Mud, sand, and rank liquid exploded, splattering Sepeti as he struggled to run. He slipped, rolled over, and bounced right back onto his feet, legs churning and carrying him forward.

“Meat!” The monster goat roared as it spat a chewed up chunk of leg in Sepeti’s general direction. “Meat!”

A woman’s wail rose just beneath the monsters roaring, carried along the hot desert wind.

“Run!” a man screamed as he stumbled toward Sepeti. “Run away!”

Sepeti recognized the man. He was one of Willa’s team members, a middling talent who’d pushed his way into the top ten of the practical exam by taking advantage of his aggressive fighting style. The man waved his hands before him, freezing the mud and liquid and creating little footholds for him to skate along.

“Move!” the man yelled as he barreled past Sepeti. Sepeti rolled through the mud and sand, catching sight of the man’s receding back as he slid away. His haggard breathing grew louder despite his moving away from where Sepeti lay.

Before the man could get more than ten paces away from Sepeti, a hairy arm shot out and slapped him. The man screamed as his legs disappeared. His top half fell forward, momentum carrying it into the shallow mud that was quickly spreading.

Sepeti thought he heard the man gasp but he had no time to figure out whether that was so. He rolled onto his feet once more, mud and viscous liquid dripping from his shoulders, and began running again. He wished he’d had more magical options, anything that would help him right now. But all he had were his created magics, which would take time to set and activate, and the water magic he’d learned from the flask. His vision pulsed as he activated |Adrenal Rush|.

The goat roared once more as a burst of flame hit the side of its face. It didn’t flinch but it looked annoyed as it turned away from him. Someone else was still trying to fight it and keep its attention.

“Run!” Sepeti yelled. “Whoever that is, run!”

Another gout of flame licked at the giant monster's face, sizzling as the viscous membrane that was constantly seeping off of its body protected it from the weak magic.

“Move, now!” A woman’s voice echoed from just beyond the monster. Malia’s voice, Sepeti realized, as he churned his legs harder.

Why was he running into the danger? Shouldn’t he be running away? What the hell had gotten into him?

The nagging thoughts were pushed away as the monster began to move toward Malia. He still had yet to see her but anger, panic, frustration, and many more emotions welled in his stomach. They propelled him forward, pushing him through the now waist high mud. Another burst of flame teased the monster. It roared, sounding more annoyed than hurt.

Maybe it was annoyed that its food was putting up a fight?

Sepeti noticed that it never moved its legs. Rather, the mud shifted and pushed it toward where it was heading. The liquid membrane that surrounded it also shifted as it moved, reminding him of the slime he'd seen illustrated in the research books.

Could that be its true form? Could it be some sort of slime-goat shadow absorbing monster?

The tumblers in the ethereal lock clicked in his head as they fell into place. His interdimensional space swung open and his mind raced as he tried to remember what weapons he still had stored in it. By his last count, he still had over a thousand different weapons he’d collected from the Machina. Any number could help solve his current conundrum. But the problem was remembering. He had to remember exactly which weapon he wanted to pull out or the lock would shut and he’d have to wait for it to unlatch again.

Stupid faulty host body and its shit memory. Not for the first time, he cursed Boba and Journal and any of the other God’s whose names he could remember.

He felt the lock beginning to shut once more and he panicked.

“Fuck it,” he grumbled as he imagined a weapon, summoning a hazy picture in his minds eye. Something heavy and metallic fell into his arms. It was longer than he was tall and hefty, weighing nearly as much as he did. Yet he was still able to hold it aloft.

The thing he’d pulled out was not what he’d been hoping for. Sepeti had thought he’d imagined one of the laser charge rifles he’d stored. He thought it would be useful seeing as they shot beams of plasma that could cut through and melt anything in their path. Instead, what he got was a proton launcher. The slick, metallic tube wasn’t much to look at. It’s futuristic design had made sense amongst the weapons he’d stolen from the Machina, what with their robotic designs that veered more toward the science fiction stories he’d consumed as a child.

On this planet, though, the weapon looked much too alien. He was sure that he looked odd, standing in the middle of a roiling pit of mud with a metallic tube balanced on his shoulder.

“Piece of shit,” Sepeti grumbled as he steadied himself. The mud shifted beneath him as the monster moved further and further away. Malia continued to pelt the slow moving goat with flares of magic as she yelled at someone else to get away.

