The coin flipped through the cold but fresh morning air, the sound ringing clear. It was weird, trusting a piece of spinning metal with most important matters. Matters of life and death. Like the question of where to go next in this countryside full of enemies of mine. The Wanderer had promised to show me a way to ‚like minded people‘, whatever that was worth. I had handled the situation on the battlefield with some amount of competence, I felt, but it did not change the fact that I was beyond lost. In life, in spirit, and in goals. It was the third day of our journey east. I had determined the direction per coin of the Wanderer in secrecy and had let Cogar lead the way most times. He knew what he was doing, that much was clear. So I did my very best to appear competent and confident as well.

That man had a knack with starting a fire. Where I had copied the grown-ups I had ridden out with in my days as a youth, that is throwing sticks together haphazardly, he built a campfire sturdier than most walls of our sheds and shacks at Ravenrock. Where I fumbled with tinder and steel, he just made the spark jump into the tinder, with one hand only. I had assumed to begin that it would just be a social position inside this Bear Clan of his, but the way he commanded the fire, and the thing he did with his regrowing arm three days back, convinced me that Skills must have been involved in a major way. And that was weird. Whoever had heard of a class like [Fire Keeper]? What was the purpose of that? What would a higher level [Fire Keepers] be able to do? It spoke loudly to a cultural significance I didn't get. And yes, I had read the notification following the vow, listing him as a [Fire Keeper] and I had seen him doing weird stuff with fire, but I just had a hard time believing it.

Classes were for all kinds of people and vocations. But I never heard of classes directly concerning simple, menial tasks. Being a fire keeper sounded to me like a part of being a [Cook] for example. Like, there weren’t extra classes like [Sword Sharpener] either. That was included in the different warrior classes.

But while Cogar tended to the fire, with much less animosity towards me than he had shown before our little talk and the vow, I noticed how the transformation of his body mass and the reconstruction of his missing arm still made progress. He lost weight and gained more of his arm back. It was barely noticeable but I had watched for it and saw it clear as day.

And each morning we separated a few seconds. I went to flip the coin, while he just ate the fire with his hands. No other way to go about it. Then we went on our journey, pretending to not have seen the other person doing anything strange.

Now we wandered the Wyld, avoiding settlements, or so he claimed and began to descend from the hillside around the Divide to a flatter region with more trees and woods. Walking came easy if all you had to do was going downhill. It might have been a calm and relaxing stroll through a rugged and beautiful countryside, if not for the fact that the Wyld was a dangerous place to be. More so than I had thought possible. And it was on the third night of the trek, that I found out why.

We sat around a perfectly structured and smokelessly burning fire, roasting a rabbit. The Wyldlings had campsites all along common paths. And the path from the east to the west, where Ravenrock had been, was the most prominent path the Wyldlings had taken in these times of war. I did not follow what exactly Cogar had been doing, but one time he backtracked a few steps, as if in search of something, and then changed direction. And we had found a prepared campsite tugged under a rock that jutted out of a small incline. And around this campsite, there was stashed firewood and in advance prepared traps for little animals, little slings and cages, with one of them having caught a rabbit by chance. There were smooth rocks to sit on, arranged around a pit for the fire. It was just a small clearing we had found, but with a little goodwill, you might have put a dozen hungry Wyldlings around the fire. But it was just us now. We have had a heated debate about that topic. I wanted to avoid any possible encounters, but Cogar had made a plausible case for firewood, fresh meat, and the fact that every Clan he knew of was to the west at war or at the foot of the mountains to train. It had been the fresh meat that had done it for me.

"Tell me, [Fire Keeper], how can all clans be to the West? What is with your settlements and cities? Where are your women, elderly and young?“ I asked him whence I was supremely contend with the hot meat in my belly and the flickering fire in front of my eyes.

"Wyldlings do not build to last.“ He said, with a much different expression of hunger on his face. His once round and full face had begun to slim and even appear gaunt. The flesh on his arms had retreated to show thick muscle strands, where once fat had been and his belly no longer sat in his lap. He had eaten but still looked ravenous. "We follow the seasons and the herds. And the Wyld takes its share. And if it does, we have to move as well. I heard stories about humans taming plants into rows and rows of food you can just...take. The Wyld would not allow.“

We were both not much of conversationalists, but we spoke. And three days had been enough to refresh his command of the common language. He had been rusty, not uneducated. "What stands still is prey to the Wyld or the clans.“ He continued. "We live while we move. Small clans live off the land. Big clans, like the ones we both fear, are too big to live, but they have big moving camps like hordes. Like cities of tents and wagons. They do not hunt. They fight to feed.“

Stolen story; please report.

Like taking castles, sacrificing innocents, and raiding the grain plains of the Empire of the Sun. It had been war or starvation for them. I kept it to myself. No need to antagonize anyone right now. Even if it hurt.

