Heath stares at his mother like she had grown a second head and then a third. All of Heath’s as far back as he could remember, his had been against him or anyone really becoming a trekker. She would admit to the importance of them when fighting monsters, but would still dissuade anyone from becoming one.

He had known his mother’s father had been a trekker and had died before Heath was born, but he would have never thought his mother had been one, couldn’t have… it was unthinkable.

Thus Heath responded to this revelation with an understandable, “What?!”

Ingrid looks at her son and pats the ground next to her, “Heath sit down and I’ll tell you more about my time as a trekker.”

Heath fought the urge to yell at her and demand answers, refusing to sit, but he wants to know what she was going to say, he needed to know.

Heath sat, looking straight ahead, not looking at his mother.

Ingrid took a deep breath and began her tale.

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  Ingrid had grown up the daughter of a silver-ranked trekker. Her father, Erik, had been a great trekker, he had earned himself a reputation with guild as someone that could be trusted and relied on. Growing up Ingrid wanted to be like her father.

When Ingrid turned ten, her father had stopped going off as much to do missions, or delve dungeons, he stayed home and trained his daughter. By the time she was fourteen she was as skilled as most bronze rank trekkers. At fifteen her father helped her get her first spirit, Lola, a mushroom spirit, that gave Ingrid great area of effect abilities, with spores. At sixteen she wanted to join the guild, but as it was guild rules she had to have two spirits.

Her father had waited six years for his daughter to become old enough to join the Trekker’s Guild and the wanderlust that had driven him to become trekker in the first place was growing again.

So they set off as trekkers without Ingrid being an official member, the plan was for her to get her second spirit along the way…. And she would, just not the way they had planned.

Three years passed in the blink of an eye and yet the right spirit never came along, their duo had grown to a group of six.

Their group moved from dungeon town to dungeon town challenging the local dungeons, in between they would take on the occasional rogue monsters or bandits that popped up. They grew as a team, Ingrid had never felt closer to her father.

She also grew closer to the others, especially a young man that had joined them….. Szymon Wagner.

Her first true love……

They had gotten married when Ingrid was twenty.

“You were married before Pa?”, Heath asks in disbelief and shock.

A sad smile makes its way to Ingrid's face, “ Yes, I was. I love Karl with all my heart, but he was not my first love.”

“But, if you were married to Szymon and you loved him, why aren’t you still married to him?”, Heath had a sickening feeling in his stomach that he knew why.

“Because he died…. Along with everyone else in my team.”, Ingrid said as tears flooded forth.

Heath hugs his mother, wrapping his arms around her, “ How?”

He hated to ask, but he needed to know.

Ingrid hugs her son back and continues.

“We had on a mission to hunt down a feral spirit.”, Ingrid began.

A feral spirit was not like the spirits found in towns, or even in the forests, no a feral spirit was friendly or even stand offish, they were malevolent, they took joy in hurting nature, animals, people, even other spirits. They were rare, but one had shown up in a small farming village, Melta. It had possessed some of the local farm animals, causing damage and harassing the locals.

“Possessing?”, Heath interrupts.

“A feral spirit doesn’t bond like a normal spirit, it takes over the person or animal. It forces them to do whatever it wants, and then when it's done with them it rips out their soul when they go.”, Ingrid tells Heath, “ It chose the children, because they can’t possess the bonded.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that was possible.”

“It’s not something people like to talk about and it doesn’t happen enough in the colonies to be a problem, usually.”.

“So anyway…”

Ingrid’s team made it to Melta and found out that all of the children in the village were missing, and that the spirit had not been spotted since the children disappeared.

They had found tracks belonging to children going into the woods, so they followed.

They found the children, well some of them.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

The feral spirit had gathered the children in a clearing and was possessing one of the children, a little girl. It flew around with great gust of wind, throwing bolts of lighting at them, cackling as they scattered and screamed for their parents.

“We rushed right in, didn’t even take a moment to plan. We had to get the children away from that thing.”

“Did you?”

“Yes…but at a cost.”

Her father and the others distracted the feral while Ingrid gathered the children and led them back to the village, once they were back in the village, she ran back to help her team.

By the time Ingrid had returned, all but Szymon were dead.

He fought valiantly among the bodies of their friend and her father, but he slipped.

“He slipped?”

“He fecking slipped, and the thing got him. Zapped him with a lighting bolt in the chest.”

“What did you do?”, Heath asks as his mother’s tears renew with vigor.

“I did what I could… I ran or tried to.”

