I sighed for what felt like the fiftieth time this morning.

Preparing for the trip was… interesting.

It came along with about a weeks’ worth of preparation. The length of the trip itself was probably a handful of days to the location and the same back, but entirely depended on the pace that me and Rethi set.

If it were just me, I would sprint full tilt for a day or so and be there, but Mayer said that was too easy—another way to exploit my statistical advantage over gaining any real, worthwhile experiences from the trip.

I didn’t really agree, but Mayer knew his shit, and if he thought that it was pertinent enough to discuss, then it was probably worth adhering to. As much as I was dreading the send-off in a few hours, anxious beyond all logical reasoning, I saw it for what it was. A bird flies the coop situation.

Even back on earth, I had never really managed to get out of my parent’s house. I had reasons that could be used as a compelling and rather convincing case, but the real truth was that I barely had an independent bone in my body.

Not that I was totally reliant on everyone for everything, but I can’t say that I worked particularly hard for anything specific, and even then, I simply cruised on by in life. The height of privilege, I know. I was waiting till after university to really figure out my independent living situation and all that, but now that was the furthest possible worry I could have.

Instead, I was effectively preparing myself to trek across unfamiliar lands, using only intuition and information that I can gather from people to find ultra-powerful people who may or may not obliterate me on sight.

Luckily, neither Mayer nor I were complete buffoons, and sending me out on that sort of trip with essentially a wave goodbye is considered to be sending me to my sure death. Though what I’d gain on this trip that would help outside of this sleepy little road town? I couldn’t possibly know.

Rethi was off saying goodbye to his newly acquired girlfriend. Gram’s daughter, Alena. I say ‘newly acquired’ in the sense that they only realised that they were dating a few months ago, but they were basically dating beforehand too.

She clearly despised me, for whatever reason she had cooked up. According to Rethi, she was a vindictive one, and that seemed to be the main reason she had no friends, other than Rethi of course. Other than there not being that many children running around, of course.

Rethi, after a while of being around Mayer and myself, had become a very relaxed kid—an unlikely voice of calm, given the way that he fights. He was probably the only person I knew that could put up with the girl, judging from my few interactions with her over the past months—none of which went well.

It was then that Rethi made his appearance. He looked a little more haggard than he should be this early on in the day, and his bags were hastily packed, meaning that he’d probably have to properly repack them—before Mayer saw them and made him unpack and repack everything ‘army style’. Which was code for painfully meticulous, of course. Not to say that it didn’t work.

“Got a good chewing out?” I chuckled. Rethi grunted, unamused by my prodding.

“She still thinks that you’ve enslaved me or something. I have no idea why.” He grumbled moodily, a distinct departure from the usual chill atmosphere he assumed. I could think of a few possible reasons why she might think so but saying them out loud would be counter-productive, to say the least. So, I merely shrugged and put the young girl out of my mind. She was going to be the least of our worries out on the road to have a nice blood fuelled tea party with a monster of some sort.

A few hours passed of preparation and double, triple, and quadruple checking that we had everything.

Mayer showed up a few times and pointed out minor things, and so on.

Then the big send-off came and went, in which Mayer briefed us on why we were going out there, and what we were probably going to face.

“We haven’t had traders come by from the smaller road towns to the south for a good few weeks now, and everyone is struggling to get by with the resources we have from the north. The people who do manage to come by were almost all attacked by a group of monsters out along the path a few days out. You are going to go there, investigate and eradicate if necessary.”

With that, he had sent us off.

Mayer had taught us how to interpret this kind of information and how we should handle it. He wouldn’t give us any more than what he already had because, simply, you wouldn’t get any more information in a real monster subjugation request.

And so, the journey began, with Rethi on horseback and myself on my own lovely mare. We took it easy. There was no point in rushing our way there only to be too fucked to do anything but get killed, so we kept the speed reasonable.

The first few hours of travel consisted of us talking about the theoretical points of the subjugation, like what monster it was likely to be, how far along the path they would be, etcetera. But really, it was basically shooting the shit. There was no way that anything that we were saying would hold up to the reality of the situation. The conversation started to morph and contort into whatever appeared into our heads at any given moment. Which eventually lead us to the topic of Rethi’s choice in women.

“I have no idea how you can put up with that, to be perfectly honest.” Rethi looked at me funny for a moment, and then shrugged.

