Dem knew his Ma would be angry that he was leaving. So like every other time he left for a long trip, he simply didn’t tell her. He would not even stop at home. She would see the supplies he bought and know. So as he left the cleared area around the settlement he headed south, bypassing the trails that might have led near his home.

His goal was to quickly survey the area his employers wanted to explore. He needed to find them a defensible camp site, and he needed to get a sense of what kind of greater beasts called the area home. He also needed to ensure he knew most of the major landmarks. He would be very busy. He could move faster than most parties, with the help of Ina, so he would have at least a few cycles to get the lay of the land before he had to head back to meet up with the party who purchased his services.

This trip would still be less dangerous than staying out in the Wilds for a whole rotation, like he would with the Party that was hiring him, but it wouldn’t necessarily be easy either. As he walked, he took a mental inventory of his belongings, making sure he had everything he needed. Once he was sure he had everything, his mind went through an exercise Caius had taught him to ensure every cantrip he knew could be smoothly cast. Cantrips were simple spells that could be powered with almost any Path. Just about everyone had access to at least a few cantrips. They cost little, in terms of the power one drew from one's Path, and they took little time to cast. On the other hand, they were weak, had diminishing returns, and were mostly used for basic cycle-to-cycle needs. Simple cantrips like Minor Healing would heal scrapes and cuts, and staunch the bleeding from more serious wounds. Minor Stamina could allow you to work longer, perhaps two work cycles at a stretch, but would eventually force you to crash and sleep for a quarter cycle or more. With cantrips he could clean water, prevent disease, and even help find his way when lost. They were essential to the daily lives of those living in the hamlets, and everywhere in the True Human Realm.

He could cast nearly thirty different cantrips, most learned from Caius and Church texts, but some were fairly new and were a part of his Class. These cantrips were imparted directly to his mind from the pages of the Class grimoire he had purchased. Imparting a spell meant he ‘knew’ them, but didn’t necessarily mean he could cast them. Working his way through these cantrips had been his first task upon using the grimoire. Not only were these cantrips useful, and in some cases they were improvements on the ones he had received from his education. They served as a basis for his Class spells. For instance, the Class cantrip, Understand Other, gave him brief glimpses into the mind of Ina, allowing them the ability to communicate even without the bond. Using the cantrip, he had learned mostly was that she was hungry, but even that practice had helped him eventually cast his Class spell Bond Beast. He still needed time to fully comprehend, and therefore be able to use, all his Class spells, but he was well on his way. His favorite was Minor Borrow Strength, which gave him a portion of Ina’s physical attributes at a small cost to her stamina. Some Spells were more difficult than others to cast, but nearly every spell in the grimoire was low-tier. The most difficult spell, Bond Beast, was a mid-tier spell. Any grimoire that had mid-tier spells was technically a mid-tier grimoire. In reality, the grimoire be bought had been cheap and extremely low-end, but it had been all he could afford. He was lucky it was even available. He secretly suspected Greer had ordered the grimoire, specifically for him, if only to provide a carrot to keep him coming back to her.

This trip would also be a chance to further his Path. Tamers usually had Paths related to working with beasts, understanding beasts, or empowering beasts. Each person’s Path was somewhat unique, a combination of personal understandings and learnings crafted together mentally into a fairly narrow concept, called an Intent. By living that concept, that Intent, one advanced along one’s path and was better able to do whatever that concept represented. Advancing along one’s path also gave one the ability to to cast Class Spells more often, and more efficiently. Advancing along one’s Path was a way of gathering power to one’s self, cantrips and Class Spells were a means of expressing that power. Most people could focus on a Path well enough to cast cantrips, but couldn’t afford more than the most basic and mundane Classes, and so they rarely had access to spells that would help them in more than their immediate work. He did not consider himself particularly talented. When he was an an adolescent, there were children younger than him that could cast a battery of cantrips when he had been learning his first few. He was also far from the wors thankfull, not that the children of the settlement ever treated him well.

