Count stared at himself in the mirror. Where, in the bestial shape he saw was the dashing young Pathfinder, so ready to strike out and make his mark on the world. The well-trimmed hair and clean-shaven face were long gone. A sacrifice for power. The essence of the short-faced bear had given him size, strength and endurance well beyond human limits, but it had also given him hair. Enormous amounts of it.

Hirsute didn’t cover it.

It was hard to be civilized and dapper when you had fur. Even his ears had rounded and rotated towards the top of his head. His nose was pronounced and snout-like, with the nostrils shifted to aim forward, rather than down. His fingers and toes had claws, not nails.

None of what he saw in the mirror was a surprise, he’d made his bed and slept in it for several years now, but he wondered now, just how much he'd lost doing so.

The irony. This was once his greatest success. A transformation of the bloodlines. Now it simply started a fire of hate within.

Appropriate really. To burn himself up with his hate. Because that hate wasn't aimed at the beasts outside, nor the world that spawned them. It was aimed at what he saw in the mirror.

Himself.

He sighed and looked away, it was time.

He straightened up, or as much so as he could with a bearlike hump, and stalked out of his quarters, giving a regal nod to the two guards, one sporting a pig's snout and the other a set of whiskers. The route to the meeting room was short, but not so short that the animalistic features he saw at every turn didn’t scrape his insides like broken glass.

He smiled, greeted them in passing without letting those thoughts or feelings show. Each name, each face yet another timber tossed into his fire. He smiled, nodded regally, or greeted them cheerfully and the fire burned taller and taller each time.

He had no choice, a leader could not be other than a liar, he often thought. You could doubt, you could hate yourself, you could not know what the fuck you were doing! But you could not show less than complete confidence. They needed him to be strong, to be confident and in control. How else could they relax? How else could they feel safe?

Even when that safety was a lie.

Especially when that safety was a lie.

He had made many mistakes in the last 4 years, but that lesson at least he’d not forgotten, not failed at. Approaching the meeting room's door, he steeled himself and hoped that another of those old lessons remained with him, enough to see him through the coming moments.

“At ease.” He barked before the waiting men and women could fully stand. The trapping of power were more than just fodder for his ego. It was the glue that kept society running. An acknowledgment and reinforcement of each person’s place in the chain. A way of knowing what was expected of them and who they could look to, even as they knew who would look to them. There was no room for confusion when death was common. With a firm structure, the chain would close over the dead, and continue to hold up the living.

There could be no delay in a fight, no power struggle or confusion. It was called a chain of command for a reason. It was firm and durable. And it held up their world.

But today of all days he couldn’t bear to let those trappings linger. Not for one second more than he must. Their willing obeisance burned even hotter than the rest. At a small gesture and a tilt of his head, the door was closed and sealed.

He strode to the front of the room, taking his time to look around at the nearly 100 attendees. Every face showed some degree of animalistic influence, from cat ears and whiskers to porcine snouts, wolf-like canines or ursine clawed paws. And all of it was his fault.

“It’s just us today, and I need to start by saying something to Bugle.” He looked at the older man, abundant graying hair, both facial and on top of his head, incapable of hiding the bear-like round ears and snout. “I’m sorry. You were right.”

The crow turned sideways in his throat, and he had to stop for a moment. It hurt. It wasn't just his ego that felt the burn either, it was what finally admitting to the truth meant for the rest of the hold. It was a death sentence. But perhaps, just perhaps, they could suspend that sentence.

He forced himself to continue. “Three years ago I created the animalism process. The ritual blood pools and Path that I sold to all of you as power. To prove they worked I went first. And Bugle begged me not to. He told me that I could not be replaced if something went wrong. That I could not be risked and volunteered to be the lab animal himself.”

“I refused. I would not have him or any of you try out a magic I was not willing to try myself.” He sneered with hate. “I felt so noble saying it. But my so-called nobility was only self-righteousness and we must all now pay the price.”

