I had, quite honestly, been a little angrier than I should have.

Though it may have presented as being angry at someone, I was really angry at me.

I should have known. It was so clearly obvious that it was almost painful to observe in hindsight. I guess that’s what I deserve for going lethal straight away, rather than being normal and sleuthing it out before trying to explode them into tiny little bits with a kinetic blast—something that Mayer had specifically said to not use on anyone but him.

I sighed and ran my hand through my dusty brown hair, brightened from the light of the campfire that had been resurrected from coals in the middle of the night. Rethi sat in front of me, half dressed and eyes wandering between the two of us, unsure who to be angry with in the first place. I looked to my side, seeing a short, dark-haired girl sitting next to me, somehow both shellshocked and also wearing a combative expression, one that I had become well acquainted with over the past weeks and months.

“What exactly happened, Master Max?” Rethi asked, kindly but worried. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Alena Gram, Rethi’s girlfriend, make a scandalized face. I quickly interjected before she could start yelling.

“Had been feeling eyes on me all night and was trying to figure out what it was,” I paused before I continued, “I acted rashly and decided to get the jump on whatever was watching us.”

The moment after I finished speaking, Alena’s top boiled over and she began to yell.

“Damn right you acted rashly! You almost killed me, you murderous-” Rethi turned to look at her, his eyes flashing a brilliant green in the light of the campfire.

“Alena. What are you doing out here?” He slowly intoned, each word a carefully laid brick, a platform for Rethi to stand on. Rethi was surprisingly good at this stuff, he had obviously handled a few situations just like this. The master was at work.

“I, uh…” She trailed off, looking for words while sneaking scathing glances at me. After a moment of Rethi patiently waiting for a response, he nodded at her, as if he had heard an enlightening string of words. I raised an eyebrow, honestly more amused than any shade of angry now.

“So, Alena,” Rethi continued with his slow intonation, “you followed us out here, on foot, to a place you knew would be dangerous. You then tried spying on someone you knew to be one of the more powerful individuals in our area, for possibly hundreds of kilometres, and you didn’t expect that you might be killed?”

His tone the entire time was not chiding, nor was it accusatory. He was reframing the subject of the conversation itself. From Rethi’s standpoint, I was beginning to see how he was less angry with me, past the fact that I’d come close to accidentally killing his girlfriend. But also, because we are out on a main travel road on Virsdis, a historically hostile planet. If you were going to do something so colossally stupid anywhere, it better not be on Virsdis.

Alena had nothing to say to that, brightening to a shade of red that only contrasted her pale features from her dark hair further. It was a mix of anger and embarrassment that I felt swirling around inside of her. She was a mess of emotions, this girl—always was. It’s why I was so sceptical of why Rethi would even think about getting together with her, for really any reason.

But, in her, I think I saw a small inkling of that reason. It’s definitely not because she was hiding a golden heart, but because that anger and indignation extends from a desire to protect. Just an overwhelmingly unhealthy manifestation of it.

Rethi sighed heavily, placing his head in the palms of his hands. The boy had been wired with worry after being awoken by my shouting. He had thought it was bandits, he had been prepared to kill. Instead, he had to deal with the near death of his girlfriend.

“You know why I told you that you couldn’t come. You knew why.” Rethi said, exasperation leaking into his voice. It wasn’t venomous, but a mixture of sadness, betrayal, and disappointment. Rethi stood up, his muscled body extending upwards to his full height that loomed over his girlfriend, even if she’d been standing. He looked her in the eye for a moment, a small battle of wills, before Alena gave up and looked away towards the trees not so far from the small camp. Rethi turned to me, seeking guidance.

“What do we do?” Alena swung her head around, indignation flaring.

“You are letting that… man choose what happens to me?” Such vitriol from such a small woman, it was almost surprising. I didn’t bother to give her a response.

“Well, she’s already out here, and was committed enough to run the whole day as well,” I looked at her, honestly slightly impressed, “so I don’t think we should even bother bringing her all the way back to town just to have to ride all the way back out here. If she wants to risk it with us, then she can.” I shrug my shoulders, and Rethi looked concernedly towards Alena, who’s expression betrayed the small wave of relief I saw in her.

“But what if-” Rethi started, but I waved away his question.

“That’s all you. If she is going to put herself in danger, then she may as well have someone around who can help her if she royally screws it up.” It was a risky call, if Alena were injured for whatever reason, it would come back to this decision being the origin of the problem. But I couldn’t honestly see Alena just giving up following us. I barely knew the girl and even I could tell that she was fanatically devoted to Rethi, for whatever reason.

Rethi looked at me, confused. He hadn’t ever really had a position of authority or responsibility, aside from caring for his mother, so to essentially be given the wherewithal to dictate how to manage his girlfriend on this trip was a new experience.

“Anyways, I’m going to bed. You can sit out here keeping watch with your girlfriend. At least we’ll have more people to keep watch.” I gave a nod, and I was off to ‘bed’.

