Pain woke him up.

The monk opened his eyes to the sight of canvas. He was lying on a bedroll, a thin beam of sunlight peering past the flaps of a tent. He sat up and felt a notable sharpness in the pain from his arm and back, drawing his full attention to them.

The arm he’d jammed into the monstrous jackal’s mouth to avoid having his throat torn out was wrapped in bandages around the wounded area. There was some kind of dried crust peeking from beneath the edge. He brought it to his nose and noticed the smell was medicinal—a poultice that needed to be changed—before twisting his head around to see another poultice had been applied to the wound on his back, held in place by a tight wrap going around his waist.

With his awakening came voices. Not the bustle coming from the people he could hear outside. It came from the very land he was on as power thrummed within it. But unlike before he was in the center and so the consciousness that made it up was already intruding on the fringes of his mind. Calling out to him.

Like an overeager child and ignorant of how debilitating it truly was to the human mind, the genius loci imposed itself upon him.

There were no words, but rather impressions. Vivid flashes of emotion and visions that swept up his thoughts. It dragged his mind through a maddening mess of sensations that would leave him unable to think clearly if he didn’t focus, which was difficult enough with the pain.

So, he’d shut it out for the moment.

Taking a deep breath, the monk solidified his mind like he’d been taught. A loose mind was as malleable as mud and accepted whatever was pressed into it. But a firm mind was stone and could shut it out, quelling the voices.

Once he was done, he pushed his focus to the back portion of his mind so he could keep functioning and rose to his feet. The pain made itself known once more, but he had a means of soothing it enough that he could work on drawing out the magic of this place on less desperate terms. He just needed to find his belongings…

Moving forward, he brushed aside the flap of the canvas and winced as the sun’s merciless glare was reflected off the surface of nearby water. But, once he shielded his eyes, he could properly spy the greenery around them that made up the oasis and how rich it was. Threading between the large trees with their leaves acting as umbrellas was verdant grass that even had white flowers spread sparsely throughout it—a very large contrast to the dry brush they’d seen along the way.

He could see that more tents had been set up with people moving between them and the shade, all members of the caravan. An olive-skinned man who dressed in finer robes was standing around and calmly calling out to others, pointing where they should go. The one who’d employed him.

“Make sure you don’t miss a single bottle that isn’t broken. If I have to write off the entire ship—” His words and expression brightened greatly once he spotted the monk approaching him. “You’ve awakened! Wonderful!”

“How long was I unconscious?”

“A day and a half,” he answered. “We were worried we’d have to leave another man in the dirt like the one with the sword and the driver. They succumbed to their wounds and we couldn’t bring them along with us the rest of the way, so we offered them up to the land here as per tradition.”

“Tradition?”

The man spread his arms outwards. “Surely you can feel it in the air here. The sense of serenity and calm that permeates this place? Peace washes over everyone and even the fiercest of beasts becomes docile.”

He couldn’t. There might have been such an air being given off by the land, but the means by which he closed off his mind to the natural world meant that whatever subtle effects it had were also being shut out. But the man didn’t need to know that, so the monk simply nodded his head and let him continue.

“I am no man of the mystic arts, so I cannot be sure of the details myself. But to keep it like this requires that the dead are offered to the earth. They say even animals reaching the end of their lives are drawn to this place and the land embraces them.”

To emphasize his point, he gestured a hand over towards a far-off corner of the oasis. A jackal was there, its dirty fur covered in splotches of dark red. It was laying on the ground, breathing slowly as it simply laid there with what looked to be a few edible berries in front of it.

“I don’t have to tell you that my people would like nothing more than to skin the thing, but the magic here prevents it,” he said with a hint of disdain in his voice but nothing more. The magic at work no doubt. “Likewise, the beast has become indifferent to us and views us as no threat.”

This place is the work of a druid, he settled on. That explained why the land felt so immature and full of life. No doubt once the jackal died the land would open beneath it and swallow the corpse whole. It would decompose at an accelerated rate to keep the locale flourishing.

Still, he didn’t understand why the pack had attacked them so furiously. They weren’t so desperate for food that they would keep attacking even as their numbers thinned. Those strange, monstrous creatures must have held some kind of sway over them…

Throb.

