Briar remained at the fire until the sun started to rise. She didn’t move from that spot the entire time, as she was trying to hold on to her dream. Unfortunately, she barely remembered anything from it. The only thing she remembered with any clarity was when she face-planted the ground.
Her dream had affected her more than she cared to admit, even if she didn’t know why. Even though she had already forgotten most of it, she still remembered how much it all hurt.
It was times like this when she wished she could still remember a lot of her old life. She barely remembered anything at this point, and she could feel more things slipping as time went on.
That scared her more than she cared to admit. She knew that she always struggled with remembering things, but that felt completely different from actively feeling the memories slip away.
She’d usually ignore it, but she could feel a void growing within her, making it rather hard to ignore. She had always managed to stay apathetic in her old life, and all these emotions were overwhelming her. How are you supposed to deal with being scared, let alone being happy?
She came back to herself when she felt a warm spot on her arm. She glanced down, noticing she had been digging her nails into her arm. She had reopened one of her cuts, and a red spot was growing larger with every passing moment on the bandage.
She pulled her hand away from her arm, and went back to staring into the fire. It was another strange thing. Her arm. She could vividly remember her slicing her arm in her dream, but that didn’t explain how her arm got all cut up.
Her nails weren’t nearly long or sharp enough to do that. At least, not yet, anyway. So how had she managed to cut herself? There wasn’t even anything sharp enough to do that in the tent.
She let out a sigh, before shifting around. Her eyes remained fixed on a stick in the fire, watching as it slowly burned in half. She watched as it tumbled through the air for the barest of moments, before it hit the ground and sent up a shower of sparks. She wondered if that’s what she looked like in her dream when she hit the ground.
The sky was beginning to lighten up when everyone else started to rouse. Malik had let the fire die out over the past hour, so all that remained were a few embers. Briar didn’t move from her spot at the fire when everyone came out for breakfast.
She got a few odd looks, but nobody asked about it. At this point, they had probably just accepted that she was weird. Malik did pull Thea over and tell her about what happened, which Briar overheard courtesy of her wolf ears, but that was presumably only because she was the leader of the party.
They eventually packed up camp and started heading back. Briar tried to keep acting like she was lost in thought, but it was hard. Not even five minutes after they started back, she had already been distracted by her surroundings, any thoughts of her dream nowhere to be found.
She started thinking about her situation in its entirety. She had wolf features because she had, as near as she could figure, jumped into the wolf’s body. She was human-shaped because…she remembered being human? That didn’t make sense.
Besides, if she got wolf features from the wolf, what had she gained from the floating lights? She didn’t remember them all too well, but she knew she had consumed at least a few. Her mind ran through everything that had happened since then, settling on something weird Finn had said.
He said something about a ‘pacifying aura’? Was that what she had gained? Wait, in the first place, how could she remember that? She had a horrible memory. In fact, strangely enough, ever since she came here, her memory had been nearly perfect.
Well, at least there was that. Though, thinking of Finn had reminded her of the sword in his room, which in turn reminded her of the thytriam she had and how it had red specks in it instead of being completely turquoise.
Finn had said that thytriam was believed to be pure mana, so did that mean the red specks weren’t mana? So what did that make it? And was it possibly to mix the two to make the thytriam a nice purple color?
Though, that raised a very good question. Finn had said that just the amount used to make his sword was enough to bankrupt a small country. So, how exactly did a smith in what she was assuming was a small town get so much of it?
With a quick mental check, she counted out around fifty ingots. That’s…not right. Her imagination started going wild, picturing people coming after her because of what she had. Honestly, after thinking about it for a moment, it was likely to actually happen.
After all, there’s almost no way some random smith got his hand on so much thytriam alone, and the people he worked with would probably try to get it back. It also wouldn’t be too hard for them to ask around and discover who had killed him.
For the first time since coming here, Briar felt a small spike of fear. There were two ways for her to get through this. The first involved surrounding herself with people who would fight for her. She didn’t particularly care for this method, as she disliked other people. She liked being in control, and not leaving things to others.
That left getting stronger. This option also had its own problem, however. Usually, whenever you want to get stronger, you focus down one path. A swordsman would focus on learning how to wield a sword, while a mage focused on magic.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Briar hated that. She wanted to be able to do all of it, but she also knew that it was much harder to do so. To be able to effectively use two different styles in tandem with each other required much more skill than simply learning to do both styles individually.
But then again, since when had she cared if things were hard. She only cared if it was something she wanted or not. And mastering every style she could is what she wanted. After all, she had already started designing a weapon that could be used for every type of person.
Though if she wanted a hammer, she’d probably need to incorporate moving parts into it, along with a lot more locking sections and joints. Is enchanting a thing? Hopefully, because she’d also need to toss in a few enchantments for the weapon to be extra durable and heavy. Could enchantments be turned on and off easily? More things to puzzle out.
----------------------------------------
Briar had been quiet the entire walk back, which was what she had expected, but the fact that she looked lost in thought was what concerned Thea. Malik had pulled her over that morning to tell her that Briar had somehow injured herself. He commented that it looked like a knife wound, leading to Thea checking if any of their knives had been disturbed.