Sepeti waddled forward, high-stepping through the mud as he began to make his way up a dune that hadn’t been destroyed during the monster's tantrum. He nearly fell a few times but was surprised he was able to handle climbing the slow-rising dune while balancing the metallic tube. If the adrenaline weren’t pumping and he wasn’t currently tunnel-visioned on what he needed to do, he would have been grumbling and cursing under his breath.

As he reached the top of the small hill he quickly found Malia. The young woman was dancing away from the monster, peppering it with flames as she kept its attention away from a pair of injured examinees. She was constantly yelling instructions in an effort to keep the pair focused on their escape. Every time the monster swiped at her she would float backwards at the last second, riding the fetid wind it exuded as her magic made her shimmer.

Sepeti would have stood around and admired the woman’s tenacious struggle but he was already sliding his hands along the exterior of the tube. He shifted it back and forth a few times as he searched for the touch activated control panel. A viewfinder popped out in front of his eyes as he slid his hand over the right spot. The infrared image of the monster filled the screen. Deep blues and greens rolled off of the monster's body, hiding the oranges and reds that denoted body heat. He jammed his finger on the space that was supposed to be the trigger.

A large X filled the screen as a warning scrolled along the viewfinder. The characters were foreign, seeing as Sepeti had never bothered to learn the Machina language, but he caught the gist of what it was getting at after he angrily jammed on the trigger a few more times.

“Stupid piece of shit!” he spat as he smeared mud on the crystalline screen, swiping his muddy finger along its surface as he looked for a way to enable manual lock-on. He pressed buttons, jumped in and out of jumbled menus, and caused the tube to make odd noises as he bumbled his way through the settings. He canceled multiple aggravated red screens as his instincts told him he was about to cause the damned weapon to self-destruct.

The goat monster scream-bleated again as the ground rumbled. Sepeti caught it’s swift motion out of the corner of his eye. It glided along the muddy field in the blink of an eye and swooped up Malia in its hoof-hand. The young woman let out a cry of pain as it closed its rough appendages around her. She was doused in the viscous liquid dripping off of the monster's dreaded fur as it continued to scream down at her.

Sepeti fell to a knee and punched at the viewfinder even harder. The machine answered his panic by continuing to chirp at him. The screen flashed an angry red as he pushed the prompts at random.

His ears rang as a searing hot lance of energy burst forth from the front end of the tube. The monster turned and opened its mouth at him as the sandy dune rumbled. Sepeti couldn’t tell if the rumbling was from the monster roaring or the weapons discharge.

Its giant arm, the one it was holding Malia in, popped off as the blue-white lance cut through it. It almost looked like a much larger monster had just plucked the arm off. The fluid that covered the monster fizzled as it was instantly vaporized by the intense heat. Sepeti had thought the damned thing was a plasma cannon but he wasn’t sure. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if it was actually a proton cannon because he didn’t know what or how a proton cannon was supposed to work. He’d never bothered learning about the specifics of the Machina’s weaponry.

The monster's tangled hair caught fire. It batted at itself with its remaining arm. It didn’t seem to notice that it had lost its other arm as it futilely swung the cauterized nub.

Sepeti dropped the cannon and dashed off in the direction Malia and the arm had fallen. He slid down the side of the embankment and jumped into the muddy swamp. A trail had been forcibly hardened by the heat of the shot, giving him a foothold across the roiling mud.

He spotted the young woman, unconscious and still within the grasp of the arm. Its weight was dragging her under the soft swampy sand. His heart thudded in his chest as he pumped his arms. He was going to make it. He had to make it. Or else this would have been a complete waste of time and resources. He still couldn’t hear anything. Not the monster, not the billowing wind, nothing. All he heard was the thumping of his pulse and the ringing silence.

Sepeti jumped down into the mud and began pulling at the severed arm. It was heavier than it looked and the grip refused to loosen. He pulled a machete out of his inventory and began hacking at what looked like the monster's thumb. The slab of sharpened metal bit into the meaty hand over and over again as he hacked at it.

One moment, he was swinging the machete down and pulling out chunks of throbbing flesh. The next, he was sailing through the air. His lungs seized painfully. He felt like he was suspended in the air for an eternity. Then sand filled his nostrils as his body was used as a makeshift drill bit, roughly pushing a Sepeti sized hole into the nearest dune.