He took a deep breath. “I've plateaued. My magic has not increased in power, or precision in weeks. At barely high tier 2. I see no hope for continued advancement. This Path has ended.”

He held up a hand to stop the short burst of chatter that spawned. Denial, and confusion, but very little fear. At least none on display.

“The Ursine bloodline fills me with power to the point that I can’t feel anything else. Powerful, but without room for growth. Every experiment I've run tells me there's only one possible solution. To cleanse the bloodline and start over.”

The silence was painful, a room full of pain he could barely face, and yet could not turn away from. The so-called solution was nothing of the kind. He'd had the sense, even back at the beginning to create a null bloodpool. A cleansing station in case the introduced bloodlines didn't take quite right.

Sometimes there were bad reactions or they found out too late that a person wasn't suited to that particular beast. Either way, they had a method. But it took most of a month to work. A month of pain as the bloodline was slowly leached from the body, followed by at least another month, and probably more than that, recovering from it.

Months for a single person, and it wasn't like they had multiple such pools. Then what if it worked? To be ‘cleansed’ back to the very bottom. Powerless and useless. He figured at least a year from there to make it back to mid Tier 2, perhaps another 2 to get back to high. And it was only that short because he'd done it once already, and had the knowledge and feel to do it faster the second time.

But could they take the entire set of the Hold’s elite defenders and set them back that far? No. It wasn’t possible. They lived in a constant, low-grade war. They could not afford to lose that amount of power for that long. Not and maintain the territory they must maintain.

They would not survive letting the beasts grow unopposed.

“So here we stand. Far stronger than the beasts that surround us. Firmly in the dominant position. But we will not keep it. The longer we wait, the more of our lead we will lose. I gambled on early, quick strength and while we haven't lost the hand yet, it is coming. And it's my fault, not yours.”

His fists clenched, blood briefly lining his claws to tear through the solid stone lectern as denials rang out across the room. Love. Respect. Loyalty. They burned him worse than well-earned criticism would have.

His failure burned inside him like acid.

“Lord, may I speak?” Bugle stood up, respectfully bowing his head.

Count gestured for him to continue, he’d earned far more than just the right to speak through these years.

“It may have been the wrong choice, but it wasn’t worthless. You led from the front, and that is something we love you for. The first into battle and the last out. The first to pitch in and the last to be fed. That doesn’t go away. You have still won something from this. You won loyalty and unity. I never saw it as mere grandstanding!”

“Hear hear!” Echoed out from the massed men and women before him. It didn’t help. They absolved him of the crime, but they could not forgive him. It wasn't their place to do so. They were not the only victims. They were not the only ones who would pay. But true forgiveness or not, he was grateful for it, because he had one last card to play, and he could not play it alone. He was going to take advantage of these men and women. He was going to twist a knife in the wound and they were going to help. Then they were going to thank him for it.

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He had no choice, not if he wanted to give the Hold a chance at life.

“Thank you all. But I didn’t call you together for absolution. I don't deserve it, nor can bear the weight of it. I’m here to ask you to give even more. Not for me, but for the Hold. For the only spot of hope I can see.”

He grit his teeth desperately keeping his eyes dry and upper lip stiff. “We are strong, and that advantage is not fake. My best guess is it will last a year. Two if we are very lucky. A year before we see anything hit high tier 2. And that will be an outlier, an isolated event. The average in the areas around us is barely low tier 2.”

“Before that time comes, I plan to go out into the jungle and slaughter every tiered beast I can find. Every hog, every cat, bird, rat, bear or dinosaur with any power or potential. I’m going to slaughter them all. And feed them to our next generation. To the children I haven’t tainted with a bloodline. And I’m going to burn anything I can’t take with me.”

“Then I’m going to do it again. We are going to do it again. And again. Until those scrubs grow enough to finally get me. In that time, the time only we can buy, the Hold can produce new batches of guardians. And god willing, a new Pathfinder, more than one if we are obscenely lucky.” A new hope for the future while the rest of the children still used the blood pools. Turning themselves quickly into mid-level enforcers to give that pathfinder time to grow.