His Path was fairly simple, but definitely left room for refinement. He focused on teamwork, mutualism, and collaboration. The more he worked in concert with Ina, and anyone else he was close to, the more he advanced on his Path. It was not a Path he could exercise every moment of every cycle, and thus was in no danger of losing himself like his father had done. He could, however, advance swiftly, so long as he threw himself into difficult situations and worked with Ina to solve them. The more difficult, and usually dangerous, the situation, the more he advanced. Paths were not meant to be easy, and conflict generally was a quicker path to power than simple daily grind. The church had a phrase, ‘The more difficult the Path, the more rewarding the Path.’ It sounded lame to him at the time, just another aphorism in a sea of such phrases, but now as an adult, he realized it was entirely true. It was still lame though.

Underlying the Classes, Paths, and Intents, there was the fundamental energy that permeated the land he lived on. Church doctrine, and other texts he had read, called it many things. Power, Divinity, Mana, Energy, were all terms for it. Picking a single word for it, or trying to have a unified understanding of it, was impossible. The energy was felt through a personal connection each person had to the world around them. Each person interpreted the connection slightly different, and there were whole schools of thought built on understanding the energy of the world in particular ways. Dem only had the most basic understanding of the power he felt in the world around him, but it was more than enough to focus his Intent, and build a reservoir of power for his Path. The energy was actually quite useless by itself. When Dem drew it in he felt.. fuller, more content, more connected, and a little more energetic, but without using it to sharpen his Intent or filtering it through his Path, it did little more than offer him a refreshed feeling. Everyone could draw power from the world, that wasn’t special. What really mattered was how that power was used.

***

The first few cycles out were always uneventful. The lesser beasts that inhabited the area within a couple cycles of the settlement were wary of Ina. If they got a whiff of her, or even of Dem because he smelled like her, they would simply move away in a different direction. After leaving those weaker areas, they eventually reached a section of the Wilds he was unfamiliar with. He had been excited to see a new part of the wilds, but also very cautious of what they would find. After reaching the new area, they had spent a number of cycles scouting around, finding a good campsite, and getting the basic work required of him done. They had moved through the trees, rather than the ground, jumping and climbing from branch to branch. Moving through the trees offered some measure of safety from the largest of creatures, who were usually too big to leave the ground. Near the settlement, he would take groundtrails, as well as low-branchtrails, but out here there was nothing of the kind, so Ina and he took the safest route, high above the ground. Despite being quite high up, they had eventually hit trouble.

He cast a spell of Minor Share Strength on Ina, giving Ina some of his strength, while buffing himself with a couple of cantrips to offset the strength-cost of the spell. They had encountered greater viper-wyrm, which wouldn’t normally have been a big a problem, but this one was oddly persistent.

Viper-wyrms were snake-beasts, about as long as an average person was tall, but thicker in the middle than most humans. Their bodies tapered to snake-like proportions at both ends, but their middle was too large to allow them swiftly climb or move through the trees. They had the arrow-shaped head of a viper, with large venomous fangs to match. They even had a tail that sported two venom coated talons at its tip. They were primarily ground-based ambush predators, with mottled brown and green coloring to blend into their surroundings. Their muscular middles gave them the ability to spring out of their dens and latch on to prey. Their venom was more caustic, and acid-like, than anything else. They wanted you a bit melted before they digested you.

As Ina and he moved through the trees, he had buffed himself to improve his speed, but he also still relied on Ina to offer a helpful tail here and there. The viper-wyrm normally wouldn’t bother leaving its den, let alone chase them along the ground. Yet, here it was, clearly moving with some speed following a distance behind them. He couldn’t see its body in the foliage, but he could sense it’s movement. Through the bond he could smell its caustic venom, Ina had picked up on in earlier. He could only assume it was desperately hungry if it was going to these lengths. Its crude strategy was to try to exhaust Ina and himself so that either, they fell out of the trees out of sheer exhaustion, or it could finally catch them as they rested. It wasn’t entirely clear to Dem whether the viper-wyrm knew about their observation of it, not that it mattered much either way. They could either stop and fight it or run and hope to outlast it.