He still couldn’t hear anything. No whooshing wind or crunching sand. But he could feel everything. The pain was everywhere.

Pressure released and the sand gave way. He flew out the opposite end of the dune and into the nearest hill, landing with a jarring thud. His vision blurred as his mind raced to catch up.

He’d forgotten how to breathe. His mind screamed for oxygen. It begged for the sweet release of letting the held breath go. But he just couldn’t remember how to do it. His lungs felt like someone was holding them in a death squeeze and he just couldn’t figure out how to breathe again.

Seconds stretched into minutes. Minutes into hours. Hours into days. Or so Sepeti thought as he struggled to figure out how to activate his cardiovascular system.

Was he supposed to pull it in? Or let it out? How did breathing work?

A bright blue bubble wobbled to life around him. His vision was still blurry and he couldn’t breathe but the bubble made him fell all right. Air rushed out of him and he remembered how it was done. The first breath was heavenly. The second was the most painful thing he’d ever done.

A figure in a drab gray uniform stepped into the bubble and he felt like he knew them. Something about their face was inviting. Their lips were moving like they were saying something but he was pretty sure his ears had ruptured from firing the damned cannon without proper ear protection. A popping sensation tickled his ears as sound returned.

“--ay here. Don’t leave the bubble. Or you just might never walk properly again.”

The person didn’t even look down at him to make sure he’d heard their message. They looked familiar yet he was sure he’d never seen this person before. Where had he seen them before?

They stepped out of the bubble and Sepeti found himself wondering what the hell he was busy gawping at. He tried to sit up and pain wriggled up and down his back. It was intense at first but it slowly waned with each passing moment. The image of someone knitting came to mind for some reason.

As his senses returned, so did his worries. Malia was still stuck being dragged into the mud. The monster was still rampaging. And yet, here he was sitting around in some weirdo’s magical bubble.

He tried to push himself up onto his feet and found that something was keeping him from doing so. It felt like a slight tug was keeping him rooted. The thought that he could easily break the compulsion paled as he realized that the slight tug became a gravitational pull the harder he fought against it. Even his hands were somehow rooted to the shifting sands.

The bubble rippled and Sepeti looked up just in time to catch the silhouette of the figure crashing into the monster head first. The figure shimmered. They didn’t glow, rather they just appeared to be surrounded by a heat haze.

The monster took a step back and swung at the figure. They ducked under the looping swing, did an odd turn at the hips, and hit the monster's remaining arm with an uppercut as it passed over their head. The arm changed trajectory sharply and threw the monster backward. The caked mud that had previously been a swampy mess was now hardened like clay blasted in a kiln.

Sepeti noticed that the monster wasn’t dripping anymore. The viscous liquid that had been leaking from its body had been vaporized by the plasma cannon but he swore he had noticed it beginning to drip again when he had been trying to free Malia.

The monster lashed out at the figure, lunging forward with its giant mouth and gnashing at them. The figure lithely sidestepped, dancing around the enraged monster. They kicked the monster's leg. It bent the wrong way. The monster wailed as it collapsed. Its other leg was swiftly disabled by another powerful kick.

Sepeti watched as the monster collapsed, falling forward and face planting into the parched mud. It writhed, flopping about as its torso twisted at a grotesque angle. The monster's upper body twisted like it was being wrung out as the viscous liquid leaked from every orifice. Its large goat head screamed and bleated, shaking its surroundings and sending mud and sand and liquid flying away from it. A crater formed around the wildly twisting monster's body.

The figure twisted as they were thrown through the air. The sudden explosion appeared to have caught them off guard as they rocketed back toward Sepeti and the bubble.

Sepeti tried to stand. He tried to move. But the tugging, the force, kept him rooted. He grunted and groaned as he tried to roll out of the way.

The figure slammed into him and darkness greeted him once more.

“Ya know, yer one of the luckiest fools ‘round,” Gran rumbled as he snapped the book in his large grip closed. “Ya look like shit but I’m sure yer feeling like bigger shit.”

Sepeti groaned as he struggled to sit up. His stomach seized as pain rippled through him.

“Shouldn’t be too quick to be movin’, sonny. Yer still recuperatin’ and whatnot. Take yer time.”

“What happened?” Sepeti coughed as he flopped back down onto the soft pillows piled under him. It hurt to move and breathe but he didn’t feel too bad.

