Blank pages are often the most daunting. They harbour expectations and silently judge all who dare hesitate before them. I felt that judgement, that weighing of character as my favourite quill hovered just above the surface of the stained inkwell, now full, carved into my desk. There was no time for hesitation, or rather, no time I wanted to waste on it. I dipped the nib, scraped the excess, and wrote the first word.
> Marco,
A single name, a simple address, a perfectly ordinary way to open a letter. The mere act of writing it, of starting, failed to inspire an outpouring of words; there was no sudden muse, no certainty in how to proceed, just the shattered remains of a fragile hope that there might have been, a hope I’d not even dignified with false confidence. I leaned back with a sigh, feeling the familiar shifting of the chair beneath me. One of the legs was ever-so-slightly too short, a rare imperfection, a grounding one.
“I do not suppose you have any input?” I craned my head to stare back at the large bed in the centre of the room. Fudge had rolled onto his back and splayed his legs out in a tangle of directions. While it did not look even remotely comfortable to me, it seemed to satisfy him just fine.
Fudge, being a dog, did not answer save to harrumph at my audacity, for I dared to interrupt his nap. The bed groaned beneath his weight as he made a show of repositioning himself. It was a sight that cheered me up, if nothing else. Unfortunately, the content of the letter remained a puzzle for me alone.
I stood. Perhaps leaving the desk was counterproductive, but sitting at it fruitlessly was worse. Seeking some justification for my cowardice, I retrieved the elegant watering pot from its place by the window and made a show of tending to the plants. Well over a dozen of the small, potted things were scattered around my room. Some had flowers, some merely had leaves - there was even a small, round cactus that made me roll my eyes when I remembered the story behind it. Each plant was different, save for the blue ribbon tied around their respective pots, though even those each carried their own flare in how they were wrapped, curled and otherwise presented.
In my coming absence, I knew they would be cared for by the dormitory staff, but it was important I shouldered that responsibility in the meantime. Such was the burden of youth.
Where do I even begin? That was the crux of the matter, really. In the top draw of my desk sat the most recent letter I’d received from home. According to Tina, Marco was asking questions about his absent big brother and, perhaps appropriately, wanted to learn about him straight from the horse’s mouth.
I hadn’t realized I was even a notable topic of conversation back home, but in hindsight it wasn’t that surprising. For all that I had put them through, my parents remained my most steadfast supporters - of course they told Marco stories about me.
How old must he be now? Five, I think. I’d probably barely recognize him when I saw him next.
By all accounts, we were strangers to one another - not that I’d done much to mitigate that reality.
“Where do I even begin?” Saying it aloud didn’t magically help, but I had to begin somewhere. I spared a quick glance at the water clock - without which I would have missed far too many classes - and suppressed a groan. I was going to be late, no doubt vexing Sera in the process.
That’s going to be a hassle.
Fuck it. I slammed back into my chair and started to write. Marco surely heard plenty of stories about my early childhood, but a lot had happened since I left Elbura. Since I couldn’t decide where to begin, I’d just start there.
***
A field full of jagged stumps stood sentry around the bizarre structure at its centre, where felled trees were haphazardly stacked in a loose mound. The limbs had not been removed. The bark had not been stripped. There was no craftsmanship, only the savaged ends that could have each been paired to a matching stump. The entire thing brought to mind a half-assed beaver dam - minus the river.
Nestled at the base of the structure was an opening that could only be described as the entrance to a burrow. It was a burrow large enough for a grizzly bear to saunter into without risk of scuffing their fur, but a burrow all the same.
From my position at the fringe of the artificial clearing, there wasn’t much more I could discern about the den, not that I was especially eager to get closer. Even if I had been, a dog-shaped wall stood between me and reckless curiosity. Fudge was on edge. His ears were tucked low, his hackles were raised, and his unease rang through the Tamer Bond clear as a bell.
Easy boy, Lionel is going to take care of it, I thought. Feelings of calm reassurance accompanied my words, effortlessly carried by Taming [Fudge] to the dog in question. Fudge relaxed ever so slightly but I could only do so much when, to his senses, danger was all but imminent.
“Fudge is nervous,” I whispered to the air, knowing full well that Lionel’s ridiculously sensitive hearing would catch it. The Slayer Lieutenant was slowly making his way towards the hole in the ground. Slowly. Not carefully - at least not so far as I could see. I’d have gone so far to say he was strolling, though frustratingly the second he’d stepped out into the clearing his footfalls refused to make a single sound.
“Fudge is also going to have to acclimate to the presence of imposing predators,” came Lionel’s immediate reply. The sound seemed to originate from a point close to my ear, another casual application of power that left me increasingly curious as to the full contents of Lionel’s list of Skills.
“Just because you are right does not mean I have to like seeing him like this,” I countered. For all that I could ‘talk’ with Fudge, the nuance of language remained beyond him.
“Your discomfort has been noted.” Lionel stopped walking when he was still a good distance away from the entrance to the den and spared a quick look over his shoulder. “Just be sure to pay attention. This is a lesson for you as well.”