He drew a sharp breath as a spike of pain pulled his attention back to the present. “Where are my belongings?”

“In the cart that you came in.” He pointed towards the section where the carts were. The camels had been taken away, leaving the wood and canvas transports lined up. More than a few of them were marred by dried bloodstains and marks from the fight.

The monk made his way towards them when, along the way, he spotted the mercenary that had participated in the battle. He looked no worse for wear with his sword on his belt, the armor and shield he wore before nowhere to be seen. The man only gave him a nod before moving on, the glint of the metal flask on his hip briefly catching the light as they passed one another.

It was when the monk was just outside of the cart that mutterings caught his ears. He pulled back the canvas flap to see that the dwarven spellcaster was holding onto his staff. “Hands off. Now.”

Startled, the dwarf fumbled with the staff. It clattered onto the wooden floor as he wheeled around to see its owner standing there. “Oh. You’re awake!”

Climbing inside, he reclaimed his quarterstaff that doubled as his focus. “What were you doing to it?”

“Nothin’, I swear!” Or so he claimed as he reached for his decanter. “Just got a bit curious, but I know better than to bother it.”

He looked it over to be sure. True to the dwarf’s words, there had been no signs of alterations to the staff or its etchings that shaped the power that flowed into it. There weren’t even signs of the previous battle upon it—no doubt due to the fact it had been carefully crafted to be so resilient.

The spellcaster took a drink of water and sighed. “Have to say, didn’t expect you to be a druid. You don’t talk much or carry yourself like the one at the company.”

“I was only taught a few things. Nothing more.”

He couldn’t even fathom comparing himself to a full-fledged druid given his inexperience and lack of formal training. While the small-scale workings that allowed him to form his claws and enhance his staff took little effort, the ability to mend his wounds wasn’t so easy to reproduce. At best he could only draw upon the energy to do so once a day. And it was nowhere near as potent as some of the healing magics that he’d seen.

His master had once tended to a wounded deer that had its leg snapped and half its hide opened from a bad fall, wounds that would have left it for dead in a matter of minutes. Yet she soothed it with gentle words before laying her hands on it. Moments later, it rose again as if it’d never been harmed and scurried off into the mountainside.

She might have let it perish if the circumstances were different. But she took pity on it because it was so young. At times he wondered if that was the case for why she taught him as she did.

Either way, he couldn’t do such great things with that same magic. The best he could do was to use it to avoid dying outright. But the pain of his wounds still lingered, which was part of why he continued going through his travel bag and reached past his set of rather common clothes and bedroll.

There he found the pouch that she’d given him intact and unbothered. He breathed out a sigh of relief before shifting his attention to a small container next to it. It was a carved tube, chiseled and hollowed out of the remnants of the branch that his quarterstaff had been made of, with druidic etching along it.

“An initiate then,” the dwarf continued, tilting his head over to the side to eye the container. “I’m grateful all the same. Kitten felt terrible when you went down intercepting that thing. You didn’t spot her along the way, did you?”

“No.” He pulled off the cork stopper and lightly shook the canister until a dried berry fell into his palm. The entire thing was filled with shriveled fruits that were about half as large as his little finger. The pain was dulled the moment he ate one.

Each of them had a spell woven into them by his master’s magic, infusing them with the touch of nature’s vitality. Fresh fruits were richer in juices so the excess magic in a single one could fuel the body’s natural ability to heal at an exaggerated rate. But the fruit itself would sour and rot roughly a day after it was cast in exchange for such potency.

In contrast, dried fruits lost a great deal of the healing potency. But they wouldn’t rot nearly as fast could soothe the pain to a reasonable degree. It would serve as medication until he fully recovered, which would be at least another two days even with hastened healing.

As the pain faded and clarity of mind returned, the curtain of canvas opened with a new arrival. It was the maui’en ranger, bereft of her cloak to reveal her beige tunic and shorts that left her tawny arms and legs exposed. She was carrying a wooden case that had hempen bandages and a bowl steaming water on top of it.

There was a note of relief in her voice as she said, “Here you are. I was worried you might not have made it when I woke up and found your tent empty. How are you feeling?”