“You and yer exam-mates got ya asses handed to ya. That’s what happened.” Gran chuckled as he played with his long beard. “Ya little newbies meddled with things ya shouldn’t have.”

“Well,” a familiar voice chimed in. Sepeti turned his good eye on the owner of the other voice and found Ms. Lina, sitting cross legged on a sofa on the other side of the room. She wasn’t dressed in her Association uniform, wearing a bright green blouse and a pair of crimson red pants. Her bright choice of clothing didn’t surprise Sepeti in the least. “The fault lies with us instructors.”

“Ms. Lina,” Sepeti coughed again as he strained to keep his eye on the woman. “What brings you here?”

“I’m the one that brought you here. Seeing as I’m the reason you’re still alive. And the reason why you were nearly killed again. Good thing I’d made sure to tether you into my bubble or else you’d be dead.”

Sepeti’s groggy memories began to churn as he remembered the predicament he’d been in. The giant goat monster, the exams, the examinee’s running, exploding sand and mud, and Malia. A spike of anxiety rushed through him as he remembered Malia. He began to sit up, groaning as fresh waves of pain riddled his body.

“Stay put,” Ms. Lina said. “You need to recover as much as possible. I’m really just here because I have some questions for you. Unofficial questions.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sepeti asked as he eased himself back onto the fluffy pillows. He kept his neck strained so he could keep his eye on the instructor.

“It means what it means,” Ms. Lina said, straightening herself out. She snuck a glance in Gran’s direction and Sepeti noticed a slight tremble in her voice. She was clutching the arm of the chair she was sitting on, fingers digging into the plush upholstery. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Gran, I’d like to get on with what I requested.”

“That’s fine. By all means, go ahead.” Gran opened his book again and leaned back into the deep sofa, making it creak.

Annoyance and exasperation quickly flashed across Ms. Lina’s face. Just as quickly as it had appeared, it disappeared. Her strange expressions made little sense to Sepeti.

What problem did she have with Gran? Was she afraid of him or was she annoyed by him?

“Very well. Mr. Sepeti, I know you’re not in the best shape, but I need to do some seeking-to-understand, seeing as there are some discrepancies and oddities found during my initial investigation.”

Her professionalism was off putting. It was weird. She hadn’t acted this way during the exam. Yet here she was acting out of character.

Was it because of Gran? What the hell kind of sway did the damned giant have over someone as strong as Ms. Lina?

“Ok,” Sepeti said, unsure what she was getting at. He wanted to know what the hell was going on.

“First, how did you first encounter the Kosi?” Ms. Lina had a pad of paper and a pen in hand. He was still getting used to people pulling things out of thin air. It felt normal for him to do it but it was weird seeing others do so.

“It popped out of nowhere while I was tracking some other monsters.” Sepeti figured the monster’s name or title had been the Kosi.

“What were you doing in that area? And how did you end up there when most of the listed monsters were located on the opposite side?”

“I was tracking monsters and ended up there.”

Ms. Lina nodded as she scribbled some notes on the paper. Something about her demeanor was really getting on his nerves. He just couldn’t place a finger on what it was that was annoying him or why. Usually, he wouldn’t care in the least bit.

“What happened the first time you ran into the Kosi?”

“It almost drowned me with its weird slime. I turned tail and ran and somehow it didn’t follow me.”

Ms. Lina continued nodding, keeping her concentration on what she was writing. Her movements were stiff. Everything about her was robotic. The strain in her voice was palpable.

“And that’s when you came back to the exam base camp, right? Is there anything you remember other than that? What happened when the Kosi first awoke?”

“It just showed up out of nowhere. I was crossing the dunes and then I was sucked into that weird liquid and everything turned swampy. It attacked me on sight and I ran.”

“Ok,” Ms. Lina’s scribbling was loud for some reason. Sepeti glanced over at Gran. The giant appeared to be nose deep in his book. The man had barely moved but his presence seemed to be pressing down on the instructor. “After you spoke to me, did you tell anyone else about your encounter?”

“No.” Sepeti was sure he hadn’t mentioned anything to any of the other examinees. But he was also pretty sure Willa had been eavesdropping on his report.

“How did you end up encountering the Kosi for the second time?”

“I dunno,” Sepeti shrugged, shoulders and chest aching from the slightest movement. “I was headed in the opposite direction. The damned thing popped up outta nowhere again and was already under attack by the other folks.”

