“Are you sure?” asked Isaak, looking around the darkening forest.

“It’s fine. I sleep outside all the time,” Elijah said, sitting beside the small fire he’d built. Artemis was draped over his lap, sound asleep. Because she was so much larger than any housecat had a right to be, she didn’t quite fit in his lap, but that clearly didn’t bother her very much. And if Elijah was honest, he didn’t mind, either. “I spent an entire winter sleeping outside once. Don’t recommend it one little bit. Of course, I’ve got a pretty awesome treehouse now.”

“You live in a treehouse?”

“I think I’m selling it short here. Not a house in a tree. A house made out of a tree. That’s a very important distinction, I’m pretty sure,” Elijah pointed out. As he spoke, he idly scratched behind the cat’s ear.

“What are you?” asked Isaak.

“Uh…a human being. Well, as much of a human as any of us are anymore,” Elijah answered. He tilted his head to the side and scratched his chin. “Though with cultivation in the mix, I’m not really sure how true that is. I mean, I feel human. But Body of Wood doesn’t really sound like a very human thing to have. More tree territory, if I’m honest. Or Pinocchio. Pre-“real boy” shenanigans, of course.”

“I was…I was talking about your class,” Isaak clarified.

“Oh. I’m a Druid. Well, technically, that’s my archetype, but that’s good enough.”

“Does that mean you’re a protector of nature?” asked the young man. “Or is it more like the Celtic druids?”

“The first,” Elijah answered, reaching into his bag. He still had some travel rations in there, down near the bottom. So, he reached in almost up to his shoulder and grabbed the jerky wrapped in wax paper. When he pulled it out, he offered some to Isaak. “Jerky? I’m not sure what kind of animal it’s from, but it’s not bad. A bit peppery for my taste, but it’s better than eating crab every day.”

“Crab?”

“Yeah. Used to love it. But fun fact about crab – when you eat it every single day for more than a year, it kind of loses its luster, if you know what I mean. Maybe if I’d had proper spices, but those are hard to come by out in the wilderness. Best I could do was some salt from boiling seawater, wild garlic, and a few odds and ends I gathered,” Elijah babbled. “It was edible, but only just. Didn’t really help that I’ve never been much of a cook. My dad used to tell me I could burn water, and he wasn’t that far off.”

As Elijah spoke, Isaak tore a chunk of the jerky away and scooted a bit closer to the fire. It was still on the tail end of winter, and though the temperatures had begun to rise, nights remained quite chilly.

“I don’t know anybody else who can do what you do. Are you on the power ranking list?” asked Isaak.

Elijah considered lying, and his good sense told him to do just that. However, he’d never been much for dishonesty, especially with someone who had saved his life earlier that day. Besides, the notion of constantly lying about who he was just left a bad taste in his mouth. So, he said, “Yeah. Top ten, actually. What about you?”

He hadn’t even checked, but given the boy’s obvious power, it seemed likely.

“I was in the nineties for a little while after the tower,” he stated. “But I haven’t hunted that much lately. I just…”

The young man trailed off, and Elijah understood precisely why. It didn’t take a psychiatrist to recognize the inevitable consequences of the trauma the boy had been through.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it,” Elijah said.

For a long moment, Isaak just stared into the crackling fire. Then, in a low voice, he said, “I was the only survivor. I shouldn’t have made it, either. I was the first to go down. Too slow. My shield didn’t hold. The monster…I think it was a werewolf or something…it was too fast, and it targeted me first. Stored Soul saved me, and when I woke up, everyone was already dead. But the monster, it was wounded. Barely alive. I killed it, and I got the rewards.” He laughed harshly. “A stupid sword I couldn’t even use.”

“I saw it.”

“Ridiculous thing, right?” Isaak said, shaking his head. “After that, everyone started calling me a hero. Someone said I was like Atlas, standing with the world on his shoulders, and it stuck. Me. A titan. Even stupider than the sword. Before the world changed, I was a nobody. Worse than nobody. I spent all my time playing online games and avoiding...everything. But now I’m supposed to be a hero or something. I don’t know how to do that.”

“Me neither,” Elijah admitted.

“What? You saved me. You saved Artemis. You are a hero,” Isaak insisted, leaning forward, his eyes glistening.

Elijah just shook his head. “I’m definitely not what you think I am, kid,” he said. Then, he stood, careful not to wake the cat cradled in his arms. He stepped toward Isaak and deposited Artemis beside him. The cat woke up and yowled in his direction, but he ignored it. “I’m going for a walk. I’ll make sure nothing messes with you.”

“What? Did I say…”

Elijah ignored the rest of the boy’s question, instead slipping into the trees and shifting into his predator form. He had Guise of the Unseen wrapped around him within a couple of steps. But he didn’t go anywhere. Instead, he just turned around and watched over Isaak, who looked incredibly small and young, sitting there beside the fire.

The boy was also naïve.

