I made progress. Became able to run the whole two laps without collapsing within about two weeks. Within four weeks, I could run four. Within two months, my record was six laps until I buckled. Even then, I could run that much multiple times a day because my body felt fuller, more filled out.

It’s probably all the disgusting spider meat. Or Croc meat. Or… whatever half of the stuff is the Wolf dumps at our doorstep.

I fell into a one-day training, two-day’s rest rhythm as per the Wolf’s instructions. But with all that unused free time in between, it didn’t feel like I was doing enough. And so, I started pushing harder, and harder.

First, I went out for a run, always a few hours before the Wolf returned, and my actual training started.

Then, when that wasn’t enough, I ran extra laps a few hours after training was finished.

When that wasn’t enough, I used my rest days for improvised training sessions.

It hurt and on the actual day of training I was always worse for it, but if I could just bear with it, I hoped that I wouldn’t stay feeble and powerless for long.

The Wolf caught on to my secret training sessions by the end of the third month

In an odd twist of circumstances, as I tried harder and harder, I could run less, and less. On the latest endurance test, I flagged after only three laps. A painful sharp feeling persisted in my chest and legs that felt like running barefoot on sharp rocks to the point where I couldn’t ignore it. I fully collapsed into the mud, lying there until I felt the hard metal boot of the wolf nudge my ribs.

“Are you doing alright?” He asked.

Is that a tinge of worry in his voice? Can’t be, he is the Wolf. Grumpiest of grumps, demanding, hard to talk to and not at all compassionate.

I turned my head to his side and looked him in the boot. “…You said I have a lot of weaknesses. So, I need to work hard. Harder. I have to get better faster. But it’s not working. Something’s wrong, it’s like I’m walking backwards, and I can’t do anything about it, I’m just going in circles, you haven’t even started sparring with me yet and I’m just so, so… frustrated.”

“Have you been resting as I told you to?” he asked.

“…no.” My answer was quiet, almost a squeak and laced with guilt.

“Are you hurting?”

“…yeah.” Worse than when we started. At least my arm was healing.

“Do you now know why I told you to rest?”

I stayed silent.

“Strength comes not only in the will to push on, but in knowing when to stop. And then stopping.”

In spite of his advice, even though he said I wouldn’t get stronger faster if I ran too much, even though I had a broken arm, even though I felt like shit for hours after each run, I was antsy doing nothing. I couldn’t rest seriously. I couldn’t sit still, couldn’t wait. I had to do something, or I’d go completely nuts.

I think the Wolf saw the turmoil in my eyes.

He sighed. “Sit.”

After a moment, I managed to sit upright.

“Cross your legs. Straighten your back. Then, relax. Be comfortable.” He was calm, but with a serious air about him.

I tried to follow his instruction and leaned my back on a nearby stone. He didn’t say much else for more than a minute.

I screwed up. I trained poorly. How did I screw up running in a circle? I’m gonna get punished. I deserve it. I–

“Rye.” Said the Wolf. “Do you want to be a knight?”

I looked him in the eyes, or where they would be under his helmet. A lump of anxiety gathered in my throat. I did want to be a knight. And I could not, under any circumstance, fail.

“More than anything in the world.” I said.

Under his scrutiny, I tried to keep my gaze solid and certain.

“What do you think one requires to be a knight?”

I didn’t need to think long about it. “A knight needs to be strong. Strong enough to defend themselves and others. Kind and compassionate. Willing to lend a helping hand. Willing to put themself into the face of danger.”

He listened but shook his head. “Those are a lot of things. In my eyes, a knight requires only one.”

I perked my ears and leaned in close.

“Control.”

Control? That’s… vague. What does he control? His weapon? His body? His stupid horse?

He picked up on my confusion. “What then, do you think is a knight?”

I didn’t need long to think about my answer. “A knight is a protector of the people. Of the land. Of our empire and family.”

It took a bit longer for him to respond.

“I… do not think you are wrong. But I have come to a different answer myself.”

I leaned in ever so slightly.

“A knight.” He said “Is someone who is sworn to fulfill a duty. To find a solution to a problem. To deal with a threat, even sometimes to his own detriment.”

He let that linger in the air for a moment before continuing. “To that end, you need to know what must be done, what can be done and who can do it. Whether to work together, with others above or below your station, or if you alone will suffice. You require discipline and control, of outside and inside influences. Of others and yourself. Does that make sense to you?”

“Well, yeah. I guess. If I’m riding a horse and can’t control it, eventually I’ll run someone into the ground by accident. But if people don’t trust me to ride it, they’ll take my reigns, or stab my horse, or jump left when they should have jumped right.”

He stared at me for a bit.

“Well said. But you do not realize how much you lack control. Of yourself. You must master your inner influences. You must be the leader of your limbs, the lord of your own body and mind. You must trust yourself, because if not you, then who? Know your limits, know your goals, and slowly outgrow the former while achieving the latter.”

