Brandon was sitting at the kitchen table in the house. Kyto sat across from him, but what had drawn his gaze was the immense beast that sat at his side. He had seen beasts over the years, but not one the size Tiddles was. He was huge in every way possible. Muscles bulged and covered his frame, and its head and jaws were large enough to fit a whole Keefir. Maybe not an entire Keefir exactly but large enough to scare the absolute shit out of him.

"So, he is your beast?" Brandon asked cautiously.

"No. He is not mine. Tiddles is his own beast." Kyto replied.

"His own?"

"His own. He comes and goes as he pleases; I have no control over him; he is his own person."

"Person? He is a fucking beast."

"Only to those that do not know him."

Tiddles looked at Brandon and spoke. "Some people are so stupid thinking we do not understand them."

Kyto glanced at Tiddles but did not reply. Tiddles had not been there the previous evening when Brandon arrived with Sniffer; it was his first time meeting the beast. Sniffer had collected the tonic from the girls before he returned, and Brandon had drank the bottle. It had alleviated some of the injuries he had sustained at the hands of the guards but not all of them. His face was still puffy and bruised, and he wore dirty, dishevelled clothes.

"I think we need to get you healed properly," Kyto said.

"I have no more tonic."

"That is not a problem as long as you can keep a secret."

"What secret?"

Kyto formed his healing strands and pushed them into Brandon, his display triggered.

Minor facial injuries healed. 35 experience gained.

The puffiness and bruising around Brandon's face disappeared as his strands finished the healing process. Brandon felt a tightening sensation and put his hand up to where his swollen face had been to find that it no longer felt tender. "What the fuck just happened?" his eyes like saucers staring at Kyto in amazement.

"I just finished the healing process that the tonic did not have enough for," he replied, smiling.

'Who the fuck was this young man sitting in front of him' he thought. He knew that Kyto was much younger than he was, but he seemed to have the quality and maturity of someone much older.

"How the hell did you do that?"

"Mana."

"Mana?"

"It is difficult to explain, but I will try."

Kyto briefly informed Brandon of his chosen skills after the System upgrade. He did not detail the part about being Enlightened or Chosen and just kept it as a new skill tree that had opened.

"So, you can heal people? Like a doctor, but with this thing you call mana."

"In the simplest terms, yes."

"Are you sure you should have told him?" Tiddles asked.

Kyto again did not respond but turned and smiled at the beast.

Brandon watched his gaze and followed Kyto's as he looked at the beast. The beast turned back to look at him and recoiled from the stare. At that moment, the three cubs came hurtling into the kitchen from the garage, Sneezy leading the charge.

"Dad, Dad." Sneezy was shouting.

"What is it?" Tiddles asked, turning and looking at Sneezy.

Kyto turned as well and saw the three cubs. They were drenched and covered in mud, the rain outside not perturbing them from going out. The rain had reached the land this morning and pelted the area with heavy set clouds pushing across the lake from the north.

"Tabs will have your guts for garters when she sees the state you have made of the kitchen," Kyto said, looking at the three muddy balls of fur. He had been surprised at how they seemed to grow, and he was sure they were starting to grow exponentially in the short time they had been at the house.

Sneezy ignored Kyto, "I can smell them."

"Who?" Tiddles asked.

"Those horrible things from the factory," he replied.

"What? Where?" Tiddles asked, turning and standing.

"Not far a kilometre or so, perhaps from where we were," Sneezy said.

"And where were you? You know you should be staying nearby." Tiddles growled with his dad's tone.

It always made Kyto smile when he heard Tiddles play the dad card.

"I know, Dad, and we are sorry, but Sneezy is telling the truth. He smelt the horrible things, and we came straight back to tell you." Rosie piped in.

Tiddles had started to appreciate how good Sneezy's olfactory senses were, and he was sure they were even more sensitive than his own. "Which direction?" Tiddles asked.

"West of town," Pouncer replied.

"West, what the hell were you doing over there? You know people live over that way if they had seen you." Tiddles snapped.

"We were careful, Dad, we promise," Rosie said.

"I am going to go and check it out," Tiddles said, turning to Kyto.

Kyto just nodded as Tiddles left with the cubs back into the garage.

Brandon's face was a picture. He was sure he had just seen three Spylore cubs. "Were they Spylore's?" he asked with a perplexing look.

"Yes."

Brandon's face was a picture as Kyto turned to look back at him. Silence enveloped the room for a few moments.

"Coffee?" Kyto asked, standing and walking to the wood burner.

Brandon did not reply, still just staring at Kyto. After meeting the beast and witnessing the healing Kyto had just carried out on his face, and now with three Spylore cubs, he was at a loss for words.

Kyto brought the coffee over and poured a cup for the pair of them.

"I think the first thing we need to do is get you cleaned up and some new clothes," Kyto said.

Brandon stared blankly, and Kyto knew he struggled to process all the details. He hoped he had not gone too far healing his bruising, but he had a feeling about Brandon that he could not quite place and had sensed it the first time he had met him.

