Rhodney, Nike, and Navy, Misty, all walked out of the woods together. Nike carried Torrent and Smokey who nestled together in the giant's arms.

Rhodney’s head hurt and he grabbed onto it. Rhodney hated how heavy his head felt. “I need some sleep,” Misty said, rubbing her eyes.

“You’re turning into that shadow guy, lass.” Nike tried to joke, but the kids weren’t having it. They all agreed,

There was no way they were finishing the test. At first they wondered if they were just unlucky and everyone else had come in scott free, but as they walked up, they saw it. Flame’s team looked somehow worse.

The girl on their team wobbled and looked barely conscious, sitting and just staring at the ground. She held her stomach.

It had been thoroughly bandaged, but bled a terrible amount.

Rhodney questioned how effective the archaic bandage would be, and would probably need to heal her himself.

He sucked his teeth.

A wave of pain hit his body when he even thought about healing her. His body screamed at him to stop. He’d been through enough.

In… In the morning. He thought.

He heard that…thing. Still clicking in the woods as they left it. He murmured, “Go away, we’ll meet later,” and quickly, he heard the leaves rustle as it dashed away.

Rumble was being treated by… Another lesser? An older man with tons of gear and equipment on his body, treating Rumble who was bleeding profusely. The man slightly smiled at Rhodney’s group as they entered.

The sight of them had amused the adult for some reason.

He caught Flame sitting with him. Jesus Christ, He was beaten to hell.

He had a similar looking wound as his companion, with a similar looking bandage but…

Flame looked fine. Actually, he looked… bigger?

His tattoo had grown significantly since he had seen him last. And his body looked slightly more toned.

His horn broken in half remained broken, but had grown smooth. Like a tree stump.

Flame chuckled as he met Rhodney’s eyes,“What happened to you guys,”

Us?

Nobody on Rodney's team answered, ‘half because half of them were unconscious,’ so Rhodney just answered the question with another question after he had counted. “What happened to the rest of your team?”

The earth around the unconscious Rumble shook. Flame looked over to his friend for a second, while the tall lesser swore as the boy's wounds reopened. “No idea…”

But he looked like he had an idea,

“How about you, what happened on your side?” Flame didn’t move in a disrespectful way like Rhodney had seen before. The boy seemed a little more… grounded? His team was injured, and the boy seemed like he had seen something… prolific.

Rhodney would never say it, but the woods seemed to make him mature slightly.

Nike rested his friends near the lesser adult to be healed and quickly walked back to retrieve more people.

“Well…” He was out of it for a bit, and his head hurt, so he looked to Navy. He actually needed to fill in a bit of the pieces himself, and this would be a good way to pass the time.

Navy sighed and held the bridge of his nose.

“Ok, so here’s what happened,”

…

…

He heard it, he felt it. Navy stopped when he heard the new voice echo through the woods. “Anomaly…” He breathed out. His head slowly notched left, almost clicking like an action man as he faced the creature.

“Fatherrr…” Fear crawled up his spine as he heard the creature speak. Its drone was accented by a clicking that bounced in time as it talked.

With each syllable Navy found himself gasp. Energy left the creature’s breath as easily as it breathed. ‘...Chimera?’ Chimera class beings were a type that started to appear, roughly 500 days ago.

Roughly about half a decade.

The army never quite figured out why these mashed beasts existed. Beings that seemed to break common sense. In their movement, their structure, their magic. It was different when a creature grew into something horrible on intention and being created in that very state. They always looked like some kind of cruel joke, smashed and put together like improvised toys. But their bastardization of symmetry wasn’t what made them so scary.

He watched the creature's eye glow with a nuclear green. Exuding irregular mana in its very gaze. Not only irregular, but unstable.

By some cruel joke by a chaos god, or some other-worlders experiment gone wrong, they had spread around the ecosystem.

They weren’t normal.

He only attributed it to bad luck before when he started seeing them more often. Like he said, they’ve always existed but, when he saw a nest of the buggers…

He was grateful that he was with his clan,

But that wasn’t the case anymore.

That sapient glint on its non sapient body. The twisted squash stepped out of the darkness to reveal its body.

The creature’s eye’s shook as his mana spiked. His lanky, straw body was dirty. Dirt, twigs, and other debris floated and twisted in knots.

Its body tightened when its mana spiked. Its melon head stretched into an imitation of anger as it’s straw grew taut. It’s Asymmetric gigantic arm flexed as well, squishing like putty as its otherworldly strength overpowered its roughly put together form.

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Navy felt a surge. The creature roars spit out seeds and liquid plant matter onto the ground. Its uncanny body writhing as an even stronger wave hit it’s body. Every strand stretched, hardened, expanded, barely keeping a human shape as it buckled over.

Navy didn’t want to move.

He was terrified, confused. The beast used its mana like it couldn’t close the valve. Even the oddest chimera he'd seen knew how to use its mana intuitively, they were still a monsters after all.

It was like a person who didn’t know how to breathe properly. or a non sapient… it just didn’t happen.

Its body was its own construct, moving half on its command, and half on its emotion.

Navy slowly walked backwards… cursing to himself as he left the convulsing Torrent alone on the floor.

Sorry.

More likely than not, the creature was going to leap at one of them. As cowardly as it was to leave his teammate on the ground, together they were just a bigger target.

Navy couldn’t tell what the mental state of this creature was. He called it a non sapient monster… but the creature muttered that word. ‘Father?’ Why–

Navy’s heard a snap as he stepped on the loudest branch in the world. The creature looked up.

“...Shi–”

SLAM!

In an instant, Navy was against the tree. He sucked air through his teeth as his head hit the back of the tree. His legs dangled as his arms were bound tight.