“That’s a big ask.” I said. I had a lot of inner influences, if that’s how he wanted to call it. My mental box was absolutely packed to the brim with them.

“It is. But, with control and a collected mind, you can prevail over anything. To that end, I will teach you a mindset. Follow after me.”

His fingers intertwined, and I tried to copy him.

“Close your eyes.” He said. “I want you to focus on your navel. Breathe in and expand­…”

I heard him breathe in and did so myself.

“…then exhale and contract. Inhale, expand. Exhale, contract.”

We sat there for minutes, just breathing in and out. Slowly. Steadily. The pain in my chest was still there, pounding against it.

“Follow your breath, the air. Follow it down into your deepest parts, down to the naval. Imagine the path it takes. Picture it. Can you see your path?” he asked.

“Mhm.” I said.

“Hold that image. Now, listen to the sound of the air in your throat. In your mind, when you exhale, follow that sound. It has a sound, doesn’t it?”

I didn’t know if it did. There was the sound of air leaving my lips. The beating of my heart. The oppressive quiet of the dark. What was I exactly supposed to be listening for?

But the Wolf gave me an answer of sorts. An odd one. “Ram. It sounds like Ram, doesn’t it? Repeat after me, in your mind. Ram. Rammm. Rammm.”

Ram? I mean, I’m not gonna argue it. If he says it’s Ram, it might as well be Ram.

Ram.

Rammm.

Rammmmm.

Time passed and I didn’t know how much. We could have sat there for hours, and I wouldn’t have thought more than ten minutes had gone by. It was an odd feeling. The silence of the dark, oppressive and all encompassing, was still there, yes. But it was so distant.

“Now say it out loud. And breathe slowly.”

“Rammmmm.”

I didn’t think about how silly this was, two people fully clad in armor, sitting in the mud between graves of the dead, saying ‘rammm, rammm, rammm’. Or well, I did think of it, and it was silly, but the fact that it was, that I was feeling that way just didn’t matter to me anymore.

“Now, I want you to think about what you’re doing. Don’t stop doing it, just think. You are feeling the breath in your lungs. The cold air in. The warm air out. The pathway from your mouth to your naval. It is all here. You are here. You can think. You can breathe. Isn’t that a blessing?”

It was.

“Think of your struggles.” Said the Wolf. “The worries. Your foes. How you overcame them or how you failed. How you feel. What you know about your past, what you fear you don’t. Ponder what you dislike about yourself. Why don’t you want to be where you are?”

That was… a lot to think about. It was distant, but I could look at it and tell myself that yes, I had a lot of worries and that yes, I didn’t know how to resolve even half of them. But for now, I was just content thinking about them, opening the box and sorting them into little bits before putting them back inside.

If I’m patient, the Wolf’s training will strengthen my body.

If I ask what I don’t know, people will answer and help.

If I help people, they may help me in turn.

If I kill monsters big and small, I will glow even brighter.

And if I really am not in hell, then this really is a second chance at life. And that is the greatest blessing I could have asked for, to be alive still and again.

Then, the Wolf said something I didn’t like at all.

“Now return to it all. Breathe out. And be.”

Just like that, a spell I hadn’t even known was over me was broken and I was thrust back into the cold, wet graveyard behind the temple.

“W-what? Why? It’s, I was, I…”

I was calm for once! Actually, genuinely calm. Why did he take it away? How did he do it in the first place?

“You!” I said, pointing at the Wolf. “That was magic! You cast a-a spell. How? Do it again!”

The Wolf spoke calmly to me. “That was no magic. It was a technique to center yourself. A trick of the mind. Meditation. The body cleanses the mind, the mind cleanses the soul, and the soul lifts up both.”

I wasn’t convinced. “It was magic! It helped. A lot. Please send me back there, I’ve got so much to sort out.” I said.

“You can always go back yourself. Follow the steps, the breathing, the sound of Ram. It is now a place you can arrive at and leave. Eventually, if you practice enough, you will take that place with you into the real world.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, unless it’s magic! You’re a knight, a wolf, a murderer, and now a wizard?”

He huffed. “Wizards only appear in fantasies and fairytales. I am no caster.”

“But, but… it’s magic. It has to be.” I said, finding no way to understand what I just went through without it being some sort of miraculous moment out of a fairytale, where the old man turned out to have been a wizard all along and turned the little bee into a bright blue bird.

I liked that tale.

“Do you want to see what real magic looks like?” the Wolf asked out of the blue.

“I… I’m not some kid that’ll suddenly be happy because you showed me some cointricks.” I said.

“Well, it will please you to hear that I know little of such mundanity. Here.” He gave me a long branch that went from my toes to above my hips, free of all twigs. The moment I picked it up, I knew it was the length of my ideal sword.

Did he prepare this? Was he planning on sparring with me? Why is my ideal, preferred length so damn short? More importantly, how did he know?

He then took a tiny branch, a twig almost. It still had some brown leaves attached to it, but I saw no way he would reasonably be able to parry with it.

