As I was organizing myself to leave Fespen, I noticed Gorban and Shirel headed down the road through the city towards the northern gate carrying large packs. I called out to them, and they turned, conferred for a moment, and then walked over.
“Headed to the capital now?” I asked.
“We are,” Gorban answered.
I jerked my thumb at my wagon. “If one of you doesn’t mind riding in the back, I could give you a lift.”
Gorban rubbed his chin, but Shirel brightened. “Really?” She looked at Gorban, who seemed hesitant to take the offer, and pouted. “Oh, come on, it’s better than walking. Be nice to save some energy before the tournament.”
“Should get there a bit quicker, too, unlike when using oxalire,” I said, patting Horsey. I had no idea what, if anything, the pair knew about tarands.
Gorban nodded, and Shirel grinned. “We’re in!”
I was expecting Gorban to offer to ride in the back, but Shirel hopped in the wagon before they even said anything. She settled in next to Rika, and I saw her hands twitch in her lap.
“You can touch her,” I said with a laugh. “She likes to be stroked down her neck and behind the ears.”
Gorban watched impassively, but I saw his eyes flicker over the nocturne urstrig, the headpounder, and the mecrokotas, where his gaze lingered. Concern for his friend, or possibly partner, around the large beasts was understandable, but I clapped him on the shoulder and motioned for the driver’s seat.
“No need to worry, they’re all perfectly well behaved,” I told the man. Then I grinned, remembering that we were headed to a tournament to fight. “Until I tell them not to be in the ring.”
Gorban shook his head and sighed, but his eyes warmed and he clambered to the front of the wagon. I finished up with the harnesses and then led the wagon to the road and out through the north gate towards the capital.
The trip north was a lot more fun with the company. We continued chatting about Taraponi and their journeys, and I shared a bit about my own. We discussed combat, and did some training together. All three of us knew that there was a chance we would compete in the tournament, so we kept back some of our trump cards and best moves, but there had been so many people passing through Fespen that the tournament was likely going to be rather massive, making it easier to act as though the chances of facing each other in the ring were small.
Shirel did not wind up spending much time in the back of the wagon, trading off with Gorban after the first day and then sticking up front for most of the trip. I was surprised that of all the beasts in the back, Gorban seemed most interested in the mecrokotas. I even saw him pet the large hyena monster a couple times, and it seemed to tolerate him too.
When I asked him about it, he looked almost embarrassed. “I’ve fought these beasts before,” he explained. I recalled that mecrokotas were from the Taraponi region, as were my new friends, and nodded. “They are quite vicious and powerful, devastatingly so in large groups. I find it… interesting, to be able to share this one’s company without conflict.”
We made good time on the road to the capital, not as fast as I may have gone if I went solo, but I certainly saved the two of them some time and energy they would have wasted walking. Of course, more time in the capital meant spending more money on inns, and inns in the capital were not cheap. As we approached the outskirts of where the farms that surrounded the capital began, we saw a large uptick in semi-permanent camps, people who had already arrived but were holding up beyond the walls until the tournament began.
Some farmers were offering accommodations at more reasonable prices, taking the opportunity to make some coin by acting as bed and breakfasts, or offering some space in their oxalire barns, if they had them.
Unfortunately, people were also just waiting around on the roads, clogging everything up. I saw some people who looked short-tempered and tense, tired from the harder living of road life to reach the capital only to be surrounded by potential foes and not being able to rest properly before the tournament they had traveled there for.
“Hmm,” I grunted, looking ahead down the road and deliberating.
“Maybe we should backtrack a bit, get off the road and carve out a campsite,” Shirel said. “With your beasts on guard, nothing is going to be crazy enough to attack us.”
It was a fine idea, but to be honest, I had actually planned on coughing up for an inn in the capital. I was not opposed to camping out with Gorban and Shirel instead, but I did want to head within the walls and make some preparations. I was road-worn and wanted a proper bath, get groomed, and find some nicer clothing for walking around in.
“Sure,” I said. “I might run into the city after we make camp though, there are a few things I want to do before the tournament, but it’s also probably safer and easier on me to keep the beasts out here until closer to the day of, anyway.”
All we had were road rations, and hunting any fresh food close to the capital would have been impossible with all the bustle, so in addition to getting a bath, haircut, shave, and new set of clothes, I picked up some food to bring back to the camp for me and my new friends. I rubbed my bare face after a whole winter of wearing the beard, feeling uncomfortably naked by its loss, and debated keeping it after it grew back, although probably closer cropped and better groomed than how wild I had let it grow on the road.
After enjoying a nice dinner around the campfire, we set up some sleeping arrangements and I set the beasts up on a rotating watch. Gorban and Shirel had initially been skeptical about sleeping through the night without a human keeping watch, but the beasts had proven themselves on the journey and the value of good sleep before the tournament was huge, so at that point, we all quickly settled in and fell asleep.
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I awoke in the morning to find the headpounder sitting on a scowling man, pinning him to the ground. Gorban was already up, and glanced at me, but I ignored them both as I got up to engage in the usual morning rituals. Once Shirel was up and also fully awake, I walked over to the man pinned to the ground.
“So,” I drawled. “Would-be thief, or would-be murderer?”
“Neither,” the man spat. “Was just going to hunt one of these beasts for some food.”
“Well now, I can’t have that either.” I pulled out my gold rank Tamers Guild badge, and showed it to the man. “You know what this is?”
The man glared, but then looked at the golden badge and shook his head with a scowl.