Technically a many-tailed was a far more deadly beast than a greater viper-wyrm, but this snake seemed different. Its behavior was bizarre, and defied what he knew of the beast. He was wary of engaging a beast acting so erratically.

He examined the bond between Ina and himself. He offered her the feeling he was waiting for her ideas over the bond. Their communication mostly took place through individually sent feelings or mental pictures. She offered him a mental picture of herself dodging the initial strike of the snake-beast, while scoring a disemboweling strike along its side. He knew this was a very idealized scenario. Ina was still freshly ascended and did not have a healthy respect yet for the tough scales of a greater snake beast. It's true she could score its hide, but was unlikely to cut past the muscle casing, to open the visceral cavity. He sent her an image of them playing a kind of game with the snake-beast, stopping for short amounts of time to let it begin trying to reach them in the trees before quickly moving away. This would exhaust the beast and force it to reveal itself, after repeating this tactic a few times, they could try taking it head on as she wanted. Ina agreed to the modification of her plan without any fuss. She didn’t mind playing such a game with the snake beast.

They immediately began their game of exhaustion with the snake-beast. They moved for a while, and then stopped, giving it the chance to try to make its way up a nearby tree before beginning to move again. It kept itself out of line of sight, but Ina could still hear and smell it as it got closer. After an eighth of a cycle, the snake-beast started to slow down, and Ina wanted to take her chances with it. He had not intended on doing any hunting this trip, but the snake-beast was relentless. He asked to do one more push ahead of the snake beast, and then doubleback to surprise it. Ina was impatient to fight the snake beast, but was willing to push ahead one more time for the element of surprise.

***

As the snake-beast hurried along the ground, Ina crept through the trees above it. Dem had found a good place further ahead to hide while staying out of the range of its spring-attack. He waited, preparing to stab with his spear or distract the viper-wyrm, whichever would help Ina the most. He had applied every buff he had at his disposal to Ina. He hoped it would be enough.

His thoughts stopped dead as he saw the head of the snake-beast rise up from the brush. It was larger than a normal viper-wyrm, which meant it would be quite old and therefore powerful. A a shock of terror struck Dem's body. This was an elder greater beast, not far from ascending to a calamity beast. Seeing the fanged head begin to take in its surroundings, clearly aware something was was not right, he scrambled mentally. As swiftly as he could he sent a mental image to Ina, trying to warn her, but she was already challenging the dangerous opponent, drawing its attention and baiting its strike. Rather than immediately striking though, it began to grind its scales together, letting out a loud hiss. At first he couldn’t understand what it was doing, it was calling attention to itself obviously, but the purpose of its actions was not immediately clear.

He gasped, a realization dawning on him. This snake was not alone, and its behavior wasn’t meant to exhaust its prey. It was designed to herd them further onward towards its children. Viper-wyrms were solitary predators, except for when they had just given birth to a large clutch of children. He and ina would be prey for its children if they waited here any longer. He conveyed his understanding towards Ina. The only way out of this was to kill the parent snake quickly and then escape the encirclement of younger snakes undoubtedly moving inward toward them.