Of course, I didn’t sleep, I hadn’t slept in months at this point. Oddly enough it had become hard for me to understand why I ever enjoyed sleep, other than the simple refreshing of the mind. Now I found the idea of sleep, or willingly giving myself to unconsciousness, a deeply unsettling concept.

So, instead of sleeping, I spent my time listening and experiencing and thinking. A sort of meditative technique for those with infinite mental and physical stamina. I had initially developed it as a mental rest while performing the Sharah, but it became something that I simply did in downtime that couldn’t be used effectively for anything else.

At first, pushing myself to feel and experience the emotions and thoughts around me was hard, if not downright uncomfortable. Me being a natural empath and also capable of shifting were supposed to be mutually exclusive. But for reasons unknown to me or Mayer, other than the canned response of ‘you’re a Champion’, it wasn’t. I haven’t been able to scrounge out much information of the Long Dead or Soul-Seekers, other than what Mayer knows. Everyone else just know of them as legends, beings that once existed and now definitely do not.

How my ability to interact with ether independently from being a natural empath wasn’t immediately obvious, though I guess it was intuitive enough. I was able to ‘transfer’ a small amount of my emotion sensing empathy through my ether, something that I was sure would strengthen through becoming more adept with shifting and utilising ether.

Which, at the moment, I was definitely not adept at. Sure, I was capable of using shifting, enacted by the Sharah, but when I just tried to move ether on its own; it was a whole different ball game, and I wasn’t even knowledgeable enough to be able to understand why.

I could hear the quiet but relatively tense conversation outside of the tent. It came down to the fact that Rethi was disappointed that Alena wouldn’t let him trust in his own judgement, and Alena was mad that Rethi would allow himself to be subservient to me. Fair enough, I’m not sure I’d take too warmly to a partner of mine being subservient to someone else. But I’m not sure she cared to believe that Rethi was not a slave, and never would be.

It was a long night after that. I was still a little shaken by the fact that I nearly blew a hole in the chest of a young girl. Cold blooded killer, I am not.

The sun began to peek from behind Virsdis, the warm glow slowly adding colour to the rough canvas of the tents. The early mornings were enchanting on Virsdis. Virsdis had a side that was always facing the sun, the light side, and a face that was permanently dark, where the Nightfell have taken up residence—in the legends, anyway. Night on Virsdis came when Orisis blotted out the sun with its mass for ten hours as it passed in its orbit around Virsdis. In the morning, after ten hours of night, Orisis moved just enough to let the sunlight refract off of its atmosphere, creating a bright and almost heavenly display of the ‘sunrise’.

I wonder if people awaken early to see it, or if the other Champions look upon this and think as I do. Maybe they are too busy doing anything else other than look at it, in fear of potentially coming to find that this is more than a proving ground. Or maybe that this world was anything more than a game that the God who had put us here had created just for us to mess around in.

I got up out of my reclining position, readying myself to tackle the day, when I felt a pair of eyes flit over me, just for a second. I was instantly snapped out of my reverie, as I quickly spread my ether out, trying to connect to anything I could with it, trying to use my natural empathy as a sort of radar.

I found Rethi and Alena sitting on the ground near where the fire was, and something else. I moved quickly towards the tent’s opening and threw the flap open, only to see Rethi and Alena sitting by the last whispers of a campfire.

Rethi’s alert eyes wandered over to where I was standing and gave me an odd look as I stared intently at the campfire.

“Everything alright, Master Max?” I hesitated, giving the boy a nod only after a few seconds of staring at the campfire. I could have sworn I felt something. In fact, I’m entirely sure I felt something. What it was, I couldn’t know, but it was a far odder experience than the silly girl tailing us, who was slumped onto her boyfriend’s shoulder, sleeping away her watch duty.

I gave Rethi a light scolding eye for that, and he scratched at his face sheepishly.

“Alena, up.” I said, calmly. She awoke slowly, her eyelids fluttering and then finally opening, starting with a squint. It was a rough wake up, made harder by the fact that she was forced to run after us for the whole day, so she didn’t fall behind. She groaned out something in a very teenagerly way. I chose to ignore what it may or may not have been, based on Rethi’s shocked expression.

“We are going to pack up camp and get moving for the day. You are expected to help pack up, and then you will ride on one of the horses while we travel. There will be no complaining, or I will take you back directly to Master Gram. Are we clear?” I state harshly. Not too harshly, of course. She was still a kid. But the differences between a kid here and a kid back home are immense. If she couldn’t pull her weight, then that was her fault and many would not grace her the option of being escorted home, no matter her gender or age.

Alena wiped sleep from her eyes and nodded, getting up with Rethi and I to pack away the canvas tents and roughly washing the cooking tools that Rethi had used last night. It took thirty odd minutes before we were back on the road, the grumbling girl up on my horse, trying her best not to fall off, with adequate help from Rethi, though I suspect that he was trickling out information because he found her jostling around on the horse’s back secretly hilarious.

Throughout my jog alongside the horseback riders, I continued to search for the origin of that odd presence that I had felt only hours before. It was something almost wholly alien feeling to me, and yet I couldn’t catch even a whiff of it.

I was concerned that there was more than just a little girl following us.