotic, Hollywood laugh that expressed someone deep in the throes of lunacy. I could guess why he was laughing—but I couldn’t understand it. That’s the vibe I got from him.

Aiden sifted through the cores and pulled out a chartreuse one. It was hideous, a yellow-green color that was normally associated with vomit, but the look in his eyes when he said, "Are you sure?" told me that it was special.

"Whatever’ll help you grow faster," I said.

He nodded. "Thank you… one sec." He paused and spun his fingers through the container, picking out five cores. Three teals, a near chartreuse, and a tan one. "You and Kline want these ones… the others… aren’t as good."

I cupped my hands around them. "Thanks." I paused with the cores in my hand for a minute and then looked up at him with earnest eyes.

"I know about Dominion."

His face drained of color. "Huh?"

"Dominion. That’s what it’s called, right? Your… intimidation whatever spell. Right?"

"How did you…"

"Information request."

"Oh…" Aiden chuckled, eyes welling with this crazed bitterness, as if life had tripped him only for him to get jumped by a gang, robbed by the cops, and then run over. "I’m sure its evening news… fuck."

All of his meekness was gone, replaced with something… different. It was as if the bitterness from his treatment in college or at work had crushed his happy heart from yesteryear, and the quiet, shy personality he had embraced for most of his life was struggling to reconcile with the personality that the world was beating into him. It was terrible yet hard to rip your mind away from, like watching a car crash in slow motion.

I wondered if my parents would see me the way I was seeing Aiden when I returned to visit.

"Yeah…" Aiden sighed. "That’s what it’s called. I take it you know how the skill works? What it requires?"

"Yes."

"Lovely, isn’t it?" Aiden took a thin breath, long enough for it to expand his lungs, then held his breath for a few seconds before releasing it. "Can I ask you something?"

"Yes."

"Do you think you can save him?"

"I’d say it’s impossible, but I’ve survived worse."

"What’ll it take?"

"I’ll needa make an elixir… but my equipment’s far from here, so we’ll have to travel… learn it, make it… return."

"How far?"

"Four days on foot. Three if we hustle."

"How long do we have?"

"Five days."

Aiden pressed his hands together in a forceful prayer gesture, pulled them to his chest, and thrust out his hands, tense to the point of dysfunction. "So it is impossible."

"On foot," I said. "But if we can ride animals…"

Aiden looked at the ground.

"Look, Aiden. These beasts aren’t your friends, okay? They—"

"It’s okay." Aiden made eye contact. "Mira… People’ve kidnapped, drugged, threatened, and coerced me at gunpoint to get me into this forest. This world sucks." He stood up and grabbed his axe. "This’ll never be the same, so we might as well get started."

"Okay." I stood and then looked at the ground. "But sit and thread that."

"Shouldn’t I be killing things?"

"Don’t worry about that… I’ll take care of it."

2.

They say it’s best to rip off the bandaid, but it’s implicit that you’re supposed to let the wound heal first. But in Aiden’s case, what I was about to do was the equivalent of preventing the nurse from stapling his wound shut as he died of hypovolemic shock.

I reached an open meadow a mile upriver, reached into my bag, and marinated meat. I put it into my cast iron and set it directly on an alchemic heating array. Then, I fired it up.

"You can still speak to animals, right?"

Kline meowed.

"Okay. I want you to take all the frustration you’ve built up with Aiden around, bottle it up, and then scream that every other beast in the next five miles is a spineless bitch-ass pansy that grooms ugly beasts of bugs while they watch their wives get pumped. And tell ’em if they don’t fight us, it’s just proof of it."

Kline’s eyes widened, and he gave me a creepy smile that made me blush.

"Hey! I’m just trying to say the worst thing I can! You got something better?"

Kline turned away and bounced his little shoulders back and forth as he trotted off.

I huffed, rolling my eyes as he got into position. Then my emotions stilled.

"Make it count. If we don’t succeed now, we’re fucked."

Kline nodded and then turned, looking into dead space, the sign that he was staring at his Guide. With absolute trust in my little warrior, I sat down on a mica-speckled boulder that glimmered in the setting sunlight, watching him close his eyes and study a new spell.

I wonder what he bought… I thought, but there was no indication. Kline looked in the distance, following his eyes on his invisible tutorial teacher. Then, he stood and turned to me, pawing at his ears.

I cupped my ears lightly, gesturing if I was right.

He meowed.

I clamped them shut. Then, I watched in a trance as my little warrior jumped up onto a boulder like Simba, looked up toward the sky, and released a roar that caused my body to split consciousness in three directions. The dissonance in my nervous system consumed me, and I wanted to fall, but only a fragment of my brain clicked into focus, and it told me to activate Mental Shielding.

I did, and the reaction was like putting pure sodium into water. The second I activated, all three waving parts of my consciousness snapped together like magnets colliding mid-air, and my body turned rigid and blockish, making me drop to my knees.

What the fuck was that…

Kline meowed worriedly and flew over to me.

"I’m okay…" I said, mere moments before shedding my stomach lining on the ground. I was definitely not okay.

Kline yowled and paced and grimaced, trying to say sorry. I told him it was fine as I pushed myself up and leaned against the boulder I was sitting on. "Just… give me a minute."

Kline nodded and planned to—but life intervened.

Hundreds, and I mean hundreds of howls and roars and cries, littered the twilight skies above the Areswood Forest, calling out from all sides.

I just wanted to lure beasts to camp for Aiden to finish off, but it seemed that things would be far more serious.