“Better,” was the only answer he could give her. “And you?”

“Practically untouched, all things considered.” Her ears shifted for a moment before casting her eyes down at her supplies. “Anyway, it’s time for me to change your bandages. I should have done it earlier, but I overslept.”

“I’ll just leave you two alone,” said the dwarf as he slipped through the exit on the other side.

She climbed into the cart and took a seat across from him, setting down the case and opening it up. There were several vials, jars with dried plants, a mortar, pestle, and other things. Everything that an herbalist would use to make things like the poultice.

“Are you a medicine woman as well?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Nah. There was an instructor of mine who taught classes on field medicine and I took to it. It’s usually good enough until we get to a place where we might find a healer since we don’t have access to them out in the field often. There’s only a few of them in the company and are better suited to higher-ranked teams.”

“What is this… company?” he asked. “A mercenary group?”

Her nose scrunched up as she tried to put the words together. “It’s more like an organization that gathers people who have certain talents to solve problems. Sometimes is guarding a caravan, other times its monster extermination, and a few times its exploring newly discovered ruins or other dangerous sites. The dwarf and I are a part of it, but we aren’t on an assignment—which means those arrows I used aren’t reimbursable, unfortunately. They were so expensive.”

He figured she meant the ones that had caused the flames to explode and the brambles that had tangled the larger ones up. “…Sorry, I suppose.”

She only shrugged it off. “A few decent jobs will replace the cost of them, even if it’ll leave my purse tight afterward. The price of a life is a lot more costly… which is why I owe you and that mercenary a favor for throwing yourself against those things when they rushed us.”

“Were those creatures native to this region?”

Her ears flattened against her head. “I’ve lived in the place we’re heading until I was older enough to set out and joined the company, but I hadn’t heard about them before. It was just luck that the dwarf decided to tag along because he wanted to visit the place. Without you and him we’d have been screwed since only magic was doing a thing against them.”

After considering her words, he proposed a suggestion. “I have a delivery to make at the main temple, but I am unfamiliar with the terrain. I’ll consider the debt settled if you could lead me there.”

“Consider it done if we get there in one piece.” That said, she removed the old bandages, applied the fresh poultices, and wrapped new bandages to keep them in place. Then she went about her way to mend the others who had been injured.

Left to his own devices, the monk remained in the cart for the sake of quiet contemplation on the previous events. They weren’t far from their destination and he now had a guide who could lead him straight there as well. But it would be a moot point if they were attacked again and he died because he was still injured.

He could only blame himself for his shortcomings leading to the situation.

His father had taught him and his siblings the way of martial arts, a method of forging one’s body and fists for the sake of survival. Mastery, as all should strive to achieve, would only be found through single-mindedly refining one’s technique and testing it. Had he been able to fully commit to the practice like his siblings, then his fists would have been able to punch through their armor-like hide.

But he hadn’t because of the voices he could always hear that the rest of his family couldn’t. It would have driven him mad had his master not helped guide him through it and even offered him another path. He was sorely tempted to take her up on it, given he honestly enjoyed what she taught him and treasured her tutelage.

But he couldn’t accept that since it would stray from the path the rest of his family walked. In pursuing more than one path, he would only be dividing his attention and could never reach the pinnacle of mastery in either. So his only choice was to pick one or the other—either he had to leave behind his family or abandon his master’s teachings.

…Yet, it was only by reaching outside of himself that he had been able to survive until now. If not for that, he would have died that night against the brown bear. If not for that, he would have died against those monstrous jackals.

And he hated that.

He hated it because it meant he hadn’t been strong enough to help himself or anyone else. He was nothing more than a leech, feeding of the lifeblood of the others just to stave off death another day longer. He was a parasite in all but name.

The kind of person his father hated the most.

Even so, he still needed to draw from the land to mend his injuries. That would be the only way he could see through his promise to his master. He couldn’t fully embrace her teachings as he would have liked but, at the very least, he wanted to remain on good terms with her.

So, if the only price to obtain said power was to open himself up to the immature land beneath his feet and listen to its whims for the duration of his stay, he would do so.

All to see his promise through to the end.