“She really isn’t that bad.” I gave him my best blank look.

“Remember the time she saw you covered in my blood and she decided that she’d run around the town telling basically anyone who would listen that I was torturing you?” Rethi looked sheepish.

“No-one got hurt in the end, it really wasn’t that bad.” My blank stare continued.

“She tried to stab me. With a broken broomstick handle.”

Rethi opened his mouth to reply but closed it and sighed.

“I know. I know. She’s crazy overprotective. Always has been.” He looked down at the horse that was shifting beneath him as it sauntered down the path and scratched at the back of the horse’s mane.

“I don’t think she has quite gotten her head around me not needing protection anymore, and my attitude changing to reflect that. It’s making her worse. Paranoid even.” I nodded. The boy certainly didn’t need protection anymore. It was doubtful that anyone in the small town would be able to lay a finger on him before he had ripped their throat out.

“Maybe she is unsure about the power dynamic of your relationship shifting?” Rethi chewed on his lip for a bit and grunted in affirmation.

“Maybe. We are on rocky ground at the moment, with me coming out here with you. She thinks I’ve gone insane.” I laughed.

“Maybe we have. We are going out, hunting for a group of monsters. Most people would think that we were crazy.” Rethi joined in with my laughter and we moved on to lighter topics, like shifting and the Sharah.

The sun eclipsed by the other planet in the sky, turning the sky a brilliant golden colour, the planet warping the light slightly making it almost look like a golden orb. It was quite the marvel, something I’m not sure that I’ll ever truly get over seeing.

Our conversations slowly died down into a comfortable silence, like a fire that once blazed, but now hummed with delightful warmth.

The path became less maintained the further we went out, becoming more and more uneven, which would have made it much harder to travel on foot. It wouldn’t have bothered me at all, but I could see why the addition of the horses was a wise move by Mayer. So still, despite the rapidly eclipsing sun, we forged ahead, agreeing to set up camp two or so hours before the sun truly disappeared.

It was in those few hours of walking that I started to feel a strange sensation on me. Tracing me. I looked around not truly perturbed, but a little wary.

The sensation went away but came back a few times over the course of the next few hours. I couldn’t pin the feeling on anything in particular, so I had to leave it alone for the time being.

Rethi and I struggled to set up camp, despite doing it with and without Mayer’s help on several occasions. The change from open plains to the outskirts of a towering forest apparently made for a much more difficult time setting up tents.

It took us a good hour to properly set up the camp and the fire, and then another thirty to make and eat a simple dinner, which I ate more out of habit than any nutritional value I could get from the simple soup.

The one benefit that came with being sleepless was that I was always capable of taking night watch.

I didn’t tire, so a drop in perception due to fatigue wasn’t something we needed to worry about. A fact that Mayer had made abundantly clear that we factor into our decision making on the road. It was also another one of my ‘cheats’, in his words.

Honestly, unless Mayer hadn’t shoved the importance of having a watch rotation down our throats on many an occasion, we wouldn’t have even bothered having me out on watch in the first place.

This time however, I started to see Mayer’s reasoning.

The feeling from this afternoon was back, and much stronger this time. It became abundantly clear that either someone or something was following me, and it was close.

I didn’t move, making sure that whatever it was wouldn’t be alerted to the fact that I know they are there. I readied a sequence of movements, primed to obliterate anything that so much as moved.

It was then that I heard it. A small, almost imperceptible shuffle in the woods near our camp.

I sprang into action, swiftly moving from a sitting position into the proper stance, then flowing into a collection of movements that sung of destruction. I snapped towards the source of the sound and slammed my foot into the ground with a sharp pounding motion. I felt the power of the slam rush through me and begin to run its predetermined path through my body as I finally understood what it was that my eyes were telling me.

My mind went into overdrive. I desperately forced body to move a little more, to change directions of the blast just a touch. I growled with the effort it took to change a sentence already set in motion, but my complaining legs and arms complied.

The diverted force shot outwards, raw energy roaring towards, and then into the base of a tree, exploding a haphazard circular hole in the sturdy wood, sending splinters flying everywhere, some even stabbing into my flesh only to be pushed out less than a second later.

I stood there dumbfounded for a second, my eyes and mind disbelieving. However, after a moment of this, my mind kicked back into action and, almost involuntarily, I roared.

“What the actual fuck.”