And that burned even worse, his failures would remain, giving the hold a constant supply of sacrifices, a fast rise but with no end game. A poisoned, thorned branch sticking out from the side of a cliff. He'd grab ahold and hope. Hope to survive the poison long enough to drag them all out of the fall.

“I don’t have the right to ask,” he reiterated, “but I will anyway. Who will join me?”

His stiff upper lip quivered and his dry eyes grew damp as to a man, they stood up and took a step forward.

They were gone. All of them! Count's heart broke even as he wondered, he who never expected to wonder again, was it enough?

Would his people survive?

Three years at best. The voice was female, crystalline. Precise and didactive. And completely inhuman.

Count reeled. “Three?”

Amusement. Three is quite good. It brings your total time to 8 years. Not the best in your class, but respectable.

With every word spoken memories cascaded into his head. Class, graduation, the test.

“It was all fake?” He spat, aghast. Hope fought with anger and he was the loser.

Contempt. Did it feel fake?

“Well, no.” If anything, the life of memories returning to him were the more questionable. Cars? Computers? Metal boxes that flew? Somehow that seemed much less plausible.

Exasperation. Have you learned anything?

He didn’t answer. He felt her amused indifference at his attempted evasion.

You cannot hide from yourself.

Her will pushed against his, triggering memories he didn’t want to face. Of love, of fights won and lost. Of enemies who became friends and friends who fell through the cracks to become enemies.

If all of that is ‘fake’ then ‘real’ is an empty term.

That… that. He searched for a flaw in that logic between shimmering memories of loss and failure. “What.” He stared helplessly at his hands. Faces, events even funerals sprang fully formed to the front of his mind, then slipped away again, replaced by another while his emotions danced about wildly to the same beat.

Rage, hate, self-loathing and pain fought with confusion to see, even in the sanctity of his own mind, what was ‘real?’ What was old, what was new? And did any of it really matter?

Truth… He couldn’t see it. He took several deep breaths, focusing his mind into a mantra that somehow defined both his lives. I will live in the now while planning for the then. I will deal with what I must until I can deal with what I can.

He repeated it, over and over again while forcefully corralling his thoughts. Pushing them into baskets, roughly sorted and delt with not at all. Just creating enough space to exist in. The rest would have to come later.

“What now?”

Now we make sure the lesson sticks. Walk forward. Count found himself in a mist-covered forest glade. His bare feet dug into thick loam, the decayed leaves and plant matter scenting the air with a sweet acrid smell that somehow reminded him of home. He dug his toes in, reveling in the simple input of his nerves. Something he could feel and understand, without all this thinking.

But moving his toes, while pleasant and distracting, was not going to get him anywhere. With a sigh, he began to walk. The mist covered his sight and barely let him see 10 feet away, forward was as good a direction as any.

He existed in that bubble. The mist retreating ahead and following behind. It muffled sound and filtered light, leaving him unbothered. Undistracted. He couldn’t say how long that walk took, but he was the better for it. His thoughts were settled. Not fixed, not even close. The boxes and repression would not hold for long. But it was enough to step away from the ragged edge.

Then the bubble expanded to reveal a crystal clear pond extending out maybe 20 feet wide and barely a few feet deep. The reflections of the mist above filled its surface from Count’s angle and he stopped abruptly.

Any closer and his head would appear. His instincts screamed and his belly clenched. He could not take the next step. Something bad would happen. He didn’t know what, but he knew he wasn’t ready.

You have two choices. Look or wander in nothingness until you are ready to look.

So no choice at all. He didn’t think walking and isolation could do much more for him. And he was on a timer. Compartmentalizing his thoughts and fears was dangerous. He needed time and safety and he needed it soon. “What will I see?”

Truth.

He wet his lips. “Teacher says that doesn’t exist.”

Incorrect. Father says truth is subjective and might not exist. An impractical definition. Either it is ‘true’ and invalidates itself, or it is not and we need not bother with it. Paradoxes are not useful. But if you prefer, I will rephrase. You will see yourself free of self-deception. See your choices at every step, and face why you made them.