“I will, and I know.” Travelling by foot was, by and large, an exercise in tedium. The opportunity to watch Lionel in action was a welcome one, even if it meant a slight detour. A planned detour, at that.
“Do you remember what this Beast is called?” Lionel had given me a brief rundown of the situation the day before.
“Tehon,” I replied quickly. A few weeks prior, it had decimated a herd of cattle belonging to one of the nearby villages.
“Good. They indulge in significant slumber between meals so we’re going to rouse it to draw it out. I would advise against venturing into the den of a tehon under all but the most dire of circumstances.” Without additional fanfare or waiting for my response, a sharp whistle emanated from Lionel.
Fudge started to whine as it grew increasingly high pitched, beyond the range of normal human hearing.
“Lionel, Fudge-”
“Will have to get used to discomfort.” Lionel’s voice cut me off. He could have spared Fudge but decided not to. It was hard not to feel a lump of spite at that fact despite being able to acknowledge the wisdom in Lionel’s reasoning.
A thunderous roar emerged from the den, having echoed through its depths.
“It’s awake,” Lionel noted.
No shit. Fudge started emitting a low, rumbling growl that I felt through our contact. I barked a quick command to bring him to heel. He obeyed, but a renewed wave of unease and frustration poured into me through the Tamer Bond.
He’ll get over it, I told myself. The last thing we needed was to accidently draw attention to ourselves.
“Now, watch how it exits.” Lionel maintained an almost casual cadence despite the increasingly distressing noises emerging from the ground.
Following the instruction, I strained against the distance and shadows cast by the not-dam. Mana from Perseverance answered the call, flowing to my eyes to combat the difficulty of my objective. A stretch of the Skill’s purview, perhaps, but close enough that my mana wasn’t wasted by the effort.
Seconds passed, and my vision grew increasingly accustomed to piercing the dim just in time to witness the tehon emerge. Rather, its rump emerged. Unlike the savage, head-first charge I was anticipating, a shaggy mound of black fur backed up out of the den. Squat, stocky legs barely compromised the silhouette of the tehon as it moved. A round stub of a tail was the only irregularity to the shape; if not for the sheer size of the Beast, the whole affair would have almost been comical.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“Beasts in the second Tier are not graced with intellect like people are, but they possess a sort of savage cunning. Despite its rage, the tehon moves with caution, for now,” Lionel continued his commentary of the situation.
“I take it they are well defended from the rear, then?”
“That, young Will, would be an understatement.”
I was certain I’d once heard of mundane animals employing similar strategies but it must have been in passing since the details escaped me. The casual trivia I’d collected from my first life was often less useful than I wanted it to be. A bitter truth, but a truth all the same.
The tehon paused when most of its body was exposed. Had its intimidation been successful, if there had been no further sign of confrontation or irritation, perhaps that would have been the end of it. As it was, Lionel simply whistled again, prompting another roar that made my lizard brain spark like a firecracker screaming ‘danger’.
“Now that we have elevated the tehon to a suitable degree of anger, it is going to charge at me,” Lionel explained even as the beast in question spun to face the target of its ire, sending up massive clumps of dirt in the process. It roared again, and that time I had the displeasure of seeing it from the front.
The bulldog equivalent of a grizzly, the tehon looked like someone had squashed the face of a bear in on itself. Its lips were folded back and spraying spittle, revealing a mouth full of predatory teeth that I didn’t bother trying to count. Its forelegs ended in a set of massive claws, each longer than a grown man’s forearm. Much to my horror, they were neither unwieldy nor an impediment to the tehon’s ability to accelerate; it closed on Lionel in the span of seconds.
Lionel jumped, easily clearing the Tehon. Carried forward by its momentum, the tehon scrambled to stop and pivot, and I noticed it-
“Notice how it is slow to turn,” Lionel’s voice chimed in as he fell into an easy landing, his knees barely bending from the impact.
“I saw,” I said quickly, not wanting to distract him. Confident though Lionel may have been, I was all too aware that a seemingly routine day could turn to tragedy. One of my hands maintained a firm hold of Fudge’s scruff, a constant reminder that he was to stay put.
Twice more the tehon charged at Lionel; twice more he avoided it as he had before. It reminded me of a bullfighter, or at least the representations I saw in cartoons as a child. The sound of Lionel’s whistle was aggravating enough that the tehon rushed from one charge to another, too blinded by rage to do anything else.
“When you do this with a team, you will want to have concluded affairs by the end of the first engagement,” Lionel said amidst the acrobatic display. “Despite my brilliance, a direct swipe from a tehon would still leave me incapacitated - if not decapitated - should misfortune strike.”
“Finish it then,” I snapped. “Can you not tempt fate?” Even so, I pushed more mana to my eyes and tried to commit the creature's movements to memory. If Lionel was dragging things out, it had to be for my benefit.
There was a sudden shift to the air as the sounds around me grew muted. I no longer heard Lionel’s whistle, the rip and tear of the underbrush beneath the tehon’s weight, nothing.
“Try not to move,” Lionel’s voice instructed, the only noise he allowed to exist.