Ina moved closer in a series of jumps from trunk to trunk around the snake-beast, her tails taking small swipes at the fat middle section of the viper-wyrm. After a few of these swipes scoring its hide, it seemed to lose its patience, and readied a spring, aiming for when she landed on the trunk nearest to it. Ina seemed to predict the snakes intention, and then used her tails to change direction at the last moment by sinking her tail-claws into a different trunk altogether. Her tails offered her the ability change direction in mid-air if she could latch on to something nearby. The snake-beast rammed face first into the trunk it was aiming at but Ina was not there. This wouldn’t hurt the beast much, its viper-like head was mostly bone and cartilage, but it would stun the beast for a moment. That moment gave Ina the chance to move in from the side, away from its fangs or talons. While Ina moved in, Dem also jumped in to help. Ina took long strips of skin out of its hide with her claws, as he moved above the fight quickly and readied his spear. The most he could do was try to pierce either the front end or the back end of the snake. Holding one of those two sections of the snake-beast immobile, would give Ina the chance to really tear into it middle. As it was currently, if she went for its head, it would use its tail to attack her, and vice-versa.

The viper-wyrm quickly recovered, seemed to cast some sort of spell on itself causing it to glow slightly in the gloomy shade of the forest floor.The spell was likelya restorative, but Dem couldn’t sure. It readied another strike, one Ina would have to stopp attacking to dodge. Even if it missed, it would keep them there longer, which would only spell their inevitable doom, so the snake-beast was in no great rush. The old monster was very intelligent, it appeared.

Ina dodged its strike once again, though this time the snake-beast angled itself so that it only caught open air, instead of slamming into another tree trunk. It was at this crucial moment Dem fell from above, spear blade first. Ina had sensed what he was about to do and had moved closer to the snake-beast, to try to fill its vision and give him an opening. Despite this, the snake-beast seemed to sense something was amiss. It knew it had been chasing two meals in the trees, not one, and so it looked up briefly, but was ultimately too late. His spear descended, skewering the snake a span or so behind its clawed tail. His feet landed on the cross guard of the blade, adding the extra force of his weight to slam the blade home. Pain ran through his legs as he landed, causing him to stiffen. Its scale and hide were tough, but he had used his weight, momentum, and the spelled blade all to his advantage. Despite the pain, he jumped away from the spear and the newly enraged snake-beast. Ina had continued to attack, which drew its attention away from Dem. It struck again at Ina, this time it managed to get a mouth full of one of her tails, venom splashing around where the snake-beasts mouth had bit down. The venom immediately began to caustically steam and hiss, as it ate through the flesh of her tail. They needed to finish this quickly. He sent her a mental image, and despite the pain she was in, she understood.

Her next action surprised the snake-beast, Ina used her other clawed tails to cut envenomed tail off near its base. With time it could be regrown. If she let the caustic venom take effect, she might die just from blood poisoning. The snake-beast now had a length of Ina’s tail in its mouth. A portion was even stuck on the beast’s fangs, and so it began to shake its head, to dislodge the tail. Dem could sense it was now quite angry. It clearly had underestimated its opponents and was enraged that its prey had fought back to this degree. Meanwhile, Ina went in for the kill, pouncing on its back, while using her remaining tails to hold head still and pointed away from her. Its neck muscles proved stronger than her tails, and it managed to slowly turn its face around to strike again, but not before she had begun to disembowel it with her hind claws, each nearly the length of Dem’s hand when fully extended. He needed to continue to do his part, so he took out his knife, and with a few quick slices, he had cut the talons from the end of the snake-beast. He had to thank his Da later, his Da had been the one to give him the knife and sharpen it. It cut through the weak scales around the talons easily.

The snake-beast, made another attempt at striking Ina, but her dug-in tails kept it from any sort of accuracy. This gave Dem the chance to retrieve the spear in a single swift motion. Ina had paralyzed the back end of the snake by nearly severing its spine in the middle of its fat grub-like body, and so the spear wasn’t needed to hold the snake beast down. He needed get this over right away. Empowering Ina with a Minor Strengthen Other, she was able to hold its head still enough that he could push the tip of the spear through the back of its head under its skull plate. It died angry and unwilling, killed by prey it hadn’t considered a threat.

He would have let out a sigh of relief, if he hadn’t suddenly noticed movement from every direction. At least a dozen creatures moved in on them. He pulled his spear from head of the parent, readying himself to take on it's children.