It took a moment to sink in, then he took a stumbling step backward. “That sounds -dreadful!”

It will be. It is also the point. Only by facing and accepting your actions can you learn from them. Unlearned, little of this will stick with you over the coming weeks. It will fade, like a bad dream.

“That sounds pretty good right now.” He muttered, giving the pond a fearful glance.

The easy way out usually does. But it will gain you nothing. You have already paid for this self-knowledge. It would be wasteful to leave it behind.

He struggled to keep his breathing even. “Is that why I am here? Why I suffered so? To learn some esoteric lesson?” The memories were fragmented, bits and pieces coming to the fore, but confused by the overlap between three different worlds and two different timelines.

Not esoteric. Direct and practical. You were given a chance to live out a life in the positions you desire to fill. Experienced a worst-case scenario of how that might go. This is not just a test. It is a sieve of choices. An opportunity to try out your assumptions, and see how the world might react. And a chance to see if you are ready to meet your aspirations.

“Then, -” Fear ate at him, it wormed through his veins and scraped against his insides. “did I Fail?”

Amusement. No.

Relief hit him, but it quickly died beneath guilt and confusion. “But, I died. And if you aren’t screwing with me, my Hold died too.” Caleb, Donna, Margret, Hansel, Yorick- the litany of names poured through him in a wave. Each a body blow. “How is that passing?”

Passing through. This is not a test you pass. It is a trial you survive.

“Survive…” The word didn’t seem to fit. He was, stretched. Worn thin and overwritten. Not the same Count at all. He let the thought lie. “I don’t know if I deserve that.”

Deserve is another of those human concepts. Empty ones. Like paradoxes, it exists but adds nothing. There is no deserves here. Only what is, and a chance to improve what will be.

“And what ‘will be?’ Am I ready? Or have my mistakes proven I never will be?”

Schadenfreude. Look in the pond and find out. Judge for yourself.

He started, confused. “Myself? Teacher isn’t-”

No. Father has not and will not watch. Only you and I. And I, by my oaths, He felt as much as saw them at the word. Massive self-imposed chains that tethered and supported the very world around him. will reveal nothing.

He was getting frustrated. None of it made sense. “Then what is the point? How will anyone know that I passed? How will they know what I’m capable and incapable of?” He barked.

Like most of your kind, your capabilities will be judged by your actions. Desist with this foolish focus on others' judgment. You are a Pathfinder. No one will stop you from striking off to found a settlement. They may not follow you, but they will not stop you. Only you can decide if you are prepared for it or not.

“But isn’t that the point of this? To prove we are ready?” It didn’t make sense.

Indeed. But prove to whom? Here is an obvious secret. Another of your pointless paradoxes. It is only you. You decide if you are ready. You decide if you can face your fears and try.

If you are convinced, then you will find a way to convince others. Conviction is catching.

“That’s not fair! I can’t just-.” Words failed him and he tried again. “I need more than that. I just sent 437 people to their -”

482. She interrupted, punctiliously. Pregnancy rates were already skyrocketing.

“Fuck you!” Spittle dripped from his mouth as he screamed it. Twisting and looking for a target, his fists clenched and white-knuckled.

Rejection. I am incapable of and uninterested in such behavior.

Her intent suddenly tightened on him. An anvil of dissatisfaction. Enough self-pity. There is no one here but us. No one will hear and no one will care how loud and hard you beat your chest.

You want someone to tell you that you are ready. Or that you are not ready. To make that choice for you. To split probability and capability into little boxes labeled with littler numbers. This box is marked 90%+ and those in it get to create new Holds. This one says 60-80% and directs you to an existing Threshold.

That cannot be. Life is not so easily reduced. Even if it was, neither I nor Father, limited by his oaths, could do the splitting.

Instead, that determination will come, as motivation, morals and direction do, from within.

Impatience. Now quit delaying. Approach, see what you are made of.

It’s time to grow up.