Tim’s vision was blurred by the wet starlight of his peel portal. Unreal velocity hurled him toward a wall in the forest. Focus!

The imposing depth of the power working against him shot through him without asking if he was ready. His former ways could not help him here. This game didn’t have a reset. He had to win with one life. To do that he had to evolve. And he had to do it in the blink of an eye.

Sometimes stupid scary produces stupid simple answers. As though all he had to do was blink, compound vision replaced his single perspective. His sight on the peel-trail expanded into a 365 panorama. The tree he feared was now clear in view. His next step was slowing down? Time and weakness against the peel’s g-force required an instant decision. He got one chance before his overpowered skill impaled him like a fork through a pancake on the upcoming branch.

Tim activated Mist. His trajectory halted. His form ballooned into a puff of mist. He splat across thousands of pinpoints from the tree trunk to its canopy. Icy pain and surreal fear at his new form stunned him from reaching his next step. His heartbeat hammered. Short, sharp breaths failed to fill his need for sufficient oxygen.

Danger - Form integrity is failing.

Tim pulled in on the outer rim of his form, collecting mana and pieces of his aura into blobs he could snowball into more. He wrapped them closer, piecing himself together while S’Trace sliced his sword through a chint arm. The second slice freed head from body, then the cranium thudded unceremoniously, rolling a line of white and red aura blood in the grass. Light sparkled in its thickness, drawing Tim toward its nutrients like a dying man to water. The red notification dulled to orange-brown, but the warning of form integrity remained. His left side reformed first, allowing him to lean into that side and fall into another section of himself. It stuck to his hip and rolled off on his leg as he slid out of the tree toward the pool of blood aura. What started as a slow motion, tip toe edge on one leg of a chair tipping, teetered over into a face dive.

The tak-til, tak tiiiil whine filled the forest as they swarmed for their prize.

Tim plunged into an open gulf of sticky warm goo. Quickly lost himself inside and had to reform gills before it suffocated him. Aura absorbed into his wounds yet plummeted to a depth surprising him in its sign of his deep empty well. A switch triggered open a doorway to a room he hadn’t realized was waiting inside him. Waiting for the Hunter to find it and fill it with the power needed to roll back its entrance.

Aura Fill (AF) = 9%

Now able to measure Aura and distribute across six areas: head, torso and all four limbs.

What had been foggy before was sharp as a sunray off a mirror. Where that reflection was too bright to read before, he now saw through it and gazed at its beauty. The aura blood from the chint filled out into his limbs and eased some of the pain in his back. His nuclear migraine had him on the verge of losing his lunch, but he forced deep breaths and held it back through willpower.

“Get up!” S’Trace shouted. A chint stabbed its bulbous tail end and its three-foot stinger at the m’bochen. A peel carved pink aura in a sun ray around S’Trace’s hooking fist. The sudden velocity outmatched the chint’s strike. It popped the creature in the abdomen, right above its hard shelled bottom half. While it rebounded backwards, two more split around it in a flurry of legs and alien agility.

An urchin struck S’Trace in the back. Lucky catch while he was distracted. Now threatening to have broken S’Trace in a critical moment where defense and strength would be needed beyond his former levels.

Tim staggered off balance, his legs not quite full and stable.

S’Trace sliced his sword up through the arm pit of the nearest chint. His secondary move wasn’t going to get to the other in time.

Tim cast Battleground and Brother’s Keeper.

S’Trace’s dodge boosted enough to avoid the jabbing tail.

Tim pulled out his aura bow with a new arrow and ripped it off. The tip burrowed through the second chint. Thud.

The arrow punctured its chest with stunning power. S’Trace only needed a heartbeat more time, and that was it. His secondary slash lopped the tail tip mid-strike. Tim’s second arrow punched a hole through cheek and splattered aura from the back of its skull.

A fresh wave of Brother’s Keeper aura mixed with a flash of green scales across S’Trace. The wave repulsed the tree urchin enough for Tim to rip it off S’Trace’s back. Its ring of inflamed sores oozed white venom through holes in S’Trace’s shirt. Tim shielded the panting m’bochen.

Helping him stand, Tim spotted a path around the ridge behind the trees, presenting obstacles on both sides.

Two more chints burst from the shrubs.

Tim wrapped his urchin cloak around S’Trace. “Peel.”

Their combined skill carved a tunnel and sucked them inside. Tree urchins sprang out of the canopy as though vomited from the ocean. The peel tunnel sliced them up and melted them off to bathe the tunnel in their guts. Their aura fueled the peel in a gush of new speed. He and S’Trace rocketed through the clearing and soared over a creek.

S’Trace sliced a scythe up and against the oncoming ridge. They ricocheted off the peel to straighten out into a new clearing.

