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Let him see true battle. Let him bathe in blood. Let him experience true violence and suffering and hardship. Only then will he be a man. Only then will he be able to paint these zealous simples on his body and thrust his face into the world.

It was hellish and freakish and wrong—until I learned the reason he brought Tyler there.

The scene threw cold water onto my hot head and made me shiver. It was just that powerful.

It started when we entered a meadow that doubled as a gruesome burial ground.

A party of harvesters lay against the cracked trees a beast threw them into, or the ground, with bent armor, from where they were stomped. It was grim, but the thing that was so unnatural was the puddles. There were quite a few in an area filled with murky crimson water.

Kalas stopped us and summoned Tyler as he dismounted and crouched beside a puddle.

"What do you see?" he asked.

I looked closer and saw that it had slush in it, white and milky, cutting against the red and brown pigments marbling within.

"Ice?" Tyler said.

"Yes," Kalas said. "And what of the puddle?"

Tyler stood and stumbled back and looked in all directions. "T-They’re paw prints."

I wasn’t particularly impressed, obviously, but Kalas’s eyes drifted from the dead harvesters to me regardless: "What does this speak to you?"

I studied the area closer and found the paw prints left the forest with minimal blood in thin spatters—not from a gaping wound.

"I think…" I paused and turned to the dead harvesters. "I think one of them was very talented… talented enough to freeze a giant in place, but even immobilized, they couldn’t harm it. It just broke free and killed them… anyway."

"Correct," Kalas said. "And do you know why?"

"Because its aura was too strong," I said quietly, reflecting on my own experience. If Kline had faced any other beast but a first-evolution reiga upon our arrival—we would have died. But we did find it, allowing us to eat the meat and build our aura.

Pure luck.

Happenstance.

That’s the true reason I was alive.

"Exactly." Kalas turned to Tyler. "The strongest rabbit cannot harm a wolf. Remember that before you bare your fangs at a legacy again."

Tyler looked down; Aiden and I did the same. Then a solemn breeze blew between us, seizing our lungs and only letting go when Kalas mounted and said.

"You’ve seen—now learn from it. Let’s go."

Tyler mounted his lurvine, and we rode on, reflecting upon what we learned. I was glad for the lesson because the more I thought about it, the more I was brought back to Kyro’s lesson, where he humiliated me and my high-level magic with gusts of raw aura. Even with every sneak attack imaginable, he destroyed us with the snap of his fingers. And while I had become stronger, sharper, and far more powerful, and while I had a weapon and experience now—I was going up against magic casters. Kline could kill twelve of the lessers in seconds, but I was already warned that these people were different—really different.

I glanced at the Dante guard. He had yet to speak once during the trip. He was just doing his job like a robot, but the way people stared at him made it clear that this man was a monster under the hood—a sleeper car that looked like it just came off the lot but was cranked with a mean engine and NOS days before the race.

We rode on.

Most of the herbs were picked, alchemic, benign, and poisonous as we went through. Someone picked a plant that was neon purple; a mile later, I saw him dead on the ground, arm rotted like he had touched uranium at Chornobyl. More people were dying on the ground, begging for help. I gave them Diktyo water. I was going to make a trip for it anyway, so it was, ironically, quite plentiful.

Kalas told me not to waste my resources.

Felio said it was refreshing to see people help strangers.

We rode on.

It was about five miles in when alchemic resources came into view. They didn’t highlight, so I didn’t know what they were, but Felio did. She screeched in delight and flew off her lurvine, skillfully dodging every poisonous plant as she pulled out containers and declared the plant names like I did to my parents. That triggered something in my brain, and suddenly, I was right beside her, hearing facts about the plants, riddling off trivia about similar plants from Earth.

2.

Tyler sighed when he saw Mira nerding out with Felio. Here he was, trying to keep his breakfast down after all the gruesome sights he saw, and there Mira was, throwing up her index, as she always did right before going on tirades and going off about plants merrily as if nothing had happened.

Yep, he thought, she’s definitely a psychopath now.

He turned and found Felio’s guard with a similar expression.

"She always like this, too?" Tyler asked dryly.

The guard nodded with a tired smile. "It’s incessant. The mistress tries to get her to submit to Hellara etiquette, but no one seems willing to force her. She’s a treasure in a land of rocks."

