“What can tell me anything about the thing we fought in the forest?” Kaju asked. He was an old man in his fifties, had a great thick white beard and grey wizened eyes. He was a soldier once and too old to hound monstrous beasts through the woods. Nonetheless, he was the only one uninjured in the battle from the other side, and luck had nothing to do with it.

He looked around at his guest, the two boys, the hunter, and their village herb collector.

Deacon had accompanied them.

The five of them sat in the bar. Mannat had never been inside one, but from the looks around, he could see Pandit and he were the only boys inside. The men curiously stared at them as if they were some exotic animals their village hunter had caught in the woods.

“There’s nothing much I can tell you. The monster,” Khargosh stressed, “--attacked our village last night and today the whole village looking for it in the woods.”

Pandit flinched upon hearing Khargosh call his brother a monster. That was the extent of his reaction. He didn’t speak, nor look at his dad. The gazes around softened toward him as the people misunderstood the reason behind his twitches. Perhaps, they thought he was scared of the monster. They had seen the carnage it had left behind in its wake. Even they were scared of the monster that had rampaged through their village in the morning. Pandit was but a kid in their eyes.

Kaju whistled. “You don’t mean to say even your women and children are out in the forest?”

“They are… with all the bells and whistles.” Khargosh emptied the wooden cup of fizzing beer and slid it across the counter toward the bartender. The brawny man who had a lush head of curly brown hair caught it in his vice grip, filled the cup to the brim, and slid it back to him.

“Your people must respect the Sarpanch,” Kaju said with a hint of jealousy and melancholy.

Khargosh decided to let the man misunderstand and the boys followed suit.

“Anyways,” The leader continued, “You said he was near the border and told you about the hunt. So you decided to take a look?” He gestured toward Deacon who was busy savoring his pint of beer with nostalgia.

“About right,” Khargosh nodded.

Meanwhile, Pandit elbowed Mannat and asked him gesturing toward the trespasser they had caught in the woods. “What’s wrong with him?”

“I can’t say,” Mannat said. “His mana feels the same as his mood. Both suggest he’s depressed.”

Pandit shook his head. “That’s a really neat trick you have found. Is there any way I can learn it? I’ll finally know what’s going on inside a girl’s mind!”

“What’s your wisdom and intelligence like?” Mannat asked reflexively, pouring a bucket full of rocks over Pandit’s glass-thin expectations.

Pandit’s lips twitched in annoyance and he looked away from his friend. “So what now?” He said, skillfully changing the topic. Mannat caught his underhanded trick, but let it slip.

“Now, it’s too late to be roaming the woods. You saw what happened yesterday, and your—” Mannat checked his surroundings and spoke in confidence upon finding no one paying attention to them. “He is definitely getting stronger with every passing night. He was strong as last night even in the day. I don’t want to know what he will be like in the night.”

Pandit sipped on his juice and said, “Where do you think he will go from here? He was pretty badly hurt.”

Mannat was going to answer when the conversation next to them got his and Pandit’s attention.

“I want to know why it didn’t bleed,” Kaju said. “We cut and stabbed it plenty of times, but it didn’t shed a drop of blood. Your arrow clearly hit it in the heart… yet, it survived. It even found the strength to run away. Is that thing even alive?”

“It’s the first time I saw it.” Khargosh lied without hesitation.

Mannat almost choked on the water he was drinking. He wondered how Khargosh could lie so easily.

It has to be a skill. He thought. Something the man had received under his job or unlocked through the attribute slots. He tried to sense Khargosh’s mood but came out with nothing in the end. The man sitting opposite him was mentally firm; he was a deep black hole that Mannat couldn’t penetrate.

That was it. Khargosh tried to pay for their drinks, but not only did Kaju stopped him, but so did the bar owner.

“It’s on the house,” He was told.

Khargosh stood up and the boys followed suit. He shook hands with Kaju and nodded to the men in the bar and they left without looking back. Whatever happened in the bar afterward was none of his concern.

Mannat and Pandit looked around the village on their way out, and they found it very different from their village. For an instance, the streets of this village were wider. There were fewer houses and even fewer people around. They saw many women carrying baskets over their backs. The few men they saw looked at them from head to toe, and then ignored them. Pandit knew the men of their village would have followed strangers around until they were out of the village.

It was already evening by the time they returned to their village. Khargosh asked Mannat to have a meal before leaving, but Mannat declined the offer.

He reached home just in time as his mother would be cooking dinner. The door was open. He went inside and yelled, “I’m home, father” but received no response. The house was cold, like a long-abandoned tomb.

There weren’t any bottles on the dining table, and the bedroom door was open. The home was lifeless and dark. Mannat felt uneasy until he saw his father in the garden through the bedroom window.

He sighed in relief and got to his side. Maybe Raesh heard the door open, or he sensed Mannat’s presence; he started speaking when Mannat approached him.

“Do you remember the time when you used to call me by my name?” Raesh said. He was sitting in the garden and the tall grass had swallowed everything below his chest. It hadn’t been cut in a long time and had grown knee-high. It bent around Mannat’s as he passed through and took a seat beside his father.

“Mother would be furious if she saw what we did to her garden,” Mannat said facing his father.

Raesh looked around as if he had just taken notice of the tall grass, then faced Mannat and grinned. His mustache was rolling over his upper lip and getting into his mouth. His beard had grown equally as long as the garden grass. Abandoned, and alone, both the garden and Raesh had let nature run its course, resulting in their condition.