Another hundred feet passed in a blink. Tim’s drifting away from S’Trace exposed him to turbulence. His arm shook as he fought against the g-force to lift a scythe. The strain was too great to only try it with his mind.

Atmosphere interference pelted him with a sharp, grating impact. Every edge drove down into the depth of his muscle, weakening his scythe stroke and compounding the problem. He landed on his back and skipped, hit a tree, and whipped around to splash in a stout bush. His weight and momentum snapped the thin branches, but the scrapes they left across his skin burned through the many gashes. He bounced once more to sprawl face-first across a weed patch.

Aura Fill (AF) at 2%.

“Get up!” S’Trace ordered on the run. “Replenish!”

Tim swathed a hand over the weeds, willing their aura into his wounds. He grabbed a handful and took a bite on his way into a sprint. The nutrients dissolved so quickly he barely had to swallow. On the next bite, strands absorbed into the wounds on his hand before he reached his mouth. AF reached 12% and climbing.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

S’Trace carved strong enough peels that Tim’s scythe swipes only had to supplement with precision. Together, their peels shot them deep enough into the forest that they lost the cracking sound of the chints. Enough tree urchins burned up in their peeling to clear their way and scourge their population enough to stop and not worry about another leaping from the trees. S’Trace wove a pre-calculated path in a sweeping pattern designed to farm the urchins for aura and depopulate the area.

When he finally stopped peeling, Tim couldn’t lift his arms to brace for the fall. He thudded onto the ground with the grace of a tossed bowling ball. AF at 1 and going nowhere.

“Good practice.” S’Trace chuckled. “But there’s no nutrients there.”

Putrid water squished out of the grass around his face. His weight inadvertently pressed the water table closest to his eye. “Too tired…to move.”

S’Trace chuckled again. “You calling it a day already?”

“I’m thin, man. The last half hour I haven’t made it past ten AF. If I eat any more of that daulin weed, I’ll throw up on your head.”

“I know it seems that way,” S’Trace said as he offered a hand. He waited for Tim to reach for help, then when he did, sufficient help lifted him to his feet. His head pulsed with pressure strong enough to make him wonder if his skull was expanding.

S’Trace offered another weed bud. “Trust me. You need to keep feeding what we’ve grown here.”

“We?”

“Well, me and my brother.”

Tim read a hint of untruth there, but he couldn’t figure out why the man would lie. S’Trace tried hiding it within the truth that his brother had been here, but the lie expelled from the fact his brother had not planted anything. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe he misunderstood. S’Trace had been a life saver, and this Peel skill was incredible, if also an incredibly steep curve to learn safely. Tim needed S’Trace to keep training him. Their co-peeling bursts were like sitting co-pilot in a fighter jet. He wasn’t going anywhere near the speed S’Trace could produce, but it was in these high-velocity bursts that Tim could focus on the nuance of fashioning sturdy and smooth edges. Sometimes he hid behind S’Trace and only exposed a limb. That gave him freedom to focus on a smaller area while also feeling through experience how to work within the trembling force of the peel tunnel.

“How much did you plant?” Tim asked

“When we arrived, this place barely had any threatening creatures, and the foliage quickly picked over for anything valuable. I wasn’t the main farmer, but I helped get it started. The forest has a life of its own.”

All of that rang as true, so the other part must have been a misunderstanding. S’Trace had been nothing but helpful, so maybe he shouldn’t assume too much out of one moment. He was exhausted… but still, Tim couldn’t fully let it go. He just didn’t know how else to expose it.

S’Trace grunted on his way to picking a daulin weed. The dirt coated root reached almost two feet long. “Come, pick as many of these as you can, then we’ll call it quits for the day. I groomed this area for the path we took to clear it, but we still shouldn’t stay out in the open long, not at this level of exhaustion.”

If it weren’t for his Foraging skill being so helpful in a pinch, Tim would have called it good and not endured the torture of bending to pull weeds. Especially when they tasted like slimy spinach. However, the results of ingestion were undeniable. He forced some down while he foraged and built his AF up to 20% by the time S’Trace called it quits.

The m’bochen led them to a one-room hut built into the side of a hill covered in overgrowth as green as the forest. Tim hadn’t realized it was there until S’Trace motioned to it. At a word, “coshef” a green aura flushed the daulin weeds surrounding it. Tim guessed that was a code word to release a trap spell he hadn’t noticed. How high of a level spell was that? The camouflage aura resonated stronger than any protection spell he’d seen.

“Did you do that?”

“I had help, but it’s been all me maintaining it.” S’Trace looked up at the azure sky and then the forest. Longing and grief permeated his aura, making it hard to read any untruth from his statement. Tim believed that he’d been alone for a while. The backstory had enough holes to keep some suspicion, though.

