A massive bear rampaged in the middle of the Bheorse sports hall. A pack of four youths were in combat with it, alone. This was normal.

The sports hall of the Bheorse House was grand, decked in red banners along the walls, and lit with gold light magic cast about the room. It was shaped like a bowl, with empty seating around the edges like bleachers formed out of the stone. It wasn’t great on the ankles to run around something like this, and Cebrice felt uncomfortable.

“Come on, Cebrice!” one of the pack whispered into his mind, “Perk up a bit, you’ll throw us off again!” He glanced over to see the one who had thought it, Runiek. With her blonde braid and tan skin, her face contorted into a snarl that suited it as spiked knuckles drove into the bear's leg, barely harming it despite its force. It swiped her away, and she rolled herself back up to run towards it again.

To be a Bheorse, physical activity was very important. Unfortunately, It just left Cebrice exhausted. They were raised to love sweaty heart-pumping action. He could sense it from the others, feel it only as they felt - mixed with shame, as the transparency between them went both ways.

Cebrice winced at the embarrassment of being called out and tried to get his head straight. The exercise was starting to get serious, with Runiek struck again and declared out.

The cave bear before them, typical dream-manifest of their game, turned to the nearest player, Mofrim. Mofrim was pale and freckled with a mane of long and messy crimson hair, and he was tall, which meant he would be hard to miss. But he was also a pillar of force. He held his dagger at the ready, moving calmly in anticipation of how the bear might move. It had already been quite savaged. Fresh wounds were slashed across its shoulders from Mofrim's previous attacks but it had staved him off from ending it so far. Its claws, the size of an adult human’s torso, moved with surprising swiftness given its size. Cebrice felt Mofrim's flinch at the image tearing towards him. Mofrim bolted to the side to try to dodge to no avail. His own size betrayed him and Cebrice was washed in Mofrim's disappointment at having missed the chance to strike one more time.

But then, there it was. Cebrice saw an opening. If he just moved then, he could get it in the underarm. It wouldn’t have a chance to swing. It was right there! Not too far for him to make. He clutched his spear. What was so clear in his mind, his body would not follow. His breath stopped.

Beltal, strong and swift, moved like lightning with her spear and rammed it just as Cebrice had thought. “Thanks for the heads up, Cebby!” Beltal pulled herself free of the beast. Her dark skin shone with the exertion, and black hair, shorn on the sides and tied up into a ponytail at the back, whipped over her shoulder as she landed back on the ground. Disappointment and frustration flushed not just through him but through the other envious members of the pack.

The bear roared out in rage and pain. It staggered, blood dramatically spewing from its killing blow. They saw the collective dream of the bear fade away, and united they roared into a voracious cheer, loud as they could. Beltal let out the sensation of victory to them all, but the thrill of the hunt felt distant to Cebrice.

He already wanted to go back to his room and take off the defensive gear which they didn’t even need. It was just for the atmosphere. But he didn’t, because to be a Bheorse meant you didn’t leave your team behind. You won when they won. You share in the spoils, and that was law.

The spoils in this case were in the feasting hall, a long thin room just off the sports hall. They didn’t even take off their gear, stripping only the gloves to reveal sweaty hands. The servants already had the food on the table for the group.

Cebrice’s pack as chosen by the Elders consisted of those four; Beltal, the popular and rising star of the Family whose mind was filled with thoughts of purpose and the future; Mofrim, whose thoughts were calm and steady; and Runiek, a hard-edged swarm of anger and determination.

Then there was Cebrice himself. How long would he be allowed to be carried by his betters? The elders watched their progress. They assessed them. He felt like his time was limited, but he didn't know how to make them see his value. He didn't know what his value was. None of his pack could answer this thought, although they were not unsympathetic.

He was the shortest of the lot, with brown skin and dark hair in unruly curls cut short so that it couldn’t be grabbed. His hair had caused problems in the past before the trim - unlike Mofrim’s hair, which despite being very grabbable never seemed to cause him problems.

Mofrim pulled his ginger mop behind him at the mental attention from Cebrice, but took it as a compliment. The feast was at least distracting, and Cebrice tried not to think on his hair envy. He had plenty of other topics to feel insecure about.

He took a piece of meat and picked up some roast vegetables. Everything was eaten with their hands, dipping them first in a cleansing bowl in the middle of the table, filled with the enchanted water. It made them clean but the smell of sweating over their spears in the hunt didn’t diminish in the least.

The sounds of smacking and chewing, laughter, and the breaking of bones and cartilige filled the hall. The table was covered in pieces of food and spilled water within seconds, as they reached across each other for everything they could shove into their maws. Cebrice tried his best to get as much as he could as well, but competition was always fierce.

"That was some kill, Bel!" Runiek enthused mentally while her mouth was full.

"Cebby's good at spotting the right moment!" Beltal replied, to give credit where she felt it due.

It just made Runiek laugh, "Shame he's such a mouse, or he might be good at this!"

"Hey!" Even mentally Cebrice had no real retort to it.

They laughed into their meals and Mofrim ruffled his curls from across the table with greasy hands. "It's OK, Ceb." He said with a bold grin between bites. The sentiment only made Cebrice feel even smaller.

