Aurin and Shamtile waited at the platform of Hazelton Station. It was a bright and sunny day and Luna had called the previous evening, telling Aurin that she was finally coming back to town after a couple of weeks away training. She still hadn’t uttered a word about where she had been for her training, but Aurin was sure that she would tell him now that it was over.

Shamtile started waving his hands and jumping up and down excitedly while screeching. He then hopped off the bench, put his hand on the ground and started nodding fervently at his tamer.

“The train is on the approach?” Aurin asked, already knowing the answer. Shamtile could feel the vibrations in the ground.

True enough, a few seconds later, the train rounded the bend. It slowed as it approached the station and then ground to a halt before the doors opened. Luna stepped out with Innogon by her side and she immediately ran to Aurin, jumping into his arms.

“I’ve missed you,” she said.

“Likewise,” replied Aurin. “Still not going to tell me where you’ve been hiding?”

Luna stood back and folded her arms with a smug grin on her face. “Hiding? I was training, my love. Training so that I can beat you in the national championships.”

“Where?” asked Aurin slyly.

“I’m a force to be reckoned with,” said Luna, ignoring him. “It doesn’t matter what you do, if we’re matched up, you’re going down.”

“I hatched Zeera,” shrugged Aurin.

Luna looked briefly surprised before shaking her head. “Going down!”

The two laughed and walked down the steps, followed by the playfully fighting Shamtile and Innogon. The two were punching each other the entire way down the street while Aurin filled Luna in on everything that had happened over the previous two weeks, from training with Vai to meeting Damien in the tower.

Luna was stunned. “I still can’t believe there are those out there who think the Zodiac Squad can make a return after the Zeera Crisis. The entire town would be up in arms against them.”

“Damien has always seemed like a bit of a lost soul to me,” said Aurin. “I despise him for his lack of remorse, but I pity him in a sense.”

“Well, you’re a better person than I am because I feel nothing but loathing for him.”

“On a lighter note,” said Aurin, as they passed through the town square. “Have you made any changes to your team since you’ve been gone?”

“Perhaps,” said Luna, pulling out a few summoning stones from her bag.

Before she could summon them, an icy white stone caught his eye. She didn’t have an ice elemental two weeks ago, so she must have either been training near another tower or somewhere that sells Minakai eggs. Admittedly, there were many places that sold them making it impossible to guess where she had been.

In three flashes of light appeared a Flaround, Cephelarock and a Cryopillar. Flaround let out a happy bark upon seeing Aurin, now much bigger than he was as a Dogember. Cephelarock wriggled his much lengthier stone tentacles before clapping a couple together in greeting. The new addition to Luna’s team, Cryopillar looked uncomfortable and crawled up beside her.

“You have been busy,” laughed Aurin. “Is your Cryopillar shy?”

“She’s just a little clingy,” said Luna. “Maybe it’s the summer heat. And how about you, Aurin?”

“Well, you already know about Zeera…who I’m not going to summon here because he’s meant to be my secret weapon for the tournament.”

“And it would freak people out to see another Zeera in town. This Zeera is much smaller, right?”

“Yes,” confirmed Aurin. “Ten feet tall rather than fifty feet. Reincarnation has worked wonders for him, but he’s proving a challenge to train. He listens to me, mostly, but he can’t fully control his power yet. He overdoes it very easily.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Any other team changes?”

Aurin summoned his Quetzel to his side. “Just the one,” he said as the golden serpent glided over to Luna and nuzzled her face before twirling through the air and landing on the cobblestones. “I evolved her a couple of minutes after you left town.”

“Well, perhaps I’m not the only one who is a forced to be reckoned with now,” Luna said, prodding Aurin in the shoulder.

“Hello!” called a voice from across the square.

As Aurin and Luna turned to look, Emily sprinted towards them, looking very excited to see Luna back in town. She stopped in front of the pair and hunched over, placing her hands on her legs while panting.

“Did you think we would run away if we saw you?” joked Aurin.

“No…I…just…” trailed off Emily while Luna laughed at her.

“I missed you too, Em,” she said while Emily nodded and smiled, trying to catch her breath. “Were you able to get them?”

“Get what?” asked Aurin.

“Tickets to the national championships,” said Luna. “Demand has been ridiculously high this year.”

“I got them,” grinned Emily, finally standing up straight. “Three tickets! One for me, one for Gardner and one for Jimmy.”