“Strike me. Fear not, I cannot wound you with this.” He waved it around in his left hand, as if showing its harmlessness as it swooshed and swayed.

And the point of this is to show me true magic? What, is his stick going to turn into a giant sword? Is it going to catch fire? Is it going to start speaking in riddles and offer me three wishes?

Am I going to catch fire?

I got up, still tired from my failed attempt at running, and took the branch in one hand. I wasn’t scared that he couldn’t dodge me, or block me, or somehow deflect my moderate swipe with his miniscule branch. I swung at him, a clumsy overhead strike being all that I could muster.

The moment I hit his armor, something rustled. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was holding his twig in my hand, and he was holding my stick in his. I didn’t blink. I didn’t just lose focus for long enough for him to swap them by hand. From one moment to another, they had simply switched places.

I then felt the Wolf let go of my hand. He had grabbed it with his right as he stepped into my swing.

Magic. That was magic.

“I can exchange things I wield or wear with that of others as long as I am touching them. Do not speak about what you have just seen to others.” He said. “Boons are best shared with no one. Barring that, they are best shared with those you trust. While I do not expect you to keep yours a secret if you ever choose to get one, I trust you to not go talking lightly about mine, Rye.”

I gulped. Magic. Boons. Effectively the same thing. And the Wolf was trusting me to keep his as a secret. Which wasn’t a big ask for me, but it was a whole lot of trust.

“Is this why you always carry around a massive, unwieldy and rusty sword? So you can take your foe’s weapons and leave them with your useless hunk of metal?”

The Wolf genuinely flinched a bit at that. He looked over at his massive hunk of rust, leaning against a nearby treetrunk.

“Well. No. not exactly. Sasha is… she needs a touch up.”

Inwardly, I giggled because even the big, bad Wolf turned out to have a soft spot for naming weapons.

Outwardly, I just had a shit-eating grin. “I won’t tell anyone about your boon.” I said.

I think that after running until I dropped, then doing that weird meditation-magic stuff and then seeing how an actual boon works, I’ve had enough for one day.

“And Wolf?”

“Yes?” he said.

“Thank you.”

There were a lot of things I was thankful for. The food. The training. The trust. I still knew so little about this world, I was still so afraid of everything, of doing something wrong that just having someone show me a way forward lifted my spirits tenfold. Even if it turned out this wasn’t the path for me, if I could walk one as hard as this, then I could walk any number of other ones.

In the end, I saw the Wolf in a new light. Not as a faceless grump, or a dangerous man behind a metal mask, but as a teacher. And it was worth listening to a teacher, even if it felt wrong or was a pain.

Now I just have to be a good student. And not screw up running in circles again.

“Do you feel better now?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good.” He said.

I didn’t actually feel much different. Maybe a bit colder. A bit muddier on my butt. A bit more clear-minded? Though, I couldn’t say if the difference was real or imagined. The pain in my chest was gone, or dulled at least.

“I think I expected more of a swordfight or some running over obstacles and carrying ridiculous weights rather than… this.”

He scoffed. “Oh, you will do enough fighting in the future. But this was for you to remember who must be in control.” He pointed at my chest. “You. Repeat the meditation technique once a day, or if you feel yourself become unsettled. Learn to live with your problems. Because if you live, you will solve them all over time.”

That was easy for him to say, with a sword, solid armor, probably years of experience and a good two head’s height on me. Then again, most of my problems weren’t solvable by bonking them on the head with an oversized sword.

“What if I don’t have time to do that? Like, in the middle of fighting a giant spider?”

The Wolf pondered for a moment.

“For that, there are always the verses. Repeat after me.”

His head inclined back a bit as he spoke.

“Fear knows me not.” he said.

“Fear knows me not…” I repeated after him.

“Pain knows me not.”

“…pain knows me not…”

“I am an ocean.”

“…I am an ocean?”

“And fear is but a drop.”

“…and fear is but a drop.”

At the end of it, I was smiling. I knew it already. It was always with ever me since I arrived in this sodden place. And now I knew the full length of it.

I still don’t know what an ocean is. But that’s ok.

“However, you must not rely only on the verses. They can help in a pinch, but they are flawed and in turn can become a deadly crutch.” The Wolf said.

That wasn’t going to deter me. They helped; I knew they did. And I needed to use every bit of strength I could get my hands on to survive in this world.

“Ok.” I said. “What’s next?”

“Next?” he asked. “Next, you rest. A full week. And no strenuous activity. If you fail to heed my advice this time, I will not consider teaching you again.”

I nodded. I was fully intent on doing as he said now. Even if I had to bind myself to the ground for it to work. Because he trusted me. And trust always had to be repaid.

“Oh, and before I forget.” Said the Wolf. “More people will have awoken by this time. They are guided towards the temple by the children of Glom. The wicks harken their coming. They portend company, good and worse. Be on your toes.”

My jaw nearly dropped as my mind tried to figure out what that meant. In the end, it broke down like an old overloaded wagon and I sputtered the only thing I could agree on with myself.

“More people!?”