Cebrice’s whiny inner temperament led to a lot of teasing over the years. He tried to be more optimistic, but it seemed it wasn’t meant to be.

--

After a meal, the Bheorse youths had the time to bathe, cleansing themselves before approaching rest and their communion. It was in their chambers that they were supposed to practice connection with their ancestors.

Cebrice’s chamber was not very large, but it had much history, as all the rooms did. Along the wall were the names of all the family who had lived there. Most of the wall was filled with these etchings like graffiti. Each carried its own weight. When he moved in, after his joining to the Family, Cebrice wrote his name too, small, where he might not take up too much room. There would be more here to come, after all, and they would make better use of it than he.

He pulled a tome up onto his lap as he sat down cross legged on the floor, dressed now in softer robes that he could relax in. The tome was the entire lineage, and the stories of those within it.

Each came with their own heroic deeds, it seemed. When he looked at the images left of these people on the pages, their portraits seemed to stare straight through him. Their spirits were restless, tugging at his own. They urged him wordlessly - but not wordless like how he was with his pack - wordless in that they were not speaking to his mind, but to his soul. Or to his inner consciousness. Somewhere, anyways, that he couldn’t reach.

He read through a biography of one who looked out from the page, imagining them within him. He thought of the bear, the dream manifest, and pictured it across from him. It began, a flittering of the shadows, the names on the wall blurring behind it, some becoming its eyes, others the curve of its ear, the snout reached towards him. He watched it with a sense of passivity, as he could see all its parts. All its flaws. A cartoon of a bear, but not the real thing. And he was distracted. The picture seemed to laugh at him, but he felt that was another dream manifest. The bear turned away, and walked into the wall, and disappeared.

He turned the page. There was another story. Another hero. This one had killed several tunnel serpents during the expansion of the underground, and had used their fangs to make their armour. Their grin was contagious. Cebrice felt them, too, connect. They wanted him to throw the book onto the ground, run out of this room, and throw over a table. To release. Release. But what did that even mean?

With a groan he tossed the book onto the floor and pushed it meekly from him, then turned back to his bed and curled into a ball. He was afraid, so afraid that he felt sick, but he didn’t know what it was that made him feel that way. It was persistent. It was a dread that filled him. It choked from him his whole life.

A knock at the door. “What do you want?” He could sense that it was Mofrim. He hoped that he hadn’t been listening through the walls again. Other Bheorse could do so much more with their magic than he could.

“Hey, Cebrice, did you hear Beltal’s voice just now?”

Cebrice sat up in his bed and stared at the door. “No…”

The usually calm Mofrim was quiet for a moment, then with more unease than Cebrice had heard from him, said “We should go find her.”

He would have said that Beltal isn’t someone to be worried about. But Mofrim’s tone convinced him to pull himself out of bed. “Alright, fine. Let’s get Rune first.”

Runiek had wraps around her hands and was wailing it out on a sack suspended from the roof in her room. She had rubbish all over the place, crumpled papers and bowls from the mess hall she’d brought up for herself in the middle of the night. It seemed by the intensity of her strikes that communion with the ancestors was going well.

Cebrice was stood awkwardly at the doorway, with Mofrim towering behind him. “Hey. Rune, did you hear Bel?” Mofrim asked.

“… Not as clearly as you.” She gave the bag another punch for good measure, making sure to really wham it before turning away and unwrapping her hands. Cebby could feel the exhaustion pouring from her. They’d barely stopped to have a break for food and she was back working out again? It was no wonder she was strong, but she needed to rest.

She felt his worry in turn and looked towards him with disdain for his pity.

Mofrim interrupted their exchange, his own emotions normally a sea of calm affection mixed with disinterest, had now instead concern for a memory which he had and they did not. “She sounded like she needed help.”

This information was shocking to them both. Cebrice didn’t know that Beltal ever needed help. She was the most competent of them. Did she need an Elder?

Mofrim replied in his head. “No Elders, she wanted us. Neither of you got this message?”

“I felt her, but - I was feeling a lot at the time, I guess, it just…” Runiek spoke aloud with a snarl, angry with herself.

“I didn’t… I just didn’t,” Cebrice admitted quietly.

“Where do you think she went?” Rune asked.

“We’re going to be trackers, and this is as good a time as any to start,” Mofrim said, looking around the hallway for any traces.

“Shouldn’t we get Elders though?” Cebrice voiced again.

“Ceb, we don’t need them.” Mofrim said, not stern, but factual.

“Yeah!” agreed Runiek, “She is our responsibility. We can’t go crying to them forever, can we? We’re going to sort our own out.”

“R-right.”

The two taller youths went on ahead, Cebrice lagging behind. If something was bad enough to get Beltal into trouble, what help could they give? And what if they couldn't find her?

“Cebrice, just pretend it’s a game. It’s the hunt,” suggested Rune, who could sense his vivid uncertainty and tried to remain calm herself.

He didn’t even bother to say okay, but he did try. He could feel their patience with him, and it felt kind of like what he thought love was. He held onto that feeling. It alone moved him forward.