Jade Benz

Jade was making steady progress on the puzzle. It was made up of several smaller puzzles, kind of like that key ring puzzle where you could get one off but not all of them. She still couldn’t tell how many of the damn things there were though, the number seemed to shift.

She had found a simple one off to the side, so she concentrated all her efforts on that one. For some reason it reminded her of Tik and Tok, and she liked the feel of it. Each time she found a catch she would push a strand or pull a loop the energy would grow brighter.

At some point she found out that there were lines connecting her to her ogres too, they were faint and thin but as she solved more and more of the small puzzle, they became brighter and brighter. It was actually a lot of fun.

She had stopped for a break to play a quick game with her boys. As she stood up and quit looking inward the glowing lines disappeared. Something was different though because when she threw out paper to wrap the rock they would always throw, she got two sets of scissors.

* * *

Benjamin Vryce

Benjamin was getting a lesson in stalking prey. His instructor may not have realized that she had two students but that didn’t stop him from picking up on a few things anyway. It had been hours, he didn’t know how many in this place, since the sun had risen.

In the beginning he did his best to stay just at the edge of his sight range of the pair, worried that they might spot him. It only took a few hours for him to realize that the male didn’t have any forestry skills at all.

When he had first spotted their fire the night before Benjamin had been certain the pair had meant to hunt the dire boar. Now after having followed them for a while, he thought it more likely that the female was using it as a sort of live fire exercise.

He had steadily closed the distance between himself and the green skinned duo. From watching them he discovered that she was pointed to various plants as they moved. The tracks of the boar, things not to step on. She even stopped and mimed what he should be doing and when.

Benjamin was still too far away to catch any words they pair might have spoken but by paying attention to her lessons he was slowly gaining an understanding of how to move in the woods. Briefly he wondered if this was his actual objective for this trail, then decided it didn’t matter. It was interesting and he wanted to learn.

Apart from the female being some sort of woods expert he learned a great deal about her male counterpart. He was larger than she was, more heavily armored and muscled as well. While her outfit was all leathers and hide his was metal plates and leather straps.

He carried a large axe reminiscent to Benjamin of something a Viking might have carried, the Vikings he saw on tv anyway. As well as a wooden round shield that was wrapped in rawhide. It was clear that he was an experienced fighter, just not one accustomed to the forest.

The girl was slimmer and shorter and didn’t seem to be wearing armor at all. She was wearing thin, soft looking leather he thought was buckskin. Dyed in a splotchy pattern that blended well with the forest around her. The color of her skin aided in the camouflaging effect. For weaponry she carried a longbow and a belt knife. She had a quiver of arrows as well but there couldn’t have been more than five in there.

That was the first thing that tipped him off that they might not be in the best situation. The more he watched the more he started to suspect that these two were in some sort of trouble. The camp they had set up the night prior was quite bare bones and neither one of them was carrying packs.

The man was carrying a waterskin of some sort that they each took small sips from every few hours and he caught sight of the ranger picking mushrooms and other edibles as they walked. Some she slipped into a small belt pouch; most they ate on the spot.

He wondered, not for the first time, what the pair thought they were doing. They didn’t have any more a reliable method of taking down the boar then he did. They didn’t have any supplies and unlike him it seemed they still needed to eat regularly. His musings were cut short when the dire boar gave out a shill squeal.

The pair he was following froze in place. They were much closer than he was and could see the beast. He debated what to do for only a few seconds before circling around them to get a look at what had happened. Once Benjamin got a look at the dire boar he almost wondered if he was seeing things.

This whole forest wasn’t on a scale Benjamin could make sense of. Giant squirrels, giant boar, massive trees. The trees near the outer edge of the forest had been normal size trees, as he got further in however, they got bigger and bigger.

When compared to the boar they seemed like normal trees. It also made it hard for him to tell just how big the green people were. He couldn’t get too close and without a point of reference they just seemed small. What he was seeing now, made them look tiny.

It was a tree, a white oak he thought, but it was so large it made the trees around it look as small as the normally huge trees made the ones on the forests edge look. And perched on the side of that tree was a squirrel on the same scale as the dire boar.

Benjamin’s mind blanked out for long seconds and when it started working again his first thought was about what to call this thing. If the dog sized squirrels had been dire then what was this truck sized beast to be called. Somehow dire dire squirrel just wasn’t impressive sounding.

