“Soulbinder.”

I nodded.

“And you have no idea what it meant?”

I nodded again.

Tetra was silent for a moment, reaching up to tap on her horns in a gesture that I associated with thinking about something serious.

Wulfric stepped forward finally, after having been silent for most of the conversation. It hadn’t actually been that hard to calm Tetra down, and I fully understood why she was so upset – surprisingly, she seemed to understand why I had taken the steps that I had, including not sharing the truth with my close friends and family.

“Well… as for me, I feel a… connection of sorts, to Heller. I can’t really explain it, but…” he paused in thought, “well, in a way I feel like we are related? Except even more so than I feel with my parents.” Wulfric spread his hands apart, “When we are separated, I can feel something, not that I can tell where he is or anything.

Tetra’s eyes widened, and I nodded slowly. It made sense, and the timing seemed to correlate it. I had a strange tingling that there was more going on than we knew, but the Merrik did come and speak to me, for the first time in my life, shortly after I revived Wulfric by imprinting a part of my cultivation on him.

And make no mistake, it was an imprinting, not sharing. That much was clear by now, and we knew for sure that Wulfric could not gain Qi through my cultivation technique, nor manipulate CP or do anything except view his character sheet… but I could easily add Qi to his imprint every time my own Qi pool expanded.

From what I could tell, when I got stronger, something in me allowed me to pack more Qi in both myself, and in Wulfric, and it don’t cost me anything except a little bit of effort…

If that was ‘Soulbinding’, then it was grossly overpowered, as it really hadn’t cost me much at all to imprint Wulfric years ago compared to the amount of raw power he had gained. As it was, I couldn’t beat him in a fight right now, and I hadn’t been able to ever since I imprinted him… but that said, I could immobilize him quite easily, either with magnetism (he turned into Iron as far as we could tell, not steel or any other type of metal) or by burying him in ice. And since he didn’t need to breathe or eat in his Iron Form, it was a stalemate, and as soon as I got too tired to keep him restrained, he would be just fine, like an unstoppable juggernaut.

But there was a dark side… I had never told him that, according to my system, it wouldn’t cost me that many more points to turn him into a slave or even a summonable minion, with or without free will…

Not that I ever would. The very thought of taking someone’s free will like that made me sick, and I always recalled the words of the Celestial, that taking away free will never ended well. Would he strike me down if I tried? He was the one who gave me this cultivation method, after all…

“I DON’T CARE!”

A sudden yell from Tetra broke me out of my musings, and I looked at her only to see tears at the corners of her eyes.

“WE ARE MEANT TO FIGHT TO THE DEATH AGAINST THE BEASTS! Do you know how many people die every day?”

My eyes widened as I stared at her in shock, no idea how to respond, not that she gave me any time as she carried on.

“You want me to either watch you die because I was too weak to save you, or die myself for the same reason, because you don’t want to risk ‘binding’ my soul? ARE YOU A BEAST BRAINED FOOL!?”

I opened my mouth slightly as if to respond, then closed it again. The silence dragged on for a moment before Wulfric spoke up again.

“She is right Heller. Whatever the downside, it doesn’t change the fact that the Merrik is getting old, and… and that is worse than anything that could happened to Tetra or me... if we can help…”

His voice trailed off, and I closed my eyes. It wasn’t that this kind of reasoning hadn’t occurred to me in the past, but still… if what I was doing was messing with their souls…

“Can… you give me some time… to… to think about…” I finally said, my eyes still closed while my thoughts ran rampant in my head, like an unchecked beast horde.

“Take your time, Heller. But remember that we are in this together. You are not alone.” Tetra said after a moment in a surprisingly quiet voice. I opened my eyes slowly, and I saw that her and Wulfric were both looking at me; Wulfric with his lips pursed together thoughtfully and his brows slightly raised, and Tetra with a look that I had trouble reading and small streaks of water where here tears had leaked out as she shouted earlier.

The both looked calm now, and I nodded to them as I moved off the field, wanting to be alone with my thoughts for a time.

***

When I returned later that evening I was still undecided, though I was leaning towards going through with it. After all, more power was better, and if what had happened with Wulfric was any indication, adding one of my friends as an Ally was by far the cheapest way I had to get more force on my side.

And then when I spoke with my friends, they seemed even more determined than they were before, which sealed the deal. My biggest concern now was whether the Merrik would show up this time as well, or if he had only sensed what I had done before because he was nearby cleaning up the beast horde at the time it happened… or, of course, it may have been entirely unrelated, but that seemed unlikely, based on what Wulfric had said about the strange connection he felt between us…

***

Tetra screamed in joy as she ran straight up one of the walls of the training field, shooting out spikes of semi-transparent glowing violet force at Wulfric as she went.

Wulfric was in his metal form, and he almost managed to react quick enough to deflect the spikes, but before he managed to form a shield in front of himself the spikes landed with dull pinging sounds. He stumbled just a bit, but the shallow dents in his chest started couldn’t have done any real damage to him – however, they were somehow able to deliver enough force to shift his hulking iron frame.

I watched from the sidelines, being able to track Tetra’s movements only after I used my Qi manipulation abilities to shift myself into a faster time-rate. I let out a low whistle; it was pretty shocking how quickly she was getting used to her new abilities.

Wulfric pivoted on his left foot, shifting as he looked all around himself for a glimpse of his lighting quick opponent. He finally locked onto her, and a javelin made of iron appeared in his hand just in time for him to throw it, but he missed drastically.

Tetra came careening off one of the walls towards him when he was still recovering from his throw, a pair of force daggers made from the same semi-transparent substance as the spikes held tight in her hands.

Wulfric caught sight of her just in time to brace himself, but I could see that if this went on as they were, it was likely going to be another stalemate, unless we were here for long enough for Tetra to get tired and make a mistake.

Wulfric’s body of iron was just too tough for us to really do much damage to it at the moment, although my hardened spikes of ice were able to penetrate a few inches deep into his body. But since he was made, seemingly, entirely of iron, he didn’t really have any vulnerabilities or weak spots to target – except for his eyes and ears, which were very small targets and Wulfric was always very careful to defend them.

And then it happened; Wulfric had laid a trap, and the overconfident Tetra had jumped right into it. I winced as small balls of metal suddenly burst out of the ground near Wulfric’s feet, shooting everywhere and blowing Tetra up into the air just before she was able to land her strikes.

I had seen Wulfric using his ability to temporarily create and manipulate iron to do something in the sand where he was standing, but I hadn’t known that it would do THAT!

A violet flash of energy surrounded her as the forcefield that she had created around herself activated, but it wasn’t able to stop her from falling and bouncing off the ground hard.

Wulfric was already sprinting towards her, while Tetra looked around herself blearily, blinking away the spots in front of her eyes from both the impact, and the burst of light from the impacts against her forcefield.

Tetra looked up at Wulfric’s fast approaching form, and we all knew that the fight would be over as soon as he got a hold of her. Speed was of no use if you had nowhere to go…

And then Tetra took a deep breath and threw herself blindly away from him, still obviously confused as she impacted the far wall of the training compound before she was able to get her bearings.

But this time she was far enough away that she was able to recover before Wulfric could reach her, and she gave him a fierce grin as she took off up the wall again.

Wulfric let out a loud rumbling groan as I laughed, shaking my head.

I had a feeling the next beast attack would be VERY different from the last, and I almost found myself looking forward to it.