Ingrid ran from the scene crying then as she did now, but the feral was on her tail cackling. It would knock her to the ground with a torrent of wind. It laughed as it threw lightning bolts at her, just barely missing when she would dive behind a tree.

It was toying with her, and herding her back to the clearing. When she ran back into the clearing she knew she would die. She saw the bodies of her father, team members, and her husband.

She fell down beside Szymon’s body, battered and tired, and cried.

“But you lived, how?”

Ingrid gave a dry snort of a laugh, “ It stopped to gloat.”

The feral, in the body of the little girl, mocked Ingrid switching between pretending to cry and fits of uncontrollable laughter.

“As it floated there mocking me, a miracle happened. A spirit was born before my very eyes. A blood spirit. It formed right above Szymon’s body, right in front of me. It saw the feral and then turned and we made eye contact. We bonded right there. It instinctually hated the feral.”

Ingrid touches her chest and says just above a whisper, “ Thank you Bloot.”

“We bonded, I got access to blood magic. While it was still laughing…..”

“I…”

Ingrid's breath catches as she fights back the tears and emotions that came with the memories.

“What did you do Mom?”

Ingrid whips her face on her sleeve and whispers, “ I did what I could…. I killed its host…”

With Ingrid’s new blood magic, she crushed the little girl’s heart. Later she would tell herself the girl was already dead and that all she did was release her from the feral’s control, but it still ate away at her late at night when she couldn’t sleep.

After the body fell to the ground the feral tried to escape, but Ingrid allowed Bloot, her blood spirit, to guide her and captured the feral in a prison of blood from her fallen team, her fallen loved ones.

Then picked up Szymon’s sword from his now pale bloodless body and stabbed the feral over and over and over. Until she didn’t have the strength to pick her arms up. She dropped the sword and passed out.

When the trekkers didn’t return by the next day, a brave farmer crept into the woods and found her there unconscious, the only survivor.

“The incident was reported to the guild. The dead were buried, My mother begged me to move back home with her, but… I just couldn’t, everything there would remind me of my father and in return of trekking and Szymon. So I went as far north as I could, to a small frontier town that had only been established ten years before, Scozeg.”

“When I got to Scozeg… I.. .well I…”, Ingrid hesitates.

“When she got to Scozeg she found out she was pregnant.”, Karl’s deep voice says as he walks around the side of the woodshop.

Heath stares between his parents, unable to truly process what his father just said, “ Pregnant? But, but I don’t have any older siblings.”

Karl kneels down and takes his wife’s and son’s hands, Ingrid nods for him to continue.

“No Heath, ya don’t. Because she was pregnant with ya.’

“But, that would mean that you… and that Szymon is..”, Heath fubbles with his words.

“I ain’t yer father by blood. I met yer mother and I fell in love. I didn’t care when she told me. We got married fast, and announced her pregnancy a month after. Never told a soul. I held ya when ya were born and cut the cord myself.”

“Heath, sweetie. I am sorry we never told you. But, your… Pa.. Karl.. he raised you and Szymon was gone.”, Ingrid said, searching her son’s face for a response or reaction.

Heath just stares at his father.

“But, you're my Pa….”

Tears dangle at the edges of Karl’s eyes, “ I raised ya as if ya were my own blood and I love ya with all my heart. That ain’t changed…but, if ya..if ya angry at us for lying I understand.”

Heath doesn’t take a moment to think and pulls his parents into a hug, all three crying.

After three had dried their tears, they sat together on the grass.

“Mom, I am sorry for what happened to your team, your father, and… Szymon.”

It felt weird for Heath to say the name, knowing what he did.

“But, I still want to be a trekker. More now than ever, ferals may be rare, but other things kill people everyday, and if I can save lives I want too. I’m sorry.’

Ingrid takes her son’s hand and shakes her head, “ Don’t be sorry, I should be the one saying sorry. I remember that feeling, I just don’t want what happened to me to happen to you, but I know I can’t stop you. Just be careful please.”

“I will Mom. Thank you for telling me about… everything.”

“When do you leave with the… what were they called?”

“The Wild Jacks.”, Karl offers.

“Thank you. When do you leave with them?”

Karl and Heath share a glance at one another and it’s Karl that answers.

“In the next couple days.”

Ingrid nods to herself, “ Just enough time.”

“For what?”, Heath asks.

Ingrid gets to her feet, while dusting herself off says, “ To get you ready of course, I have alot to teach you and not a lot of time. You’re going to need equipment and potions. We need to talk more about magic and so so much more.”

“Really, Mom?”.

Ingrid smiles and nods, “ Really.”

The three walk back to the end talking about what Heath would need, as mother, father, and son.