It wasn’t the darkness of the night that bothered me, the trepidation that cloaked my mind instead brought on by the unconscious man nearby. Without a single fire for warmth all I could do was huddle up next to Taryn, curled up against a tree trunk, with the stream distant enough that I felt no predators would find us.

Every whisper of noise brought a worried glance, every hint of movement echoed by one of my own as I prepared for combat. No matter what there would be no sleep for me that night, while Taryn continued to recover from the previous fight.

The only hint of security I had was Taryn’s sword that was nestled in my free hand, sheathed though readily accessible if a fight began. Combined with my own physical abilities I had little doubt I could fight off anything ordinary that might come across us in the dark.

Doubt at my skill was not what really bothered me, it was the fact that within the blade I held rested another person unknown to me. A shudder ran down my spine at the remembrance of Nixi and how she had invaded my mind, driven me so close to becoming one of her children forever.

Do not compare me to that vile monstrosity.

The shock at that voice which rang in my head was bad enough that I nearly dropped the sword. With wide eyes I stared at the home of the owner of that voice, and a multitude of questions sprang instantly and struggled to all come out at once from my mouth.

Shush child, now never again think of me as that hellion.

“Who are you?” I whispered out, the question a constant nagging thought that demanded an answer.

But there would be no answer for me as once more the sword grew silent, the inhabitant apparently uninterested in dealing with me any further. A silence that only made my current situation all the worse.

Naked, frightened and barely armed I curled up closer to the still form of Taryn and prayed to the Gods that he would recover sometime soon.

When the ground shook I knew that somewhere above one of the Gods was looking down at me and laughing. The groan of a tree as it collapsed nearby, the tremble that made my entire body jump off of the earth by a few inches, the fact that everything else went deathly quiet were all I needed to know that someone had opted to play a cruel prank.

In the darkness I could barely make out the claw that was easily the size of my entire body as it gripped the trunk of the broken tree. A casual lift of the log screamed out to me how powerful this creature was, and when I heard the loud inhale of air from nostrils too large for me to imagine all I could do was gird myself for the inevitable.

Whatever it was it did not move quickly, the behemoth instead came with a leisurely couple of steps toward our direction. From the canopy a head with a long snout appeared, cocked to one side so that one of the eyes could stare at me.

Instinctively my breath stopped, as though that would somehow make the creature continue on even when it could see me. When the eye refused to stop staring directly at me all I could do was start to stand up, my right hand drifting ever so closer to the hilt of Taryn’s sword.

The snout opened and emitted a low hiss that escalated in volume before with a loud snap the mouth slammed shut. The slow movements of before seemed to be a figment of my imagination as with a frightening speed the creature lunged directly at me.

Before it could reach us I tried to pull forth the sword from the scabbard, only to find that it refused to budge in the slightest. Momentarily taken aback, with a large monster about to crash into me mouth first, I gave up on the sword and instead grabbed the limp Taryn and dove to the left.

The tree that had been our shelter was destroyed in an instant. Wood snapped, branches cracked and splinters showered outward from the point of impact. The behemoth took a few more steps before it tilted it’s head and glared once more in my direction with a singular eye.

Again I tried to brandish the sword only to be denied. With a stubbornness that matched the dread that coursed through my body the weapon refused to be of any use. “Why won’t you come out!” I finally yelled at Taryn’s sword in frustration.

Silence was the only reply.

Needless to say I became unnecessarily angrier than I probably needed to at that moment, and without a shred of regret I threw the sword down next to Taryn before once more focusing on the behemoth.

With a loud snort the monstrosity began a slow approach, with every step the head swayed while at least one eye remained aimed at me. Even though we were in a thick forested area it showed no fear of hitting a tree with it’s head, instead it simply knocked the trees down almost as though the skull was far thicker than what I might have expected.

Energy coursed through my body even as the world slowed around me, the strength that had been gifted to me by Taryn once more summoned up from within. Without a mirror I already knew that my eyes had changed color, and the behemoth responded to the shift in my demeanor by hesitating to approach.

“If you won’t come to me I’ll just come at you!” I declared, right index finger pointed at the behemoth.

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A hiss was the response it gave back, but that mattered little to me and instead I put all my attention toward approaching the monster. Before it could continue to approach I instead closed the gap with a single forward leap, right hand pulled back and ready to throw a punch.

In came the left claw of the behemoth in an attempt to swipe me away like the gnat that I seemed to be. Although our masses were drastically different I gave not a hint of concern and instead twisted mid-leap and threw out my right fist with as much strength as I could muster.

The dull noise that one would’ve expected didn’t occur but instead a loud crack, followed by a squeal of pain from the behemoth. Though no bone stuck out from the claw I could believe in that some sort of fracture had occurred within. The throb of pain that rippled through my own hand told me that I didn’t want to try a punch again, otherwise I might end up crippled in this hostile jungle.

Distracted by what I had done to it, the behemoth failed to notice as instead of following through with another attack I instead dove for one of the larger chunks of the shattered tree. With outstretched fingers I gripped tight onto it, rolled upon impact with the ground, and then twisted and threw the splinter directly at the filthy eyeball which had finally stopped staring at me.

It was a pitiable cry of pain that emerged next, the creature backed away from my direction and clutched instinctively toward the splinter that had pierced into the exposed eye. Blood and something else pooled out from the fresh wound as the behemoth ripped the splinter free and discarded it to the ground.

With a shattered fighting spirit the beast could only turn away from where I was and stumble wildly away, only interested in putting a distance between us as though I was the true monster in this scenario. Trees and anything else in its path mattered little, instead trampling down and through whatever it needed to in order to escape.