His fuzzy mind tingled as he tried to remember what had happened. One moment, he was sliding through the shadows, popping out to stab and kill the monsters. The next, he found himself sailing through the air as he was ejected from the safety of the shadows. He still remembered how wrong it felt to be pulled out of the gloam without his consent. He didn’t like the feeling and had decided he needed to figure out how to keep that from happening again.

“Were you using any skills or magic that might have attracted the Kosi’s attention?”

“No.” Sepeti’s eyes flitted away from Ms. Lina’s figure. A sudden worry that she would look up and spot that he was lying wiggled into the base of his mind. He wasn’t sure why he even felt that way and quickly chalked it up to the host body's oddity.

“During the fight with the Kosi,” Ms. Lina’s head continued to bob up and down but she had yet to make eye contact with him. A slight tremor rippled through her hands once again. “What made you face off with it? What kind of weapon or skill or magic did you use to separate its arm and deal such heavy damage to it?”

“I…” His voice died in his throat as he scrambled to find an appropriate lie. He absolutely couldn’t talk about his personal space. He might be dumb but he wasn’t dumb enough to trust just anyone. He still didn’t trust Gran. “I used a few different magics. A couple to boost my performance and to reinforce me. And I used one that was pretty strong.”

“And what magic did you use that was so strong?”

“Explosion?”

Gran cleared his throat and Ms. Lina’s nodding stopped. “Explosion? You know how to use that?”

She finally looked up at him and her feline eyes bored a hole through him. This was the first time he was actually looking her in the eyes. And he found that he didn’t like it. But he wasn’t able to pull his gaze away.

“Yes?”

“How? That’s not a skill a new, fresh level five Hunter would have access to. Are you sure?”

Gran cleared his throat again and decided to step in. “I taught him.”

“You did?” Ms. Lina blinked as she finally looked at Gran again. Sepeti noticed that she wasn’t looking at the giant’s face. Rather, she was staring straight at his chest. The area where, he assumed, the giant’s glamor placed his illusionary head. “Why would you do that?”

She had stopped shaking. It seemed the nerves and the anxiety were finally under her control. Maybe.

“I was asked to prepare him for any eventuality,” Gran rumbled as he stroked his long beard. Sepeti wondered what others saw when he did that. It had to look odd if his glamor was reaching over its head and stroking the air.

“And you expected him to run into one of the contained monsters?” Ms. Lina cocked her head as she stared at Gran, pen frozen over the pad of paper.

“Keep this off the record.” Gran pointed at her papers and the page she’d been scribbling on crumbled and flaked before dissipating.

Ms. Lina squawked in surprise.

“He is my charge. I’m the one who requested he take such an extreme test. I’m sure you figured that much out by now. As for why I would teach him such dangerous magic when I could have prepared him with something less destructive, I can’t answer that. That’s information that can’t be shared with someone of your clearance.”

Ms. Lina’s jaw hung agape, opening and closing as she appeared to be having a hard time getting her words in order. She paused, composed herself, and pressed forward.

“Very well, understood. Then am I allowed to record my findings while omitting the magic?”

Gran grunted and nodded before turning his attention back to his book.

“What else do you need to know?” Sepeti asked as his neck began to ache from him craning to keep his eyes on the woman.

“Well, I want to get to the bottom of how you were able to draw the Kosi out. But I don’t think I can ask about that. So I’ll move on. I don’t actually have any other questions that need asking. This was really just to prepare you for when the Hunter’s and the Association pull you in for their interviews. This incident isn’t being taken lightly so they’ll be digging for answers. I just felt it was my duty to let you know and I wanted answers for some of the niggling questions that have been bothering me.”

She dusted her lap off and stood. She was a lot shorter than he remembered. Or maybe he was just now realizing how diminutive she actually was. But he wouldn’t forget that her small body housed a jaw dropping amount of power that was able to take out a raging monster on her own.

“Thank you for your time, Sepeti. And thank you for allowing me to do this Mr. Gran.”

Gran grunted in response and nodded at her without looking up from his book.

“Hold on,” Sepeti said, straining as he pushed himself onto one elbow. “What about the others? Did they make it out all right? Is Malia all right?”

Ms. Lina frowned, shot a glance at Gran, then sighed.

“Malia passed away during the struggle.”