The fact that he thought of Elijah as a hero was laughable, especially considering that not that long ago, he’d killed four people for no more of a crime than hunting a bear and picking a mushroom.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

There was more to it than that, he knew. Far more. On top of his trauma and his tendency to anthropomorphize animals, he suspected that his attitude was being affected by something far greater than himself. Was that the effect of his archetype? Or was it something more ephemeral? Had he truly gone wild? Or was he simply making excuses for indulging in his most violent tendencies?

The truth was that he didn’t know, and that scared him. Because for better or worse, Elijah knew he had the power to become something incredibly scary. Without rules or restraint, he would be a monster not unlike the Voxx. Just pure destruction in human form. After leaving Norcastle, he’d been patting himself on the back for taking Jess’s advice and refusing to rise to the mayor’s unspoken challenge. But in retrospect, it was easy to leave the town behind because he just didn’t care enough to react.

Pride wasn’t Elijah’s sin, after all.

But his frustration had left him primed to react poorly when he’d come upon the bear’s corpse, and he’d given in to the anger.

The rest was history, and not the sort any sane person would look upon favorably.

As Elijah considered his actions – and how to avoid falling into that trap again – he watched the young man fall asleep. Artemis pretended like she was asleep as well, but in his draconid form, Elijah could tell that she was awake and alert, likely to guard Isaak from any potential predators.

It made him think of the panther who’d died what felt like a lifetime ago, which brought his thoughts back to the bear. Neither had deserved to die, but in retrospect, he could understand the motivation to hunt them. The world was a dangerous place, and unless humanity grabbed at whatever power it could, people would die. If not to the dangerous wildlife, then to the non-human settlements like Ironshore. Some of those people were assuredly aggressive.

Even so, Elijah couldn’t stomach the idea of hunting something for no more reason than to gain experience. Doing so for food was acceptable. For defense, too. Even for dominance. But just for experience? It just left him feeling queasy, and for reasons he couldn’t quite articulate. He only knew he didn’t like it.

To distract himself from that, Elijah focused on something he’d not let himself acknowledge while with Isaak. Since leaving Norcastle, he’d gained three more levels. The first was when he’d killed the four hunters, and the other two had come in the dimensional rift. Normally, three levels wouldn’t have excited him – after all, it wasn’t as if he needed to allocate his attribute points anymore – but in this case, he’d finally hit the level forty-five threshold. And that meant that he’d gotten a new spell.

Essence of the Lion

Channel the might of the lion, increasing Strength attribute by ten (10) points. Usable on allies.

It was a familiar format, largely because he had similar enhancements meant to augment his other attributes. The lone holdout was ethera, and he wasn’t certain if he’d ever get something like that. However, he could already think of tons of situations where having the extra Strength that came with Essence of the Lion would come in handy. The only drawback was that he couldn’t use all of his enhancements at once.

Yet, if he ever found himself fighting as a member of a group, he could pick and choose the enhancements he bestowed upon other people, tailoring the augmentations to the person’s archetype, class, or role.

And who knew? Perhaps at level fifty he would gain another slot.

Once he finished examining the new spell – which didn’t take long, considering how similar it was to the others in the Essence line – Elijah decided to take a look at his full status for the first time in quite a while.

Name

Elijah Hart

Level

45

Archetype

Druid

Class

Animist

Specialization

N/A

Alignment

N/A

Strength

67 (57)

Dexterity

79 (49)

Constitution

57 (47)

Ethera

55

Regeneration

69 (49)

Attunement

Nature

Cultivation Stage: Cultivator

Body

Core

Mind

Soul

Wood

Hatchling

Quartz

Neophyte

His attributes had continued to grow by one point for every level, and combined with his equipment and enhancement spells, he felt like he was in a good place. And in his draconid form, it was even more dramatic.

But he had to wonder about the other people on the ladder. Were their attributes just as impressive? He knew his archetype was rare, and he believed his class was as well. On top of that, with his Dragon Core, his enhancement spells were that much more effective. So, he felt confident that he could stand toe-to-toe with any of them, even the ones ahead of them on the list.

Yet, it stood to reason that they’d all experienced their own lucky encounters as well. Perhaps their cultivation was just as advanced as his. Or maybe more so. The reality was that he had no idea, and so far, he’d yet to find an opportunity to answer the questions strangling his thoughts.

And perhaps he never would.

The world was a big place, after all. What were the odds that he’d actually run into another high ranker?

Slim, Elijah knew.

But still, he expected that it would eventually happen. Power drew power, and strength challenged strength. It was naïve in the extreme to suspect that there wouldn’t be friction between those high-ranking people. Competitive natures dictated as much, and that was discounting the possibility that someone might see their fellow people as a means of progression.

No - he knew he would run into them at some point. He just needed to be ready for when the inevitable came to pass.

Until then, though, he had other things on his mind. He still needed to find Alyssa, and despite having spent the past months exploring and fighting his way across hundreds of miles, he still didn’t feel any closer to accomplishing that goal.

But he would.

He believed that because he didn’t want to contemplate any other possibility. With that at the forefront of his mind, Elijah switched back to his human form and returned to the campsite. There, he settled down to watch over the now-sleeping young man and his cat.