"Huh…" He never thought of Mira’s behavior being a treasure. It was almost the opposite. Here Mira was the most famous person in the world, all because of some stupid decision to be a mountain woman. Now, she was in the forest, and instead of being some dirty horticulturist, she was actually a bloodthirsty maniac. It had been reversed, but… seeing Mira actually speaking about flowers and fungi, pointing out edible berries, and pointing out poisons, he realized that it was kind of special, wasn’t it? She was having fun. Could he say the same? Not today, but during the trip? He didn’t know.

Tyler looked at Aiden. "You spent a week with her, right?"

He nodded. "One hell of a vacation."

Tyler chuckled and watched Mira cut a mushroom to explain the gill structure to Felio. "So… what was she like?"

Aiden glanced at Kalas and the Dante guard warily but chose to speak regardless.

"Nothing like this…" he said. "Then again, there was no time for it. A normal Tuesday in this place could cripple a monarch, so she was always running around saving my ass. Saving the lurvines. Saving… shit… everyone. That girl’s one hell of a woman."

Tyler blinked twice and then rubbed his eyes with a laugh. Then, he thought about Aiden’s words and realized there was nothing to say. His sister was a total badass, and he couldn’t even begin to understand that. He wanted to—that was for sure. But he didn’t want to ask Aiden for this tribal reason that kept eating at him the more that loverboy ogled Mira.

"So… what?" Tyler finally asked. "You into my sister, or what?"

Aiden smiled wryly and turned to him. "Do you really think your sister would date me?"

Tyler’s shoulders slouched, and he gave Aiden the deadest glance he could. "Yeah. She only talks to awkward nerds. Well, not really, actually. Mira brought a boy home one night to see pictures of the guy’s trip to the Amazon. She was twenty, in between semesters—never had a boyfriend. The guy was… weird… but he was so-so, good enough, so my mom treated the guy like a god. It was as if she were saying, Don’t worry, hun. We’re a bundled deal. Love my daughter and I’ll cook and do your laundry. Then she forced Mira into her room, insisted they shut the door, and then said they’d be downstairs with company for the next 36 hours. Practically left the girl a condom."

Aiden had started laughing at some point, and when Tyler paused, he said, "So? What happened?"

"What do you mean, what happened? The guy showed her plants from the Amazon for three hours. I know because Mira was practically glowing when she came downstairs, and the guy had the bleakest expression I’ve ever seen. Blue balled to the moon."

Aiden laughed and then looked down.

Tyler watched Mira and Felio dry out plants in real time like a pack of evil witches, then grind them with their fingers into a container with a complex expression.

"So probably not," he said. "Probably."

Aiden looked at him. "What does that mean?"

Tyler’s head space blackened. "Who knows?" he said quietly. "That same girl told that douchebag that she was seconds from killing him and… I believe her. Dead serious. I can tell when she’s lying…" He narrowed his eyes on her, thinking about Kline. "And she wasn’t lying." He turned to Aiden. "So who knows? Maybe she’ll turn into a raging nympho manic and my hit list will look like video game credits."

Aiden laughed. "You love her, don’t you?"

"Not particularly. But she’s my sister, you know? I remember hating her fucking guts. Because she was the favorite, you know? Not with mom. I’m a momma’s boy and all that. But not Mira. She was a daddy’s girl, and she’d get away with murder with the guy. You should’ve seen the guy’s face when she stopped asking to get on his shoulders. Devastated." He laughed and shook his head. "Bullshit, too. ’Cause I like football. Not her. I lift weights. Doug and I are practically the same person and I mentioned that at one point. And this bastard… you know what he said?"

"What?"

"He said… Well, if we’re so similar, you’ll love football and beer in college, and you’ll love college, football, and your little girl nine months after the condom breaks."

Aiden laughed.

"Bullshit…" Tyler laughed with Aiden, and when he turned, he saw guard bro cracking a smile and Kalas… well, he was just callous as fucking ever. That dampened the mood, and Tyler got back to the point.

"Point is," he said as the girls were closing up their fancy boxes. "I don’t know anymore. I’ve known her my whole life, but now I feel like I don’t know anything about her. But I still wanna protect her, you know? Maybe it’s some primal instinct, but I do. Ironic as it is. The real question is… do you think so?"

Aiden paused and thought about it. "I don’t know… maybe. She smiles more at my antics and… that’s cool. Makes me feel good. But… no time soon."

