What followed was slow, calming work. They peeled away the hide, spilled out the organs, and separated muscle from bone. Ideally, they would have walked away with every single scrap of the beast. Everything could be put to some use, after all. But with only two of them present, no pack animal or cart, and scavengers already gathering around, they would only be able to move so much.

Saketa wrapped up the hide, packed away the most edible cuts of meat, and took the intestines to be tried and turned into sausage casings or strings. Some tribes had a tradition to gather the blood for use in cooking, but Saketa preferred to let it feed the ground.

The rest would go to the scavengers.

“Is there another lesson to be found in all this?” Ayna asked as she worked on severing a stubborn tendon. “About the messy aftermath of violence? About there always being more work to be done?”

“Oh my,” Saketa said. “We will make a mystic out of you yet.”

“So, is that yes?”

“I wouldn’t call this an official, specifically intended lesson. But most lessons aren’t.”

Once they finished, Saketa took a bundle of dried viro fibres from her small pack. With the proper treatments, the thin, almost weightless sticks were surprisingly strong. She assembled a mover, tied together with strips of leather, and finally attached two wheels. It allowed one to drag quite a heavy load of meat and hide through a forest. And by drawing on the power of a Warden, one could drag even more.

“Carry the spear for me, would you?” she said to Ayna as she started walking.

“I… will do that,” the girl said. “But you know I’m no good with it, right? Also…”

She looked around, and Saketa saw unease.

“Don’t take this badly, but I don’t like being around squeaking, grinding, blood, and heavy stomping feet.”

“The ritual part of all this is over, Ayna,” Saketa assured her. “My powers are back in play, as is my awareness. Couple with your own senses, you are perfectly safe. There are things on Kalero that might threaten someone like myself, but they aren’t in this area.”

“My mind knows all that,” Ayna told her. “But… ingrained training is hard to just set aside.”

Her scanning let their eyes meet for a second, and again Saketa saw that other side to the girl’s personality.

“The wild is not a place for relaxation. I was raised to that fact being as fundamental as water and air.”

“Well. Just try.”

They walked in silence after that. Saketa knew Ayna didn’t want distractions, and she herself was happy to be able to look inwards.

The forest gradually got thinner, the trees younger, and the sun reached them. Ayna touched up the light-absorbing gunk she’d started to wear around her sensitive eyes. She repeatedly complained about it itching, but she was trying it as an alternative to sunglasses.

A natural border was set by a long slope that got steeper as it neared the top. It made moving the mover ever more of a chore, but Saketa didn’t allow herself a stop. Sweat mingled with the resin in equal amounts, tickling her as it ran down her skin in rather thick strands. But the difficulty of it all made her more determined. It was a tendency that she’d come to recognise as a potential source of personal disaster. But it was also simply a part of her core being, and so defying it at every turn was simply not in the cards.

Also, it did keep her strong.

The final stretch was body-wide pain, and there was a moment where one wheel lifted and the mover threatened to tip over. Saketa took one hand off the skra, turned around in the blink of an eye, and used both to right it. Then, mere seconds later, they reached the plateau.

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Before them was an area dominated more by grass and bushes than trees, as well as a view of the hills that dominated the land like waves in the ocean. A thin stream trickled down from higher up still, and a hunting lodge had been built on the edge of it. A small team was gathered outside, tending to hides strung up in frames. One particular figure spotted them, and walked over with a spear in his hand. It wasn’t a threat or a statement. Just long the kind of caution that let one survive the wilderness for decades.

The crimson hair that was near universal on Kalero was now largely grey, but he still cut an imposing figure. He was strongly built, even by Kaleran standards, and wore a vest that put much of his physique on display. Scars marked his body, though one’s attention was inevitably drawn to the gruesome streaks that covered both forearms, as if he’d stuck both hands inside of sharp-edged machinery.

All in all, he cut quite the imposing figure.

“Greetings, Warden Saketa.”

His voice had been deep in her girlhood, and age had developed it into an abyss.

“Greetings, Wildwalker Bugis. Your predictions were on the mark.”

“Observations, not predictions,” he told her.

Ayna crinkled her brow a little. She was making some progress with the language, but rarer, more specialised words still tended to elude her. The Wildwalker looked at her. Saketa’s general impression was that the man didn’t quite know what to make of the Dwyyk. The similarities in their people’s outlook were just strong enough for the differences to stand out all the more.

“You continue to survive, by avoiding the hazards entirely.”

“I do,” she said. “It’s the Dwyyk way.”

She touched her knife.

“I mean, I have killed a couple of smaller things. But I don’t seek those situations out.”

They spoke as they had before, with Saketa translating the occasional word or turn of phrase.

“I have never gone offworld,” Bugis said. “That is not my role. But tales of that world of yours have made it here. I am almost tempted to visit it.”

Ayna’s other side made another brief appearance.

“You would not survive,” she told him solemnly. “You are very quiet, but not Dwyyk quiet. And you are strong, but… no one is strong enough.”

Bugis was silent for a moment.

“I may be even more tempted. But it makes no difference. My place is here. Saketa: How do you feel?”

“Slightly improved,” she told him. “Every little test has improved things slightly for me since returning. I see there are new arrivals.”

She pointed to the people outside of the lodge, doubled in number since she left.

“From the west. And they brought news.”

His already severe features stiffened just slightly.

“A vorasondu has come out of the Valley. It rampaged through a small farming village that belongs to Tribe Seiho. The Warden Council has been notified, but the thing has apparently gone back to the Valley.”

“For now,” Saketa said.

“For now.”

They both understood the full implications, and for a few seconds neither of them said anything.

“You two will be heading west now, correct?” Bugis then said.

“Yes. We were going to visit my tribe on our way to-”

Something caught the man’s attention, and his eyes went distant. Saketa left him be. She could recognise it when one was making the most of their awareness.

The Wildwalker breathed deeply in through his nose, three times in succession, clearly sniffing for something.

“There is a kellik not far from there,” he said as his eyes returned. “Well outside of its usual grounds. I thought this might happen. Things are not in balance yet. I will check this out.”

“Walk wisely,” she told him in farewell.

The man jogged off, at an even pace he could maintain for hours.

“He’s an interesting fellow,” Ayna said once he was out of earshot.

“He walks a path that predates the Wardens,” Saketa said. “His kind guards the edge of the wilderness, as keepers, scouts and warriors. And he got those scars on his arms by pulling a child from the maw of a kellik. He is due respect.”

“Hm. We have something not entirely dissimilar on Dwyyk. “Ayna said. “Though they are more assassins than anything else. But what was that word he used? I don’t think I’ve heard it before. And, uh, clearly it has some weight.”

It did have weight, and Saketa tested her strength to bear it before she turned a grave look Ayna’s way.

“It means something like ‘tainted one’. And it is one of the things that can threaten someone like me.”

She reached out with her awareness, and tested the waves. She sensed the energies that belonged, positive and negative, and the power to be found in their interplay. But she also sensed the taint, where the negative was out of balance. Not simply negative, but corrupted.

Evil.

“I think I know what my final trial will be, before I get my new sword.”