“This shows that I’m a member of the Tamers Guild,” I explained, crouching in front of the man. “And at the highest rank. You see, these beasts here are mine, and in a way, they’re like my friend Gorban’s polearm, or my friend Shirel’s daggers. These beasts are my weapons for the upcoming tournament. So I can’t have you trying to eat them.”
I had no idea if there would be any other members of the Guild who had elected to come to the tournament of their own volition. Our membership had grown beyond my ability to know every individual who had come and gone from Freehold to join, but I did not want a weaker tamer accosted for their beast, particularly those who just saw their beast as food, so I decided to let the man off with a warning. I motioned with my head, and the ‘pounder stood, letting the man free.
“Spread the word. Beasts accompanied by people are off the table. And if you try to get at them after dark anyway…”
My mecrokotas leapt forward, snapping at the air just in front of the man’s face with a gutteral snarl.
“...then you’ll be the one who’s for dinner.”
The man ran off, and I looked back at my companions. Shirel chuckled, but Gorban just shook his head.
“You’re too soft, Pilus. You should have just killed him.”
Damn, Gorban doesn’t mess around. I shrugged. “Maybe so, but hopefully it stops some other tamer’s beast from getting eaten. Speaking of beasts… I think it’s time I do something I’ve been holding off on all winter.”
Leading the beasts away a bit further from the camp and spreading them out, I turned my body away from Gorban and Shirel and withdrew a few magic crystals. It was time I evolve my rank D beasts and get them fully prepared for the tournament.
I picked the collus first, and it quickly snapped up the offered crystal. I stepped back and took in the new form of the beast as the glow of evolution faded.
The lightning collus was slightly larger with thick, muscular legs and talons. Its plumage had turned black with a blue and purple sheen, and when it spread its wings I noticed that its wingspan had grown dramatically, probably necessary to lift off the ground with the extra muscle it was carrying. I wondered briefly if its new name meant that it was lightning-fast, or if it would actually one day gain the ability to discharge electricity as a magical attack. It would take a while before the beast actually accrued enough magic to form a crystal and have the chance to use whatever ability it developed, so it was not relevant for the tournament.
I moved on to the mecrokotas, fed it a crystal, and watched him evolve into a strongjaw mecrokotas. His coat had actually lightened in color, to an almost sandy brown, but he had a dark, bristly stripe that ran down his back down to a larger, bushier tail that he had lacked in his first form.
He was, unsurprisingly, large and more muscular, but the big change was his head. While he had always had a strong, bone-crushing bite, his former jaw was a bit sleeker. His new head was thicker and wider, more grizzly than hyena, and his jaw had grown proportionally. I had no doubt that the mecrokotas could now easily grab a man by his skull and crush it with ease.
I gave his giant snout a little scratch before moving on to the headpounder, feeding it the last crystal. After evolving into a mossen headpounder, I found myself a bit surprised at the change. He had not grown substantially larger, and overall seemed less imposing. Rather, he seemed to have a quiet, contemplative confidence. His face had gained flanges, like an adult male orangutan, and softened the harder buffalo-adjacent features. He still had the horns, but they had shrunk from the massive set which resembled a cape buffalo to be closer to what one might see on a muskox on Earth.
Where he had formerly had a dark, green-tinged coat, like a gorilla covered in algae, he was now predominantly green over a layer of lighter orange fur, and looking closer I saw the green was a layer of living moss that was either a part of him or some kind of symbiotic relationship. The large mitted paws it had previously had become more dexterous, almost like hands.
He sat there, eyes closed, seemingly perfectly at peace. The headpounder had been capable of intense bouts of explosive power and destructive force, previously, though had always lacked endurance. The mossen headpounder was even more still at rest, and seemed less capable in battle rather than more. Instead, he seemed like a living statue, sage-like in his confident quietude.
“Well, that wasn’t what I expected,” looking at the last beast. “At least the first two went more or less how I thought they would.”
I turned back to see Gorban and Shirel staring. Gorban’s eyes were wide and Shirel’s jaw was hanging open. When they saw me look at them, they turned to each other, then looked back at the evolved beasts.
“Seriously, we better not have to fight them in the tournament,” Shirel finally griped, turning and walking away.
I chuckled, and looked at the full lineup. In Earth terms, I had a giant winged flying moose, a stealthy shadowy owl-bear, a massive mossy orangutan-muskox, an enormous and deadly hyena-grizzly, a possibly electric eagle-utahraptor, and an arctic fox-direwolf with a tail as long as her body. So damn cool, I thought with a grin.
With that sorted, I checked my full stats that I would be headed into the tournament with.
Pilus Horgson (Lv 46)
HP: 357/357
MP: 506/506
Status: Absorption (major), Protection (major)
EXP: 3213/4600
Skills: 3-Point Magic(++), 4-Point Magic(++), 5-Point Magic(++), 6-Point Magic(++), 8-Point Magic(++) Acrobatics(++), Brewing(++), Butchery(+), Cooking(+), Detect(++), Enchanting(+), Foraging(+), Horticulture(+), Inkmaking(+), Inventory(++), Knotting(+), Leatherworking(+), Literacy(+), Needlework(+), Negotiation(+), One-Armed(++), Ranged(++), Smithing(+), Stealth(+), Strength(++), Taming(++), Tanning(+), Two-Armed(++), Unarmed(+), Woodworking(+)
Familiars: Alcewing (Lv 3), Frosted Direfox (Lv 8), Lightning Collus (Lv 1), Mossen Headpounder (Lv 1), Nocturne Urstrig (Lv 1), Strongjaw Mecrokotas (Lv 1), Tarand (Lv 8), Tarand (Lv 10)
Time to show off what a tamer can do.