Several things happened at once. Dornah shoved his hammer directly into the mouth of the gator, standing straight up, to block its bite at him. It lasted all of a second before a tremendous bite force shattered the ice hammer, but it bought Dornah the time to dodge in Emara’s direction and start summoning a new hammer. Vath punched it as hard as he could in the side of the head, backed up by sixty-seven strength, his new spiked gauntlets, and the yellow of his void form laid on top of them, causing it to rock to the side with a loud growling hiss. Kaser raked its side with his new claws, and barely jumped out of the way of the retaliatory tail swipe, and Emara jumped further behind Dornah, already conjuring another bolt of lightning.

So, all in all, not as bad as it could have been. They’d taken no damage as of yet, despite the surprise vortex and the Beast’s speed. On the other hand, They’d all attacked it, some twice, and so far it had a tiny flesh wound and perhaps a bruise. This was not going to be easy.

So, they got creative. Emara was from an area of the country where gators were more common, so, though she’d never fought one before, she knew that they had a much more difficult time opening their mouths than closing them. Restricting its snout with ice became Dornah’s new job, since not even he was confident in taking a direct hit from the thing while that vortex was available. Emara and Vath both aimed their bolts at its eyes, forcing it to flinch and focus on defense; and Vath and Kaser together nipped at either side of it, emulating the wolves they were descended from. Neither could do any great damage, but it couldn’t focus on either without exposing itself. They were also hoping that Kaser would find an opening to its belly, and Vath’s repeated blows to the head were certainly rattling it.

It took over an hour, and several wounds among them (thankfully non-fatal) before they exhausted it enough that Dornah was able to trap its mouth. Icy layer after icy layer covered it, and he threw his hefty body on top, holding it closed physically as it bucked and thrashed. Vath kept pounding its head; it was already bleeding out of its ears, so the blows were adding up. Emara didn’t dare to use lightning while they were touching it, but one particularly violent thrash threw both boys away, and allowed her to land the first hit of the fight that it hadn’t swallowed. The convulsions flipped it onto its back, and a second later a swipe from Kaser had entrails spilling out. It wasn’t long after that when a shudder went through the Beast, and it lay still.

The four stood panting, being sure it was dead, before a collective groan had them slip to the ground and start nursing their wounds. Emara had only been hit by flying debris from the Beast’s thrashing a few times, but she had nearly overdrawn her essence with the amount of bolts she’d been forced to use, and her head was pounding as she sat to cultivate. Kaser had been struck only once, but the gator’s tail had slapped diagonally across his whole torso while he was still in the air, throwing him into a tree. It was a miracle nothing was broken, but his bones were strained nearly to that point, and he’d have a giant bruise for days, no doubt. Dornah and Vath had gotten the worst of it, with Dornah being rammed with the things snout twice and having a bite miss closely enough that a tooth had caught and cut his arm even through his ice; and Vath having been swiped with the Beast’s front claws twice, once on his upper chest, and once on his left leg. It was like his void form wasn’t even there, and while they thankfully weren’t deep, they were bleeding all over.

It was a good thing they had pills, since they had no healer. One pill each, bandages on the cuts, harvesting the core, and then they were back on the road for just an hour. They needed to find a place to rest for at least the rest of the day, but they didn’t want to be anywhere near that thing’s territory, just in case. Most of a day of recuperation, a night of rest, and they were heading home, tired, hurt, and victorious.

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And so their time passed. Their routine at the sect much the same, and Wald and Lita sending them out every time they found a suitable Beast. They focused on Beasts that shared the same affinity as the four, both for the Beastkin’s bloodlines, and for all of them to get more used to how their affinity could be used with the Beasts providing different examples. If none of those affinities were available, anything that could challenge them was chosen instead.

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A cycle was formed; training and hunting, each day waking up unsure whether they would spend the day in the courtyard, or walk through a portal after some new challenge. They progressed steadily, their martial skill increasing, their essence control growing ever stronger, and their layers completing one by one. They even began practicing a third technique.

Dornah already had the armor, hammer, and the beginnings of a restrictive ice technique when they fought the Voracious Gator, but working that into a fight was harder than any of them had thought it would be. It could be a strong restriction once it built up, but it was slow and easy to break or escape unless his target was worn down or much weaker than his essence’s resilience. He had to focus on using it to distract at the perfect time in order to capitalize, since actually immobilizing seemed out of his reach for now unless the fight was nearly over anyway.

Emara had her bolts, and she did have a second technique, but she used it so rarely outside of spars she wasn’t sure she’d made the right choice getting it. It wreathed her form in lightning, making grapples and even melee attacks come at a cost, but in fights against things like Beasts, very few ever got close enough for her to warrant using them. Dornah and Vath did their jobs. So for her third technique, she chose a movement technique that might allow her to take advantage of her second, without putting herself in too much danger. It was less of a consistent boost to speed like Kaser’s, and more of two quick dashes in a row, as if lightning struck and then chained to a secondary target. Hopefully, this would allow her to dash in and strike with blade or bolt, cause some havoc with her lightning wreath, and dash away before retaliation could come; but she’d practice that for a long time in spars before she dared use it in a real battle.

Kaser finally picked up a ranged technique, though his worked rather differently to the others’. His made tears in the air when he slashed which would travel forward and cut things in their path until the essence was expended. He could chain them as fast as he could swing his claws for very little essence, and since their sharpness was based on his potency combined with his affinity, their cutting power was immense. The trade off was that they didn’t move nearly as quickly as Vath’s beams or Emara’s bolts, and their resilience was nearly nonexistent. They were a threat that absolutely must be addressed unless you planned to be diced into pieces, but if you had time and presence of mind, avoiding or crushing them wasn’t too difficult. The amount he could throw out was frightening, though.

Vath went back and forth on what he should add to his repertoire at first. He had a technique that increased his offense and defense altogether as well as a ranged option, he didn’t know what he was missing. Then he remembered boosting techniques. The one he picked in the end would slightly boost his essence attributes, while massively boosting his physical attributes for a short time. There were options that lasted longer, even some that lasted as long as you had essence to fuel them, in exchange for lower bonuses, but he figured that any enemy that warranted him needing the boost would be dangerous enough that he should have a hidden card to play. Even if it didn’t allow him to finish the fight, it would buy time for his companions to run, and hopefully himself as well.

Their spars took a noticeable downward turn in skill while they were mastering the techniques, and then slowly climbed upwards again as they learned when and how to use them in actual fights.

More and more time passed in this manner, and before they knew it, they had all completed the tenth layer. Vath and Kaser were even in the blue stage of essence control, Emara in her equivalent, and even Dornah was only one stage behind. They felt powerful, and more than ready to advance, but Wald and Lita simply told them it wasn’t time yet. They wouldn’t explain why, saying that if they did it would make it even harder for them to reach the state that was required.

The four were baffled. They knew that few reached their level of essence control before moving onto the fourth stage of advancement, so that couldn’t be what was holding them back. They didn’t think it was affinity either, and the layers were done, even their teachers agreed there was nothing more to do on that front. They couldn’t figure out what they were missing.

After nearly two weeks of waiting, with no real growth, Vath grew impatient. He questioned why Wald and Lita were holding them back when there were threats out there that wanted them dead - though not in their earshot. Kaser had just responded that there had been nothing for months. That the elder and his spoiled son had probably forgotten about them, or at least were too scared to try anything again.

This temptation of fate turned out to be a nearly fatal mistake.