Not finding anything off, she was left to puzzle out how exactly Briar had managed to injure herself. Her nails didn’t seem sharp enough to do anything, unless she was in her giant wolf form.
Just thinking about that made her shudder. When they had arrived at the goblin encampment, they were greeted with a massacre. They were immediately on edge, praying that they wouldn’t have to fight whatever had caused all of this mayhem.
When she laid her eyes on Briar, she experienced a massive wave of vertigo. There was this very obviously deadly beast laying there asleep, but her body absolutely refused to fight it. She noticed the same reaction from everyone else.
She hated it.
They decided to make camp there, and keep an eye on what was obviously Briar. When she awoke and approached them, there was a war being fought in all of them. They all wanted to get ready to defend themselves, but their body’s wouldn’t let them.
Briar then proceeded to plop her head into Thea’s lap, leaving her confused as to what she should do. She thought back to a stray dog that had lived in the same area she did when she was growing up. It enjoyed being scratched right behind its ears, so Thea tried the same with Briar.
Judging from the low grumble of contentment she released, Thea was certain she had made the right choice. Watching Briar change back was strange though. It looked as if it would be extremely painful, but it seemed like she didn’t even realize it had happened.
It made her even more curious as to what Briar was. At this point, it was all the more clear that she wasn’t a Fenrir wolf, but she wasn’t a Feral either. Finn had said that he had an idea, but he didn’t elaborate on that, leaving Thea in the dark.
Hopefully, when she made the report to him, he’d tell her. She liked to think she had earned at least that much. Either way, they’d have to make it back to town before any of that could happen.
----------------------------------------
The trip back was uneventful. There was a brief section where the plants almost seemed alive, but other than that, nothing happened. Briar remained lost in thought the whole time, and Thea was planning what to tell Finn.
When they made it back to the guild building, Thea headed off to the back to give her report to the Guild Master while Jorreck took Briar upstairs to her room. Upon making it to Finn’s office, she collapsed in one of the available chairs.
Finn glanced up from the documents he was filling out, giving her a once over. He nodded, set his pen down, leaned back, and waited for her to give him a report of all that happened. And, after a brief pause, she did.
She tried to go as in-depth as possible, hoping that if she gave enough information, he would be more likely to figure out if his theory was correct. It took her around half an hour to give a detailed report of absolutely everything Briar had gotten up to, though that was mainly because she included how everyone reacted to it as well.
When she finished, Finn sat there for a minute, contemplating all that she had said. Eventually, he nodded, looked her in the eye, and began to speak.
“A few decades ago, there was a joint effort between the humans and the elves to determine whether or not every living being had a soul. It was difficult to test, as there was no way to actually see the soul at the time, but they prevailed.
“Upon their success at determining that a soul exists, they began to see what would happen if you manipulated it. They began experimenting on living people, as the soul would drift away upon death. Naturally, they did this all illegally, as experimenting on sentient life is banned in every country.
“There was a hypothetical scenario proposed by one of the scientists, positing that if a soul had enough empty space inside of it, it would attempt to assimilate other souls in an effort to repair itself.
“He called them ‘Shattered Souls’, though the more common nickname for them was ‘Shifter.’ Because the physical body and the soul are interlinked, shifters began to take on aspects of whatever they assimilated into their soul.
“This could be as simple as memories, all the way to extensive physical modifications. And that is what I believe our young Briar to be. From what you stated earlier, we can safely assume Briar has assimilated the Fenrir your party was chasing, and presumably multiple spirits.”
Thea sat in stunned silence for a beat, as she tried to sort through the info dump she just received. She had multiple questions, though she figured she’d start with the most pressing.
“So, if Briar’s a shifter, then does that mean she was…experimented on?” It was an honest question. It went without saying that when Finn said ‘experimented’, he meant ‘tortured.’ She couldn’t help but picture small little Briar being tortured.
“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it. The scientist determined that it is - theoretically - possible for shifters to occur naturally. The odds of such a thing happening, however, were deemed so small as to be practically non-existent. That is what Briar appears to be, however, so I wouldn’t worry about underground research labs out here.”
Thea sat on that for a moment. “So, do you think she remembers what happened before?” Another tricky question, as she didn’t know if Briar had any latent trauma from whatever happened.
“I do not believe so. At the very least, if she does, she doesn’t remember much, or doesn’t fully understand it. You do not need to be walking on eggshells around her.”
They sat there in silence for a while, no words passing between them. Finn suddenly leaned forward and clapped his hands together, startling Thea.
“Now, I do have to get back to work. This paperwork won’t fill itself out…unfortunately.”
Thea stood up, and made her way to leave. Finn called out just as she passed the doorway, causing her to stop for a moment.
“And, Thea? Please keep Briar from eating anything that’s still alive. It could lead to…horrifying results.”
There was something in his voice that made her shudder. She glanced back, and, for a moment, she didn’t see the frail guild master. She saw a man haunted by his past.