“River, will you give me the details of what happened now?” I ask the silent lizard-man walking next to me.

Of course, master, he replies readily. Shall I tell everyone, or just you? I consider the question for a moment.

“Might as well be everyone in our group,” I tell him. He subsequently starts to explain the whole of the night’s events in far greater detail than before. Partway through the explanation, I realise that he’s in pain so step closer to him to heal his burnt throat and mouth. He sends gratitude down the link when I finish, and continues his explanation.

At the end, I eye both Joy and the herbalist speculatively. I was half-expecting Joy and the Warriors to try to betray River and me as soon as they came back into contact with their village, but in fact they did the reverse. They managed to convince their respective groups to at least give River the space to challenge the shaman instead of attacking him on sight, which would presumably have been the expected reaction.

River finishes his story about how he’d used Bastet’s fire-breath to defeat the invisible creatures – ‘spirits’ or not – which had attacked him, only to then be caught a second time. It’s good to know that it’s not necessary for the origin of the ability to be in close proximity to the Bound temporarily borrowing it. Though we’ve experimented with it a couple of times since I received that upgrade to Tame, it was always with both Bound near each other.

As he describes how he spotted my arrow piercing the shaman’s skull and felt the bonds holding him loosen, taking advantage of the moment to rip out the Pathwalker’s throat, he looks at me a little nervously.

“What is it?” I ask as his words trail away.

You are not angered? I frown.

“At what?”

That I killed Shaman? I thought that you wished to take your revenge against her.

I shrug.

“Honestly, while I was angry at the shaman, and the herbalist, and everyone even remotely connected to Lathani’s kidnapping, ultimately, it’s not me who holds any rights to revenge.” I look over at Lathani, padding almost at my heel, her body stiff. “How do you feel about this?” And then I suddenly realise something. “Oh Lathani, how are you feeling about having the herbalist here? I’m sorry – I should have checked that you’d be OK with it first.”

I definitely feel remorseful, and actually pause for a moment to crouch next to her so we can be eye to eye. We’re out of the village by this point and within the treeline, probably almost far enough away from the village to make camp. However, when everyone else realises I’ve stopped, they stop with me.

The two Pathwalkers, walking near the back of the group, surrounded by the four Warriors I currently have Bound, almost run into us. Looking up at the one who stopped a moment before she would have tripped over me, I see it’s the herbalist. Her gaze isn’t on me, but on the nunda juvenile in front of her. It’s clear from her wide eyes that she recognises who Lathani is.

I glare at her, protective anger rising in my belly once more.

Joy, move her away. I don’t want her bothering Lathani until I’ve found out how she’s dealing with the situation.

As you command, leader, the Pathwalker replies with more deference than I’ve ever heard from her before. My eyebrows rise slightly in surprise as she puts action to word, herding the herbalist away before the other Pathwalker can say a word.

I look back at Lathani, only to see her gazing over at the herbalist. The Bond between us writhes with emotions that are not expressed at all in her body language. To all outward appearances, she’s normal, but I know that that’s not true. I can feel eyes from all around watching us. This isn’t the ideal situation to have a heart to heart. I push myself up to a standing position, putting a hand on Lathani’s head and starting to stroke comfortingly.

“Alright everyone, let’s make camp here. Bastet, Catch, please direct the groups to make camp. River, Lathani, you stay here with me.”

My Bound obey with alacrity – I think they are all just as tired as I am. I take a moment to send a message to Spine and Trinity, letting them know where to find us. We’re up-valley from the village, so hopefully there isn’t any risk that they might try to go through the samurans to get to us.

“Right, now we’re a bit more private, Lathani, talk to me. What’s going through your mind?” I ask gently. River shifts uneasily, so I send him a look and a flick of emotion through the Bond which make him settle a little. The nunda juvenile herself shifts from paw to paw, then presses into me.

I don’t know, pack leader, she says finally. I can’t express it. Instead, she just pushes her emotions at me through the Bond. It’s a bit like Bastet used to do, but there, it was more that she chose which emotions she wanted to send, a precursor to talking. This is more like Lathani wants me to interpret her emotions for her, so she doesn’t have to.

I’m not a therapist, but part of me can’t help but think that that is an unhealthy habit to get into. After all, after my mother died, my therapist was all about coming to terms with one’s own emotions. Owning them. If I interpret Lathani’s emotions for her, how is she supposed to do that?

“Alright, well how do you feel about having just been in the village where you were held?” She thinks for a moment.

Nothing. I didn’t recognise it at all. Even the smell was different. When I was there last time, I was held in a place which was either dim or dark, full of the smells of plants and animal parts, and things that made me want to sneeze. Where we have just been was nothing like I remember. Except her, she finishes, using her nose and whiskers to indicate the herbalist who, along with Joy, is sitting in the middle of the space, watching everyone else build the shelter. I narrow my eyes at that, but decide to tackle it later. At least Joy is helping – I see her focussing and branches weaving together to create the roof.

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“OK. And how do you feel about the shaman dying?” This makes Lathani pause to think a little longer.

I don’t know. I am happy…and yet I am angry at the same time. And why do I still feel a little afraid of her? My heart aches at the confusion and frustration in the nunda’s mental voice.

“It’s OK to have multiple emotions about the same thing,” I tell her. I honestly never thought that I’d end up channelling my old therapist so much in such a short time. “Can you work out why you’re feeling those different emotions?”