Mannat had an urge to pull his father’s beard; reluctantly he held himself back. He stretched his arms above his head, leaned back, and laid on the ground. He looked straight up at the dim sky and stared at the clouds that changed shapes with the wind. They met each other and separated at times, and flew through the open sky without any restrictions or obligations. It was a wonderful evening.

“Did you find him?” Raesh asked.

“Yes,” Mannat said. “We had to go across the border, but we found him.”

“You had an adventure, I see. How did you bypass the traps?”

“We got lucky.” Mannat chuckled. “We found a trespasser, an herb gatherer, who helped us. Are there a lot of them in their village?”

“That was their main occupation before the border was created.” Raesh sighed. “Most of their men ran off to the town to make a living. Now only a few people take the job. It’s no wonder they are crossing the border to collect herbs?”

Mannat slapped the ground and sat up. He glared at his father and said, “We could have coexisted together. There was no need for the war if they only wanted to gather herbs?”

“People are beings of greed and gluttony, boy.” Raesh shook his head. “We’ll always want more, more land, more herbs, more meat, and more money. It’s an endless cycle. The war was inevitable. And it happened because both the villages wanted more for their people.”

The two grew silent as the wind blew through the garden. It was cold and refreshing and made the grass blades fight with each other to keep their feet. A few of them broke their back and bent over, while others raised their sharp heads to the sky in victory and cried silently.

Mannat told his father what he saw and what happened out in the woods.

“Do you think we should have chased Little Butcher and let the men die?” Mannat said solemnly as the wind died down and the grass calmed down around the two of them.

“What’s done is done. There is no point thinking about it.” Raesh said. “It was a choice you all made together. The important thing is to understand that all choices have consequences – even the right ones do. Just like how your mother and I made the choice to run away… and now I have to deal with you.”

For a second Mannat thought, his father made a lot of sense until Raesh snickered and started laughing.

“That was not funny.” Mannat puffed his cheeks, which sent Raesh into another laughing fit.

“Someone else would have laughed. A girl would have blushed. And your mother…”

“What would she do?”

“She would have kicked me out of the house and not let me back inside for the night.” Raesh smiled again and Mannat snorted.

“Liked that one did you?” Raesh said, causing Mannat’s ears to turn red. “So what are you going to do now that the boy has learned that there is a bigger world out there?”

Mannat shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know about tonight, but for now I want to eat something. I’m kind of starving. Do we have anything at home?”

“I have no idea,” Raesh said and they both got up to fix a meal.

Mannat remembered that they had bought the crate full of roots and vegetables home from the Witch’s hut. He found it under the kitchen sink. He didn’t know who put it under there, but he was thankful. Together they made a meal out of the potatoes and the carrots.

They sat at the table with two empty bowls in front of them. Mannat was looking out the window at the red sky lost in thought when Raesh finished the contents of his bowl and commented, “I wish we had some meat.”

Mannat wanted to ignore the thought when suddenly there was a knock on the door. The door opened. Khargosh and Pandit entered, holding a steaming pot.

Pandit stared at them and the empty bowls in front of them, then awkwardly said, “We brought meat.”

Such honest smiles bloomed on the faces of Mannat and Raesh he would never forget them for the rest of his life. In the far future, Pandit would tell the tale to countless men and all would offer a bowl of meat to Mannat in response; he would ruthlessly refuse all of them, only to cause a bigger fit of laughter in the company. But this was a tale for another time. As for that day, after the four had eaten —yes, both Pandit and Khargosh dinned with them. Pandit loved meat too much and wouldn’t have happily accepted the offer— the discussion came back to the unimpeded night.

“What’s the plan?” Mannat asked.

Pandit stopped tonguing his teeth and sat straight on the chair.

“I was against going into the woods last night, and I firmly stand with the same decision today,” Khargosh said.

Everyone looked at Raesh who was unconsciously flexing his hand that had suffered an abrasion in the fight with little Butcher.

Raesh noticed their worried gaze and complained. “Stop being a nuisance. I’m thinking when it will heal so I can go back to forging stuff.” He saw that Mannat looked anxious and cut his words short. “What were you saying?”

Khargosh continued, “Because the forest is dangerous at night, I thought, we should patrol the village at night. The… boy… might appear in the village again. Since there won’t be many villagers up at that time, we’ll have an easier time catching him.”

“Have you thought about what we might have to do once we do catch him?”

“Take him to the Witch, of course?” Pandit said matter-of-factly. “She made him that way, and it’ll be on to her to treat him.”

Mannat was going to tell him it was not possible, but Raesh kicked him under the table and snatched the conversation from him.

“Let’s do that,” Raesh said. “On that note: I fixed a few sets of armors at the smithy. Why don’t we all take a look and you can see which ones you like?”

He saw Mannat looking at him weirdly and raised his brows. “What? We were too defenseless against him last night. And I needed a way to join you on your next excursion.” He didn’t let Mannat interrupt him. “Did you really think I would let you go out alone if I could?”

“I also need a new weapon.” Pandit blurted out. “I don’t think a cleaver is going to cut it anymore.”

The father and son pair glanced at each other and all of them started laughing. They weren’t sure what or who they laughed at, but it sure felt nice to let out the emotional baggage before setting out for the night.