"I set up a water heater the other week, and it feeds into the bathroom area, so you can grab a hot bath, and I will get you some clothes sorted out." Kyto was, after all, a pretty fantastic engineer and tinkerer compared to the vast majority, and it had not taken him long to plan out how he could have a water heater that, by siphoning, would raise the water to the second storey and allow for the bath to be filled. All he had needed to do was purchase some tubing from town. The creation of the System had saved them a considerable amount of time, heating water on the wood burner and carrying buckets upstairs, and the girls had been over the moon.

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Kyto walked out to the heater situated in the rear of the property underneath an overhang that kept the worst of the rain off it. He lit the fire and then made several trips to the well, filling the drum. The only thing he was unable to do was regulate the heat, and he was hoping he would be able to either get some more tubing in town or even look at purchasing a small generator and pump at some point in the future also to provide a cold water feed from the well itself. The Systems in the house were way beyond any repair possibility, and although he had searched several of the other abandoned properties since they had arrived, he found nothing serviceable. He had not been surprised by the locality of the town. He knew that for any decent scavenging, he would need to go further away into the surrounding districts to find anything that he could potentially use, and with the recent change of events, he had yet to do so.

"Water is on," he said, walking back into the kitchen after triggering the siphoning process upstairs in the bathroom.

Brandon turned to look at him again on entering. "Thanks," was all he replied.

"Use anything you want in the bathroom, and when there is enough water in the tub, just place the stopper at the end of the pipe again. Watch your hands, though. It gets scalding," Kyto said, smiling at him.

Brandon stood and slowly walked out of the kitchen and back up the stairs. The night before, when he had arrived at the house with Sniffer and the girls, he had been exhausted and shown up to a room where he could stay. It was a sparse room with only a bed and a side table, but having a decent mattress and clean blankets was a luxury he had not had in a long time. He went to the bathroom area and saw the pipe that fed from the tank slowly filling the bathtub. The water was steaming hot, and the vapours rose into the cold air of the house. The house had no heating apart from the wood burners and fireplaces in the main room, but it was still heavenly compared to his shed.

He began to strip off his clothes, and Kyto knocked on the door. "Here, I almost forgot." handing him a large towel.

The bathroom had a sink unit with a large mirror above it, and Brandon walked over, wiping the condensation that had begun to cling to it from its surface, staring at the face he no longer recognised. His hair was matted and filthy, and he had a beard that he could not remember the last time he cut, and he did look a state. His clothes were piled in the corner of the room, and he turned, looking at their condition, torn and tattered. He walked over to the pipe and carefully pushed the peg into the end to stop the water flow. On the side of the bathtub were several bottles, and he climbed in, the water stinging his cold skin and making him wince in pain, although it felt like luxurious pain.

He picked up one of the bottles and read the labels. There were various bottles, all containing different-smelling oils. He chose one of them and poured some of the contents into the water, laying back and submerging himself all bar his nose. The smell of the scented oils pleasantly tingled his nose as he lay in the water. He eventually sat back up and began the process of cleaning himself. It had been so long since he had bathed.

When Brandon returned down the stairs, Kyto was sitting downstairs with a small contraption at the kitchen table. Brandon was a similar build to Kyto, so he had placed some of his clothes on his bed for him to wear. Kyto turned and looked at the man who had walked into the kitchen. He had made the most of the bathroom, scraped his thick beard away with one of the shaving blades, and cut at his hair. He was unrecognisable from the dishevelled figure Kyto had initially met. Now, he stood in clothes that were a little large due to Brandon's gaunt frame, but the length seemed to fit him well.

"You don't scrub up too bad. I cannot recognise you from the man who entered the bathroom," Kyto said, smiling at him.

"Thanks. It has been such a long time since I was clean and wearing decent clothes," he replied. Brandon was still unsure why these strangers had helped him. He had done nothing for them, yet they seemed not to be perturbed either by the state he had been in or his lifestyle. He had never met anyone like them before.

Removing the beard and the haircut he had given himself had removed years from him. Kyto could now see what must be his actual age of thirty-one from what he had said at the bar. "So what are you going to do now?" Kyto asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Exactly that. What are you going to do?"

"Well, I will return to my home again now that I am fully healed. I was only here because Sniffer said that his girl would flip if he had not helped."

"You cannot go back to the shed, and before you ask, Sniffer told me what the place was like."

"It is all I have."

"Well, get something new then."

"Ha. And how do you manage that without stacks to pay for anything."

"Do what I used to do, well and still do."

"And what is that?"

"Tinker, learn a trade, etc."

"I had a trade as a tanner until I was forced out."

"Well, go back to it."

"I can't. I have no contacts, no source of leather, no tools, or stacks to afford stall taxes."

"Well, if you need skins, we have plenty of those."

"How do you get the skins? Are you hunters?"

"Tiddles. We do not need to hunt. He brings back everything, and we have taken the skins from several of his kills. Lars makes jackets with them."

"Lars?"