Blinded by aggression, the tehon was in the middle of another frontal assault when it abruptly reeled as if struck. Lionel faced the Beast directly, a look of concentration on his face and his lips curled into a new whistle. The effects were immediate. The tehon reared back to unleash a silent roar and begun frantically slamming the side of its head into the ground, as if trying to push straight into the earth. Its paws pulled up and frantically swiped at its face. Its body heaved and thrashed yet I did not hear a single sound.
The seconds dragged on, and I could not look away from the torturous execution, for there was no other way to describe what I was seeing. At one point, the tehon’s claws sliced into its own face, and I could not tell if it was accidental or not. It gave one final spasm then slumped, falling still. Dead.
What the actual fuck…
Bile gathered at the back of my throat, but I mercifully did not lose my breakfast. Sound snapped back into existence. Fudge bristled. Despite his own confusion at the silent world, he sensed my discomfort and searched for its source.
“What did you do to it?” I asked, croaking slightly as the words passed through my suddenly dry throat. Lionel was still several paces away, but I knew he’d heard me clearly.
“Tehon have sensitive hearing,” he reiterated his earlier point. “It makes them vulnerable to my Skills.” Lionel had abandoned all of his verbosity. His voice was devoid of its usual cheer.
The explanation aligned with my own conclusions, but I took no joy in that fact.
“It was in pain,” I said flatly.
“It was.”
“Could you have killed it differently?”
“I could have.”
“Then why-”
“Because it was the method I knew would be most effective. It placed me, and those under my care, in the least amount of danger.”
A question I suspected I already knew the answer to burned in the back of my throat. Lionel seemed to notice as much, and he looked at me expectantly. Patiently.
“Then why risk dragging out the encounter in the first place? Why risk it to teach me?”
“The experience might save your life one day. It was a calculated risk.” He finally closed the distance and crouched down in front of me so that we were looking eye-to-eye. “That was not my only motivation, though. I wanted to - no, needed to show you how quickly these situations can turn ugly. This time, it was for the tehon. Next time, it might be for me, or for you, when you become a Slayer proper.”
Memories flashed to the forefront of my mind. Two young children in the forest's edge. A predator. The screams.
The screams…
“I already know that…” My voice was barely above a whisper.
“I know,” Lionel said. “I needed to remind you, though, because you cannot ever let yourself forget or grow lax - even when it would make you more comfortable to do so.” He reached out to grab a hold of my shoulder, hesitating only briefly when Fudge tensed in response to the action. “This is what you have signed up for. Slayers have a lot of freedoms, but that freedom comes at a cost.”
Lionel sighed before continuing.
“We do not normally recruit people until they are close to adulthood, so I know this is not fair, but feeding you disillusionment would only do you a disservice.” I couldn’t help but smile softly as his language started to shift back towards its usual extravagance. There was a comfort to be found in the familiar.
“I appreciate it, I think, but why tell me this now? Back home you already told us-”
“Today I did not merely tell you, I showed you, which is an important distinction. Words alone often do little to sway a young man’s mind. Having once been one myself, I can assure you I am well qualified to comment on the subject.” The hand on my shoulder reached over it to pat me on the back a few times. “For the record, you handled yourself well.”
“I… thank you,” I muttered, casting my gaze down. I had mixed feelings about the praise. How much pride should one take in their ability to bear witness to brutality?
“To answer your question properly, though, it was so that I might bestow you with another opportunity to change course, away from prying eyes and ears.”
My head snapped up at that.
“Explain. Please.”
“It will cost me, but I can still renegade on your recruitment,” Lionel said as if he were commenting on the weather, which more than anything made me suspect he was understating the gravity of his offer.
“So what, I would go to The Crown?”
“If you want to, but I could also look into other options. Having sidestepped conscription already, you will have more flexibility if we are careful.”
My mind went into overdrive as I struggled to digest the revelation. As I tried weighing options I knew shockingly little about, there was only one question that came to mind.
“Do I have to answer you right now?”
At that, Lionel grinned.
“You do not, and I am pleased you did not rush into a decision. You have until you become a Slayer proper, which given your age will be at least six years from now.” He held up a finger. “However, the longer you wait, the fewer options you will have.”
“I see. Thank you, Uncle Lionel.” I had time. For now, that was enough.
“Do not thank me yet, I have another condition.” His eyes grew harsh. “If I hear that you are slacking off while with the Slayers, then you may consider this offer rescinded. While you remain one of our apprentices, I expect you to give it your all. I think you have what it takes, or else I would not have offered to recruit you in the first place. No free rides. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, I-”
“You mean ‘Yes Lieutenant!’” Lionel snapped.
“Yes Lieutenant!” I called back and made an effort to stand with my back straight.
“Much better recruit,” Lionel replied approvingly, a smile on his face again. “Now come on, I will demonstrate how one should harvest from a tehon. Valuable components await and we will claim them for The Slayers.” He gestured for me to follow as he walked back into the clearing.
Somewhere in the middle of that conversation I’d almost forgotten that the carcass of a massive Beast lurked in my peripherals.
Huh… maybe I am well suited to this. I pushed the conflicting thought to the side and moved to follow Lionel. Fudge was quick to join us, his tongue lolling happily now that the tension between Lionel and I had mostly evaporated.