"Why not?"

"You’re sounding like your mother, pressin’ the issue."

"Shut up, asshole."

Aiden smiled this sad clown of a smile, pausing and reflecting and saying, "’Cause even if… in some alternate universe, my sad boy, defenseless asshole bullshit was some major turn on for her… she’s not stupid. There’s… reasons that she wouldn’t want to date me, and she’s not the type of person who would entertain nonsense. But who knows… one day… when Halten’s free and Brexton’s…" He smiled thinly. "I’ll move here. And… who knows? If I’m the only option, she just might take me."

Tyler reflected on the guy’s words for almost a full minute before saying, "God damn that was bleak. If she falls for you after that nonsense… God. You’ve never had a girlfriend, have you?"

Aiden’s cheeks flushed. "Where the hell did that come from?"

"The fact that you’re showing interest and spewing introspective bullshit into the same sentence. Bro, if you wanna girl, you gotta…" Tyler paused. "Never mind. I’m not adding you to a hitlist. Die a virgin." He turned to Mira. "Let’s let’s go!"

She huffed and looked away and said, "We were already leaving."

Mira tried to act all annoyed, but she was still buzzing with excitement and happiness. "Alright, let’s go…" She turned in an oddly specific direction that Kalas and both guards found suspicious.

Mira looked at both of them. "I’ve used an information request to find one of the plants Felio told me about. If you’ve got a problem with that—too bad. Felio and I will go off without you." With a huff and a dramatic flip of her hair, she trotted off with her sassy, obviously-a-strong-independent-woman lurvine. God he hated Mira.

Tyler smiled and shrugged. "Well?" he asked the others. "Let’s go."

3.

God, I was having the time of my life. Finding a foraging buddy in Colorado was surprisingly difficult, and the ones I hadn’t weren’t nerdy enough, but FELIO. This woman couldn’t tell you the difference between a vine and a climber, but if something could be turned into a shampoo, she could tell you the full history of it and then some. She was pointing out how essence flowed through plants and where it was collected and the different extraction methods that produced different effects.

I loved that girl. That’s why I felt terrible deceiving her.

Don’t get me wrong. I did, indeed, use an information request to find a plant on her Christmas wish list, and her eyes were super nice and glittery when she found it. I mean, they were searched for annually with requests but only found every few years (thank God the competitors died, fell ill, or rotted on the way), so it was hella believable. So when I declared that there was something in the distance and told everyone to wait while I dealt with it, Kalas and the guards reluctantly believed me.

Reluctantly was a key term—and good reason. My request was to find a super rare plant relatively near one of the many ingredients on Felio’s wishlist, as finding a rare plant was essential to my strategy.

So after I captured my rockstar super queen plant of the month, "White Brantor," a rare plant that cured a form of mana sickness called Skalkna not two miles away, I considered slashing my wrists and covering myself in blood to simulate a battle, but I asked Lithco if they could tell if it was my blood, hoping the information was part of one of my many skills and he came out just to say, "As much as I would be amused to see such a futile attempt—yes." I told him to fuck off and returned back with a disappointed expression and said, "Thought it was a raster. Turned out it was a whole lot of nothing," and we pushed on.

Kalas was the sharpest, calling bullshit with his eyes, but the other two guards ignored it, likely taking the stance that, We don’t trust anyone, least of all you, so carry on. Try to fuck us over, and we’ll kill you.

Whatever the case, Felio was squealing with joy over her herb, Tyler’s lurvine killed a land hippo studded with spikes while he was riding it (which Tyler thought was the coolest shit ever), and we returned to camp with fresh meat and two living protectees, a breath of relief for the guards. Only Aiden looked pensive and aloof, drifting into nothingness.

I really had to find something that would cure the poor bastard’s depression. He’d be a lot more likable if his grim optimism was both genuine and confident. And he wasn’t soul-chained to an information broker.

There was that.

As for me, I had the makings of a terrible plot to kill Kal. Now, it was just about biding my time and finding the right time to hook this fish and send him spiraling into hell.

On the way back, we saw some dead fucker cut into four slices.

Felio cried out, wondering what did it, and the others panicked and forced us to leave, wondering what sick and vile creature would do such a thing.

But while I played along the best I could, in my heart, all I could think was, Fucker deserved it.

I knew that for a fact.

Because the woman was heading in our direction—

—and those were Kline’s claws.