I let out a long sigh and started to relax my muscles, the adrenaline high draining quicker than I might have wanted and instead exhaustion filling me. Already I had grown tired of this place, the unending stream of troublesome critters that abounded made me wish for the quiet times at the orphanage. Even a herd of children was more fun to deal with than these odd monsters.

Once again I walked over and retrieved both Taryn and his sword and walked away from the scene of a fight. Though there was no corpse the fluids left by the behemoth might have been a temptation for any type of scavenger, and I was already far too tired to even want to deal with them.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

Exhausted from the long night, I could only feel joy when the sunlight filtered in through the distant canopy. The cries of numerous birds filled the air while far off the noise of the stream as it trickled through the jungle remained a constant background noise.

As though the light itself was all he had needed Taryn stirred from his long time unconscious. He groaned, eyes fluttering open to stare in my direction, before he tried to unsteadily stand up. I resisted the strong urge to hug him tight and instead offered a steadying hand, quietly observing him for any signs of a relapse.

He coughed, a low gutteral noise, and spat out a chunk of green liquid onto the ground. “How long was I out?”

“All night long,” I told him, though I did not say what I truly wanted to. Forever. Too long. “It’s about time you got up, I’ve had to lug you around everywhere.”

“Sorry about that, I can’t control how quickly I recover,” Taryn offered as an apology as he accepted his sword back.

When his hand touched the sword his eyes widened, then he glanced sharply down at his favored weapon. “What?” he muttered, before a nod of his head came as though to respond to something spoken by a third party. “Of course…”

I knew he spoke with that mysterious man who was housed inside the sword, though I could no longer hear the whispers of his voice in my head. A nervousness ran through me, an awkward nervousness that made me feel far younger and inexperienced than what I actually was. If I had broken some sort of unwritten rule what type of relationship would Taryn and I have?

That nervousness was washed away almost immediately when Taryn looked into my eyes and all I could see was happiness. He didn’t need to open his side, to let me feel his own emotions, because they were so blatantly obvious on his face that anyone could have seen what he felt.

“I’m sorry,” Taryn apologized again before he stepped up in front of me and wrapped one arm around in a hug. “He didn’t ask you to do anything weird, right?”

I instinctively knew who he meant, a smile on my face as I hugged Taryn back. “No, but he wouldn’t help me more than once for some reason.”

“My father tends to prefer tough love,” Taryn admitted.

It was that which caused our hug to come to an end, as I pushed him back to arms length and glared. “Your FATHER?” I half-yelled, not even caring if some monster out in the jungle heard me. “Lanius? The GOD?”

“You remember!” Taryn couldn’t help but grin at my surprise, a grin that I wanted to punch off of his face.

“You told me you’d never met him before,” I said in an accusatory tone.

“The true nature of the sword is supposed to be kept secret from everyone, I think only two other people beside us know about it...and one is Mathias.”

“Why would you the God of Life be stuck in a sword you carry around everywhere...no scratch that why would your FATHER be stuck in a sword in the first place?”

“I never expected I’d have to explain this to you,” Taryn admitted before he looked up toward the leaves that tried desperately to block out the sun. “I’ve told you about Nixi, how she spread herself like an infection across people and took them over. Do you think an ordinary weapon can kill a Goddess?”

“Oh,” was all I could respond with as I began to piece together why Lanius was in the sword. “So you’re literally fighting the soul of a Goddess with the soul of a God?”

Taryn did another one of those infuriating grins. “Exactly, and since he didn’t splinter himself if we can ever find the central point where Nixi is hiding he’ll be able to overpower his sister.”

“Alright, well we need to get moving,” I told him as I tried to focus on what was important. As I began to walk away from Taryn and head toward the north, or what I hoped was the north, I suddenly realized something else.

“Your aunt is Nixi!”

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

It was at least half of the day later when we finally emerged out of the thick jungle, with many a small bug gathered about us in a cloud of annoyance. To our right the beach could be seen again, a blue horizon the only greeting for any viewer. The stream that we had hovered nearby cut out of the jungle in what I could only surmise was a north-western direction and fed into the ocean.

What was the most welcome sight of all, aside from a landscape devoid of giant monsters, were the buildings clustered at the northern tip. A stone pathway led away from what was a wide open entranceway, while a tall stone wall offered protection for any inhabitants within. Someone at some point had gone through and deployed a spiked fence on the outside of the stone wall as a secondary layer.

“Vexxon’s Landing!” I almost cried for joy at the sight of civilization, resisting a strong urge to run at full speed. “We finally made it Taryn!”

Taryn only smiled in response, his eyes focused on the town for some reason. “No guards.”

“What?”

“There should be some sort of guards or lookouts,” Taryn pointed out to me.

It was a response that instantly shattered the jubilation that had begun to build within. Instead I looked once again at the town and noticed what he had pointed out, how one of the tall wood structures near the gate was devoid of anyone. It was about mid-day or a few hours past and yet nobody could be seen on the clearly visible main street. Even the exterior pathway that led to the river had nobody on it, and given how close to the ocean we were there was no way the town had a well.

“Not again,” I almost begged, already tired of going into towns that were empty. It was as though some sort of curse followed me, or perhaps I was merely bad luck for towns?

“Well at least it won’t be the Plague,” Taryn offered in an attempt to comfort me. He started to walk, at a slow and careful pace, toward Vexxon’s Landing. In his left hand he gripped the sword that contained his father. It was a caution I rarely saw in him given his capabilities to beat most opponents with minimal difficulty.

Out of everything that was happening, though, it was the sound that came from behind that garnered my immediate attention. The familiar sound I’d heard many times while training in the Legion, and a noise that any trained warrior should be able to recognize.

The sound of a bowstring being pulled back.