“Brilliant,” said Luna, clapping rapidly and bouncing up and down. Innogon joined in with Luna’s merriment despite not knowing what was being said, having been too busy spitting water at Quetzel.

“I offered to get one for Hannah, but she said she couldn’t afford it anymore. I did say I would pay for it until she was able to get back on her feet, but she declined. She said that between leaving Hazelton and everything else, it wouldn’t be the right time.”

“Makes sense,” shrugged Aurin. “No point pushing her if she doesn’t want to. At least she made the effort to show up to the Hazelton matches. I’m sure she got more than a few dirty looks from the rest of the crowd.”

“How’s your training going, Aurin?” asked Emily. “You being the runner up in the tournament and the Saviour of Hazelton must pile on the pressure.”

“Pressure? Me? Nah, it’s all good,” lied Aurin. Truthfully, he was terrified that an unlucky draw would see him eliminated early and he could think of nothing worse than that. Tobias would no doubt be as disappointed in him as he would have been in himself.

“Does that mean you’ve hatched the egg?” asked Emily.

“If he has a Zeera, I certainly haven’t seen it,” laughed Luna loudly, sounding surprisingly convincing in her attempted cover up.

“That’s a shame,” sighed Emily. “It would have been nice to see that big grey giant of a dinosaur be reborn as a more…pleasant Minakai. Would he be pleasant? I don’t know, I’m sure you would raise him well in any case.”

“One day, I’m sure he’ll get to make his debut,” said Aurin.

“Well, I just wanted to say hello to you both,” said Emily. “I’m going to go and meet Jimmy for lunch. I’ll let you two get back to whatever it was you were getting to.”

“Meeting Jimmy for lunch?” asked Aurin with a raised eyebrow as Emily scurried away.

“You’re as oblivious now as you were when I kept trying to make it clear that I liked you,” sighed Luna, shaking her head before rapping her knuckles on Aurin’s forehead. “Minakai on the brain, that’s why, isn’t it?”

“Speaking of, I wanted to ask you something important.”

“What, are you going to propose?” asked Luna, sticking her tongue out. “We’re too young to get married.”

“No, that’ll come later,” said Aurin, making Luna blush. “I was talking about Minakai again. Do you want to meet Zeera?”

“Yes!” squealed Luna, excitedly.

The dismissed all of their Minakai except for Shamtile and Innogon and made their way out of town and back to the ranch where they could see Kyle feeding the river-dwellers in the distance. One of the overeager Doripper almost caught his hand upon leaping for some fish guts. Luna was relieved to see that it wasn’t her Doripper.

“Shamtile,” said Aurin, “you’re on watch duty. If there seems to be anyone coming up the path then alert us, alright?”

Shamtile gave Aurin a salute and crawled along the ground on all fours to the edge of the ranch where he stayed perfectly still, trying to focus on his tremorsense ability. Confident that Zeera wouldn’t be seen, he summoned his newest Minakai all the way from Sule Scrin.

Upon the flash of light fading, Luna’s eyes and mouth were all wide in awe. Zeera gave her his usual sneer, but made no moves to hurt her. His temper was remarkably well contained from when he was first hatched and Aurin no longer believed him a danger, provided that he was being watched. One day, he might even be able to live at the ranch unsupervised without the fear of him mauling any visitors.

“Amazing,” said Luna, her voice so light that she barely emitted a sound. “He’s…so tall.”

“Still shorter than in his past life,” laughed Aurin. “I don’t think I would have a hope in controlling him if he was five times the size.”

Zeera grunted, knowing almost nothing about his previous form outside of a few comments his tamer had uttered. Aurin had deliberately kept things vague in case, but it wouldn’t have mattered either way. Zeera didn’t care how strong he once was, he simply wanted to use the power that he had now and prove himself the strongest Minakai.

“Ludonia’s a whole different game now,” said Luna, still in disbelief about the power Zeera exuded.

“As powerful as he is, he’s not invincible,” said Aurin. “We still have a lot of training to do if we want any shot at the top.”

“And imagine what it would be like at the top. Tobias has an epic Minakai of his own, his Arusom, and you have a Zeera. The crowd wouldn’t believe what they’re seeing, would they? Has there ever been two epic Minakai battling each other in the Bretonian championships?”

“Recently? No. But it has happened before.”

“And maybe it’ll happen again…if you can beat me, of course.”

Zeera let out a roar, shocking Luna and Innogon who both took a few steps back.

Aurin chuckled heartily. “That’s his way of telling you to bring it on.”