That was when I heard the howling in the night. Just that it was no wolf I had ever heard of. I was on my feet immediately, Kingsbane drawn, while Zero snaked out of my backpack. And while I searched the darkness with no small amount of anxiety, Cogar just put another stick into the fire and said way too calmly: "The fire protects.“

And they were out there. I could not quite see them, despite my attempts to use my Skill to see in the dark, because of the trees and undergrowth, but I heard them rummaging, sniffling, calling out, and growling. And whenever I thought to see something moving, it disappeared with scary speed and stealth.

"The fire protects.“ Cogar repeated. "Only thing that protects. Darkness is death in the Wyld.“

My mind built unspeakable horrors out of the sounds and noises out there. I shivered and soon returned to the fire, closer than ever, but did not stop staring into the darkness. Cogar took a small little pouch from his belt and took a while fumbling with his one hand until he had it open and laying on his lap. He took a pinch of the stuff inside and sprinkled it over the flames. It sizzled. And then the radius of the light grew to double the size, just like that, while the fire did not change one bit. "More room to move around scared. Don’t leave it.“ He grinned at me.

He took up his axe again, as if nothing had happened, and cut branches to size, holding them in place between his knees, to replace the firewood we had taken from the stash, chipping little flakes of wood into the flames and calmly humming a rhythm.

I could find no real rest with beasts and whatnot stalking the edge of our fire, but Cogar fell asleep in a heartbeat. He had assured me, and made true of his words so far, that he would wake up to throw more wood on the fire when it was about to go out. Another Skill of his. What level was he?

The next day we went about our rituals, every day a little bit less concerned with the other seeing it because we both were sure the other knew it anyway. You can hide little if you are stuck with another person in the wilderness, much less the Wyld. So I flipped my coin and followed with my eyes where the Wanderer wanted me to go. Or chance or destiny or whatever power that coin may draw upon. By now I was reasonably sure that something did happen because the direction the coin gave me did not stray too far from the direction the days before, more or less guiding us south and east. By now we had more than a hundred miles under our shoes from whence we started. That meant I was far far away from home.

"I know where you are going. And I do not like it.“ Cogar said suddenly with something like concern in his voice.

"What do you know about it? And where do you think I am going?“

"Nothing but Wyld. South and east. Not yet, but a few days ahead. Heart of the Wyld, they call it. Broken Lands.“

That was where I was going? That did not sound like anything I wanted to go near. And here I was again. Trusting the divine or being lost once more? And what did that even mean? The Heart of the Wyld? Broken Lands? I said as much to my companion.

Cogar stopped packing his bag for a second and put his fingers through his beard, thinking.

"Broken Lands is no name. Land is broken in truth. Heart of the Wyld is the center of the Wyld. It is where it is strong. Out here we fight the Wyld, but we use it too. And it changes us and everything it touches. But there, there is no fighting. There is only accepting. Riding the tide of change. And beyond the Broken Lands is the Shattered Sea. The clans do not wander those lands or swim those waters.“

"I will be honest, Cogar. I still have no idea what the Wyld is. A force of nature that changes people?“

He nodded. "It is chaos of nature. Living in the Wyld touches you. Brings out change of body and mind. The deeper you go, the more you change. The longer you stay, the more your mind changes. We don’t know what else. We don’t go near the heart. Only shamans, singers, and the mad go. And they do not speak of it. It is madness that lets them see more than us.“

We spoke a bit about our concepts of madness after this, while we went on our journey again. Apparently the madness he spoke of in their shamans and seers was, that they saw so many things at once, they did not always know what was real, what was an omen, or what was a prophecy. Under the constant sensory overload, everyone's mind would eventually be overpowered to the point of true madness. Cogar explained that they had some sort of a cycle. Younger seers would monitor and interpret the ramblings of older and madder ones, until they deteriorated to that point, becoming the ones to be interpreted. And every once and again a powerful shaman or seer would emerge out of the cycle of madness with enough levels and Skills to handle the chaos and overload of information and go on to bring great fortune and success to his or her clan. That's what had happened to the Snake Clan, apparently, the current rulers of the continent and the clan of Sarhain the Grim.

We came to the edge of a stretch of marshlands, a couple of miles down the road, as Cogar stopped as if he had run into a brick wall. I looked into his face and saw all color draining out of his skin, leaving him pale...shocked really.

I tried to look around for anything that could have frightened him so, but I only saw the calm lakes and waters with not even a fish to disturb the surface.

"What? What have you seen?“ I urged him to tell me.

He took a few seconds, trying to shake his shivers of fear to no avail.

"Death.“ He whispered. "Death under claws and teeth. I saw the White Beast. I just received a new class. [Prey] level 1.“