He shook his head, couldn’t get distracted. The massive pair of animals were eyeing each other up and he didn’t want to miss a second of the action.

* * *

Erlking

Benjamin had surprised him again. The Erlking was sitting with Morrigan again, it wasn’t necessary but having bodies was a novel concept to them both and having company just felt right. They each had a number of screens open in front of them and like was becoming his custom, one held Benjamin.

“Are you still watching that one, Erlking?” Morrigan asked looking over at what he was watching. The human soul was damaged, she could see that right off. The transformation his body had undergone showed her fairly clearly what had happened. He had reached too far too fast.

“Yes, I am, he fascinates me for some reason. Look at what he has landed himself into. I only placed a handful of beasts that size in that enclosure and he has managed to find two of them. What’s more, my little creations he has been tailing aren’t native to that area. I will have to backtrack their path to find out what they are even doing here.” The Erlking was once again surprised, the human soul itself wasn’t anything special but he sure got into interesting situations.

“I suppose that is odd. I didn’t place anything at all near the training grounds I set up other than training creations. Perhaps I should toss in a few wild cards, just to keep them on her toes,” She mused.

“Never a bad idea to leave room for chance. Nothing will ever go completely to plan, so it’s best to allow for it to go wrong.” The Erlking replied not really paying attention as he pulled up another screen with his other outlier.

“Will you look at that…” he breathed, having just pulled up Jade Benz screen displaying her in her void space. She was playing rock paper scissors of all things with the ogres. If that wasn’t odd enough, they were playing along.

“How is that even possible for someone at her stage?” Morrigan asked, just as shocked. “She hasn’t showed any talents for anything other than destruction, of herself as well as others.”

The Erlking was winding back the footage to learn the answer to that question for himself. The answer almost made him laugh.

“A combination of pure boredom and the calming chair. She unraveled a small fraction of her seal because she didn’t have anything better to do…of all the reasons.”

No matter why she had done it. She was the only one among his charges to actively start to undo the soul seal. As exciting as that might have been if one of the others had done it, this was not a good thing coming from her. At least not yet.

He looked at what he had prepared already. The next level trial he had planned for Vryce was the most advanced trial he had ready to go at the moment. He looked back at Benjamin’s screen, he would be busy for at least a few more days.

Reaching out mentally he scooped Jade out of her void space and dumped her into Vryce’s trial grounds. She could get up to all kinds of mischief in there without hurting anything, and the seal would always be there when and if she became more stable.

* * *

Benjamin Vryce

BOOM. The entire clearing shook again as the dire boar collided with the massive oak tree. It had been trying unsuccessfully to catch the giant squirrel between its massive tusks and the tree’s trunk. Another rain of acorns of all sizes fell to the ground as the tremor reached the upper branches of the tree.

The squirrel chittered angrily, finally angered enough to leave the safety of the trunk to engage the boar directly. It launched itself through the air coming down on the back of the aggressive beast and sunk its long teeth into the boar’s shoulder.

Unfortunately for the squirrel, it mistimed its leap. It came down as the dire boar brought its head up and was gored horribly. It leapt away with a shake of its head ripping a chunk of meat away but leaving some of its own behind as it backed off.

Benjamin looked over at the pair he had been following, not wanting to give his position away. They were where they had been last he checked, crouched down and watching the titan’s clash. The male was pointing and whisperings to the female. It seemed like this battle was his time to share his knowledge.

Once more they clashed, the boar going for a straight charge while the squirrel attempted a leap and spin maneuver that would once more drop it onto the boars back. Again, the boar came away from the exchange with slashed and bleeding wounds, the squirrel getting it worse as the tusks ripped through its body.

It was enough, the beast didn’t want to fight anymore. It sprang away blood flowing out of its wounds in spurts. Before the boar had an opportunity to do anything else it darted back up the tree, painting its bark a deep crimson as it vanished into the canopy.

The boar, bleeding from its tooth and claw wounds bashed the tree one more time. Then as another rain of acorns descended it began rutting around it the dirt eating what it could grab in its massive jaws.

Benjamin caught movement and turned his head to see the pair slowly approaching the tree. He could almost see the desire for the fallen acorns in their hungry eyes, even from this distance. The tree was bigger than any skyscraper he had personally seen from home, so Benjamin figured they were safe. That said he moved closer himself. He wasn’t hungry but was curious about what the pair would do.