"Oh, you did not meet him yesterday. He is one of the town guards, just a guard, though not like TJ as a supervisor."

"So, Lars is a Tanner as well?"

"No. He does it for fun, not as a career. The jacket you are wearing is one of his."

Brandon looked at the jacket. It was very well made and thick with a warm Wild One fur inner. "It's well made."

"Yeah. I think his family were originally tailors."

Kyto had heard the howl before. "Kyto, we need you now."

Kyto stood quickly, making Brandon jump. "What's wrong?"

"I have to go wait here," he said, running out of the kitchen and through the garage to the outside.

Tiddles had appeared at the top of the drive, his howl being heard over the rain and wind from a distance. He ran over to Tiddles and asked, "What is wrong?"

"Lars is seriously injured. Come now," Tiddles replied, turning and beginning to bound back the way he had come.

Kyto set off at a pace, the training he had been doing with Tiddles paying off as he ran after him. He was far from as fast, and Tiddles had to wait every couple of bounds for him to catch up, chivvying him along. "Come on, he has not got long left."

Kyto was running as fast as he could and struggling to catch his breath as he reached the property that Tiddles took him towards. "In there, quick."

Kyto ran to the doorway and entered, hit by the horrendous smell he recognised. He came up short, scrunching his face before seeing Lars lying at the bottom of the stairs. A large pool of blood formed at his side, and an apparent wound was visible where he had been injured.

"Fuck." was his only word as he immediately began forming his healing strands. He threw them into Lars as fast as he could. His pool dropped, and he called his familiar and began drawing from his surroundings. Lars was in a severe way, and he could see how ghostly pale his face was where he had fallen and rolled onto his back. His strands continued to push into his body, and he knew they were working but not efficiently compared to when he healed Tiddles. He just needed to keep his body flooded with healing strands and let them perform their work. Lars's mana pool was a faint glow when he arrived, and as his strands began to heal him, it slowly began to regain a deeper glow.

"Shit, I need more mana. The surroundings are empty." he cursed. There was nothing in range of Lars's body that he could see to draw on. He had stepped around as he healed, pulling on everything. The blood that had stopped coming from his wounds started again as Kyto's mana hit zero.

"Fuck. I am out."

"Move him," Tiddles said, standing in the porch doorway.

Kyto stooped, grabbed Lars under his arms, and began to pull him towards the door, blood flowing freely from his wound again. "Let me," Tiddles said.

Kyto let go, and Tiddles, with a bite that was so gentle for a beast, grabbed Lars by his jacket and dragged his still body outside.

"Trees," Kyto said, pointing to where he could see a more substantial mana source. As Tiddles dragged Lars, he began to pull on the mana again until they reached the cluster of trees, and Kyto could begin refilling faster. As he did, he again pushed his strands at Lars's body. His display triggered.

You have healed a pancreatic laceration.

He continued healing.

You have healed a kidney laceration.

A punctured intestine has been healed.

Congratulations, you have prevented sepsis.

Kyto watched as, at long last, the wound began to close on Lars's side. Tiddles had dragged him carefully through the trees, and Kyto had slowly followed, maintaining the strands and managing to source enough mana as the wound closed, his final notification triggered.

Congratulations, you have earned 1730 shared experience.

Congratulations, you have streamed a further 1930 healing mana towards your quest target.

On top of the continuing quest boosts from the bottles of tonic that had been sold, he was slowly ebbing towards his quest target. He now sat at 9770 of 25000.

Lars was unconscious, and Kyto remembered after Gar that he had remained in a similar state for several hours after he had been healed. "We need to get him back," Kyto said.

"How? I cannot drag him the whole way. It won't do him any good." Tiddles said.

"Could you carry him?"

"If he was on my back, yes, easily."

"Well, let us do that then."

With determination, Kyto picked Lars up under his arms and positioned the large man against Tiddles's side as he lay down. He then walked around the other side of Tiddles's wide girth, reached over, grabbed Lars, and roughly dragged his body over his back. Once he was resting over him, Tiddles stood up carefully. The weight was not the issue, but the fact that he was not secure would be.

"We need to take it slow heading back," Tiddles said.

"Sure," Kyto replied, walking by his side.

"Where are the cubs?"

"I sent them back as soon as I headed back. They should be back by now."

It took them much longer to get back than their journey there, and as Kyto and Tiddles approached the house, Brandon noticed them coming outside. The rain was still coming down, and Kyto was drenched. "Help me with him," Kyto called to Brandon.

The pair lifted Lars from Tiddles's back, carried him into the house, and manhandled him upstairs to his room. "What the hell happened to him, and what is that awful smell?" Brandon asked.

Kyto had paid it no attention as it was nowhere near the level of the exploding Geblex but was still pretty potent. He had to admit. "Geblex blood," he replied.

"Geblex?" Brandon asked.

"You must have heard the rumours in town about the new Wild Ones," Kyto said.

"Oh shit, so it is true then."

"Well, we now have proof that they attack Risen."