The creature's straw seemed to grow like a never ending virus. It kept producing, its arm stretched into long ropes of straw, grass and twigs that sharped and stabbed against his body. He felt its entire body of mashed materials focus on him.

‘Calm Navy… Calm…’ He thought of another mantra as he used mana to slightly reinforce his body. Acting quickly and acting impulsive were not the same thing… any battle can be won with a cool head and a plan.

He looked up and thought.

Navy’s first instinct was to immolate himself in flames as the beast walked towards him like he was prey. That was the last thing he was.

A being of grass approaching a bunch of fire creatures had to be green. There was no way this thing would survive if it met the village.

Something in the back of his head told him that doing that would be unwise. Lighting himself on fire near all this kindling. His body could take all his mana but… he looked down to the creature's long strands of grass.

Who’s to say the creature's unique brand of magic grass catching ablaze wouldn’t count as an enemy’s attack? He couldn’t risk it. And plus,

‘Shudder.’

The tree shook and Navy heard the roots start to move beneath the two of them. He saw the ground shift, and breathed.

Navy cringed as he saw the creature's limb wrap around the giant tree. The creature seemed to not notice the sounds beneath it. Lack of ears muck? Navy struggled in the veins and felt its grip tighten.

This creature was completely unaware of the first rule, don’t mess with something incalculably bigger than you. Navy was well aware of the mercy that the tree was showing him and he did not want to test the beings patience.

But currently he had no choice.

The creature slowly walked towards him, its body shaking as it shambled toward them.

His comrades were tired next to him with their eyes closed. Appearing unconscious and spent.

He… was alone.

He watched the creature approach him, its arm shrinking as it approached him. The beast, unsurprisingly, wasn’t that heavy as it stepped on Torrents seizing body.

…Navy would have to believe in her that she could live through this. That’s all he could do. The monstrosity mumbled, “Father… Father…”

Navy had no idea of the context of what the beast was on about. He didn’t care either, thinking about how he could get out of this.

His understanding of the fundamentals were pretty good, at least compared to children, but his limited capacity and lower experience left him confused.

Mana could probably help, but he’d just be delaying the inevitable. Some kind of shield or field would only push the beast back. Earth seemed… ineffectual, against a being whose entire magic was being a living plant.

And fire, well, he heard the roots still shifting beneath them. Making him nervous as he watched them root through the ground like large worms.

He’d explained that already.

Still, he had to do something!

The scarecrow was now really close to him. He felt the creature's pungent breath as gord spit flecked onto his face. Navy didn’t kick or scream.

He stared at the beat in the eye as he was held eye level against the tree. With intention, Navy hardened his horns. If the being was going to bite him, or claw at him, he at least wasn’t going to make it easy.

The creature was going to work for this meal.

“Father…” He murmured. Navy saw the creature's green eyes bore into his own, and immediately. He recognized. This was one of the training dummies! What was it doing all the way out here? And why was it… so much taller?

“...Son?” He asked apprehensively.

Wrong answer.

He winced as the creature roared in his face. He felt the grass squeeze, wet seeds hitting the side of his cheek and climbing down. Navy tensed as he expected an attack.

But nothing came.

He tentatively looked over and saw the creature fuming as it stared at him. “A… Piece…” The creature said. “But I want whole!”

“Whole?” Navy asked.

“Whole!” Navy got, ‘Yes’ from the way it spoke.

…Whole?

He looked over to Rhodney.

He paled.

Oh goddess…

They were trying to burn this thing! Why was it here? Not only here, the real question was, how was it alive? When Navy had heard of Nature Magic from that woman, he expected some advanced version of grass, wood, and maybe some rare tree magic or something.

He assumed that the green flames were just a side effect of his irregular abilities, bleeding into his fire.

When the kid started healing people that had already been a red flag. As far as he knew, that wasn’t even a type of magic.

It seemed that he had been wrong.

The tree, the scarecrow, the rock.

Rhodney’s abilities were slowly building consequences, checks that they weren’t quite ready to cash.

They would have to thoroughly explore these abilities before this got out of—

“DON’T IGNORE ME!!!” The creature's command snapped Navy out of his thoughts.

Oh…

He really was just staring at this thing.

“Sorry, that’s been happening a lot lately,” He apologized. His blessing made him a lot more… inquisitive than he was before, constantly reflecting on the past. “...So, you’re looking for your father?” Navy said.

The creature nodded.

“...Why..?” Navy slowly asked the question, not really wanting the answer. The creature looked genuinely puzzled at the question.

If the being hadn’t shot first and asked questions later, they probably could’ve had a really good conversation. The creature looked around, puzzled.

It really didn’t think this out, huh.

“I’m…Hungry…” The creature said.

Ohhh.

Did it even… have organs? Navy looked at the creature and shifted his face to try and look sympathetic for the chimera. He wanted to walk out of here… relatively unscaved. While it did have him “pinned…” the creature seemed alot like the other children. Bumbling around without much thought or direction.

It looked… lost.

It’s mouth chewed at the air like it was tasting it. Like it was… off. “You’re hungry?”

It nodded.

“You aren’t weak, son. Hunt something down in the woods. Your father he’s uhh–” Wait, wasn’t Rhodney conscious? What on earth was he doing?

Navy looked down at the floor and saw Rhodney on his knees, eyes rolled back as he stared at the giant tree. His veins glowed with green energy and he was mumbling to himself.

“...He’s uhh, busy.”

Talking to the tree people…

He wanted to face palm but couldn't.

“As a… piece, you have to respect me as well,” Navy hoped to the goddess that in this case he had a bit of power over the being. He had ‘Technically’ helped create the beast.