“We can take a break inside,” S’Trace concluded, starting for the door. “When you get up to 50 AF, I’d ask that you try a Protection spell using what you learned today. If you fall asleep, the cabin has a base trap that should keep us safe from most threats.”

“Today?” Not that he had the stamina to take on much more than staggering steps. Still, his urgency to return nagged at his spirit.

“Don’t worry. Barely any time has passed for your body. We have time. You need this if you’re going to take on the Murphy. This is an ideal break for you. We worked hard for this.”

Again, just a hint, but still a hint of untruth bled through on the ripples of his words. Didn’t he realize? “Worked hard for what, exactly?” Tim asked, trying to sound casual while wondering if he could survive outdoors if he didn’t go in with S’Trace. Was he just tired? The abundance of color in this realm sometimes made reading individual aura streams difficult. He was tempted to try, but knew he was no match for the m’bochen, and doubted he could run far enough to gain the time needed to get to AF 50 if he was also running from S’Trace.

The m’bochen turned to face Tim, stopping between him and the hut. A serious gaze leveled at Tim. “We didn’t have to invite you here.”

“Actually, I’m starting to wonder if you did. Like, where else would you find an aura mage near Squire’s Castle? How much of a coincidence was that? Now I’m here to help you with Aeu’s special potion. If you needed help, you could have just asked.”

S’Trace shook his head. “I am asking.” His face flushed with innocence, making Tim wonder if his nerves were just shot, and if he should call it good.

“I have no idea what’s going on in the origin,” S’Trace said. “Until you showed up, I was waiting for Aeu, or… or Khempal, maybe. My brother and I wandered far from home to track the vahkel. M’bochen travel in small parties and lack oversight from our main group. If we get lost, we don’t expect to be rescued. It’s on us. Be careful how you insult me, boy. Your ignorance is glowing through your cheeks.”

A strong emanation of dominance flowed from S’Trace’s aura. Truly a threat if he became an enemy. Tim’s mind busied itself trying to unravel the strands of intent and truth from error in the man’s words. Should he retract his accusation immediately and apologize, or was this the kind of aggression a bully would use to prevent investigation? They were woven so skillfully together now; it was as though Tim’s chance to discern secrets had passed. S’Trace was in full defensive mode. Which in and of itself felt damning enough. But maybe not enough to make a full break and chance survival in the woods. He still had no idea how to get back aside from an aura death, which seemed to have its own consequences. If S’Trace had been telling the truth there.

“You’re right to not be so quick to go on your own,” S’Trace said, softening with, “I also understand your suspicions. This world is a staggering change from what you knew. Don’t let your fear create untruths and run wild on fantasies with no basis in reality. Your aura is rough waters. Try not to make hasty decisions until you can control that. It’s not just you. I trained you hard, and you’re feeling the consequences. Which is why I’m not gonna make you sleep in that tree. You’ll be safe here tonight, though safer with your Protection Spell on it, if you’re willing. Consider it your way of thanking me for saving your life.”

Tim thought to argue about if he really would have died or just been returned to his body but saw his chance to smooth things over until he could try discerning the m’bochen’s spirit with less attention. “I’m sorry. Some of your story isn’t clear to me, and with me being a gate traveler at the start of the hunt, I know I have a target on my back. I–”

“I get it,” S’Trace said with a smile and patted Tim’s shoulder.

Tim flinched at first, and S’Trace noticed, but he exuded non-aggression and persisted on anyway.

“You’re razzled from the fight. Those chints and urchins are no joke. But you did well. Come on, let’s rest and I’ll tell you more of my story.”

At the thought of sleeping in the same room as this guy, Tim’s spirit bristled, like an involuntary shiver. S’Trace’s eyes narrowed slightly, as though he may have noticed. He brushed it off and calmly offered a hand for Tim to go inside. “I respect that you’re cautious, but you have nothing to worry about.” He slid his sheathed sword from his belt and offered it to Tim. “Not that I would need this to end you where you stand. Nonetheless, as a sign of my partnership.”

Tim considered the implication of accepting. It could show as weakness to take it or an insult to refuse. “No, thank you. Please. Keep your sword. Your partnership and friendship is more than enough.”

Tim smiled, and S’Trace relented with a graceful half bow.

Negotiation XP enlarged his supply by twenty percent. He was only just getting started. The list of tasks at hand grew as he gave them space in his attention. If his suspicions proved true—or even if not—he had to figure out how to fight him with his sword. On top of that: whether he really needed to fight? Could he kill the vahkel with or without S’Trace? Could he if S’Trace became his foe? How could he get back to his body safely in any and all of those scenarios…?

Listening to S’Trace’s earlier advice, he pressed out on the rough waters of his spirit, exhaling through his frustration. “Again. You’re right. I’m just beat. I might take a nap before I cast my spell.”

S’Trace chuckled and patted his back, following him in. “Rest it is.”