I am happy that she is dead, Lathani says with vehemence. She did horrible things to me which hurt and made me feel ‘wrong’. It’s only been recently that I’ve started feeling right again – and only when I joined the group properly. Mother taught me how to see my pathways and I can still see what a mess many of them are in.

She burned almost all my minor pathways, did you know that? Destroyed them so that they will never grow again as they once were. And at the same time, she force-grew my major pathways so they are now bigger than they should be. Mother told me what would have happened – I would have become very powerful, but it would have half-destroyed me each time to use that power and I wouldn’t have really been able to control it. A blunt weapon rather than a graceful hunter.

I had never asked Kalanthia for more details about what had happened to Lathani at the hands of the lizard-folk – maybe I should have. The nunda’s words don’t make a huge amount of sense when put in the context of my own Energy-chanel network: the mandala seems very balanced with no evident major or minor pathways. However, from the images Lathani is sending with her words, the same is not true of her.

It looks more like her system was originally more like her cardiovascular system: major veins and arteries led from the Core which appears to be somewhere in her chest, branching off into smaller and smaller channels. As she spoke about the shaman’s work, I saw an image of those small capillaries one by one being extinguished. Then, as she talked about the major pathways, I saw those major arteries being doubled, tripled in thickness. Sure enough, what was left was a very crude structure, nothing but thick cables running from her Core to her extremities.

I still have much to learn about Energy channels, but I can kind of imagine what might happen with a network like that – the thick cables would allow a lot of power down them all at once, but it doesn’t surprise me that there would be little control.

“So that’s the happiness,” I say finally, getting us back on topic. “What about the anger?”

I wanted to kill her myself, Lathani says immediately. I wanted to taste her blood on my claws, to rip out her throat with my teeth. River shifts again, unease and guilt seeping through the Bond between us.

“Do you feel angry at River for killing her?” I ask carefully. It’s an awkward question for sure, but one that needs a response. Otherwise, it will just fester between the two of them.

Lathani looks over at River, then shifts away from my hand. I let it drop to the side, watching closely as she prowls over to him. He looks nervous, but doesn’t move as she approaches. He flinches a little as she rears up, placing her front paws on his shoulders.

She’s got big, I think absently as I watch them. Like that, she’s actually taller than him, her head easily reaching my height. Her paws are now the size of side plates, and still look a bit big for her body – big as she already is, she’s not finished growing yet.

For a moment, they just stare at each other solemnly, then Lathani leans in and butts her head against River’s crocodilian jaws. Then, leaving a shell-shocked lizard-man behind, Lathani pushes off his shoulder and drops down to her normal four-pawed position.

No. I like him and wouldn’t want him to have died. If he hadn’t killed the nasty lizard, he probably would have been stabbed instead.

“Alright, good to know,” I reply, feeling almost as relieved as River is right now. “As for fear, it’s understandable that you would still feel afraid of someone who hurt you like that. Now she’s gone, hopefully the fear will fade. How about the herbalist? How are you feeling, being so close to her?” Then, almost reluctantly, I ask the next question. “Do you want to kill her too?”

Lathani eyes me and then River.

I do not have good memories of her, she says slowly. She forced me to drink potions which tasted horrible, and burnt my insides. She ignored every cry for help I ever made, blocked my attempt to communicate from her mind. She did not cause as much direct damage to me as the shaman, but she certainly hurt me just as much.

River is tense next to me, negative emotions flickering both through his spikes and the Bond. Lathani’s gaze rests thoughtfully on him.

I want her to hurt, to be punished, yet I think that friend River would be hurt if I were to kill her as I ache to do.

“We’re talking about your feelings here, Lathani,” I say gently. “Not River’s.”

If it were just myself and my mother, I would choose to kill her, Lathani says with finality. I would choose to kill them all and have their blood bathe away my hurt and the damage they caused me. Apparently being genocidal is a species trait. Then again, they are cats. Kind of. However, I do not wish to hurt my friend. The nasty lizard is dead. As long as the other nasty lizard is punished in some way, and I am not required to be her friend, I can live with her survival.

It’s a mature way of looking at the situation, far more mature than I would have expected from the teenage nunda who followed after us when we went to rescue Fenrir, putting our rescue attempt at risk, or the same nunda who unilaterally invoked companion Bond and put me in conflict with her mother, almost leading to my own death. Then again, maybe she’s finally learning that actions have consequences, and in this situation has decided that the consequences of hurting someone she’s grown to care about are not worth the pleasure that taking her revenge will have.

I applaud her – honestly, I’m not sure I could have said the same thing if it was me who had been hurt and permanently changed. Especially when River was someone who hurt her at first too.

“That’s a very mature viewpoint,” I say to Lathani finally. “As for whether we’ll let the herbalist live, that’s still up in the air. If I decide that she has to die, I’ll let you do it, OK? Then you don’t have to feel guilty, because it’s me who made the decision, but you can still have your revenge.”

Lathani flexes her front paws so that her sharp claws slide out of their sheaths.

In that situation, I would be happy to oblige, she says darkly. Then she looks back up at me. Pack leader, I am hungry and tired. May I go rest?

“Of course,” I say. It reminds me to pull out some meat for everyone. “River, wait here a moment,” I say, then go with Lathani to do just that. Everyone gathered around the carcasses, even Joy and the herbalist deigning to join in with the group, I return to where River is waiting for me, nerves jangling in my stomach like a whole flock of butterflies is in there.

“OK, River, I think now is the time.”

The time for what, master?

“The time to set you free.”