Vibrant golden light reflected brightly off a pool of dark blood. The blood oozed slowly out of the still warm body of a giant wolf. It’s once proud silver fur was now dyed red with its own thick blood. A young boy’s heavy breathing could be heard in the otherwise silent forest. The silvery light of the planet hanging above the sky merged with the golden radiance of the boy’s magic. Golden orbs were dragged out from the surrounding nature, gravitating towards a large orb of light hovering above the boy’s hand. The boy gritted his teeth, sweat gushed from all of his pores and he went bright red in the face. The orb shook violently as it was slowly crushed from all sides, gradually being compressed. The light flickered intensely and the boy unleashed all of his energy, blocking out everything but the orb. The small orbs dotted throughout the forest came to a halt and fell to the ground as the orb’s light dyed down slowly. All that remained was a small translucent orb the size of marble that let out as much light as a light bulb. The boy looked at the orb in his hands and broke out into a massive, relief filled grin.

“Yes!!” cheered both Ash and Ashton in their head.

Ashton threw his hands up in victory, sending the orb flying up into the air like a helium balloon. His heart sunk as he watched it slowly fly away as if gravity didn’t affect it, right up until it reached the limit of Ash’s area of control and exploded, blasting miniature golden orbs in every direction like a firework. Falling to his knees, tears in his eyes, Ashton cursed his own foolishness.

“YOU FUCKING IDIOT!” bellowed Ash. “You have no idea how much mana we just wasted. It’ll take months before we can try again!”

Ashton remained unresponsive, lying on his back looking up at the golden orbs slowly drifting back to the ground like a group of fireflies dancing through the sky.

“What the hell are you doing?! Get the fuck up! They definitely saw that you idiot!” yelled Ash furiously.

“Ah… yes, sorry,” murmured Ashton dazedly.

Ashton slapped himself, slipping out of his daze. As if a switch flipped on somewhere inside of him Ashton suddenly got very serious and dashed off into the woods, running along with the wind. It was as if the trees in the forest parted for him as he bolted through, not getting caught on a single branch. In the corner of his eye Ashton spotted several torches drifting over to where he was earlier. Climbing up a nearby tree, Ashton continued his journey from branch to branch, eventually arriving back at the goblin camp. Waiting by the perimeter Ashton leapt into motion when a gap appeared in the night patrols guard, weaving through the tents silently like an assassin before reaching his crappy tent and diving into the bundled up grass that was his bed.

********

Footsteps approached Ashton’s tent, rousing him from his sleep. An old goblin covered with scars like he’d been mauled by several tigers entered, carrying a pail of water. Their eyes met and the goblin huffed, walking away with disappointment, sad he couldn’t drench Ashton with the water. Thus began Ashton’s morning routine, beginning with the packing up of his tent. Following that he searched for a water source to bathe in and attempted to scrape off the plaque that was building up on his teeth. Practising his set of morning exercises with his fellow trainees came next and then finally the months task began; cutting down trees and delivering them back to the village.

Chopping down trees was surprisingly difficult for Ashton. He figured after all that mining it would be a piece of cake with his rock hard biceps. However the trees were far more ‘alive’ than they were on Earth, they could manipulate mana within their bodies, compressing certain areas, petrifying the wood. The larger the tree, the more mana it could circulate through its system, allowing more area to be petrified. Some trees could flood so much mana to the area it could become as hard as diamond. To combat that, the goblins split into groups, chopping at the same time from different directions, only the oldest and most skilled trees could protect themselves from so many attacks from so many directions.

All of the goblins at the camp shunned Ashton, refusing to work with him, forcing Ashton to improvise. Ashton walked up to a large tree, axe in either hand. The tree was twice as wide as he was and as tall as a four storey building. Ashton leapt up as high as he could, driving each axe into the bark, suspending himself in the air a few feet up. From there he continued to climb up by driving his axes into the tree, swing as hard as he could. The tree tried to fight back, only managing to stop Ashton from piercing the bark every third swing. By the time he reached the top, half an hour had passed and Ashton was drenched with sweat, barely conscious. Crawling a metre out onto a large branch he stopped to take a rest, only intending on a ten minute break, yet it was too relaxing at the top of the tree, away from all the worries of his new life and Ashton drifted off to sleep within a minute.

********

“Ahem,” huffed Ash.

Ashton woke up startled, tumbling off his branch, only just managing to hang on by the end of his axe. Fiddling around foolishly, Ashton attempted to hook the other axe on the branch for more stability. However… CREAK! The branch suddenly collapsed for no reason and Ashton was sent flying towards the ground.

Ashton screamed helplessly as he sped faster and faster to his horrible fate. The world began to spin around him, faster and faster and faster. Colours blurred together and Ashton felt as if someone had punched him in the nose. His senses got weaker and weaker until he lost complete control over his body. Then, as if he were a well crafted puppet on strings, his body moved on its own, throwing one axe at the tree, lodging it in place and then quickly hooking onto the end of the handle with the other, all in less than a second. Colours, sounds, smells and pain all rushed back into Ashton, so dizzyingly fast, he almost lost his grip on the axe. Intense throbbing pain surged from his shoulder and Ashton looked up to find it was barely attached. The force of the fall had dislocated his shoulder and then torn away at the flesh leaving it dangling by a little bit of muscle and tendon. The pain crashed down onto Ashton’s mind, wave after wave, he couldn’t think straight at all. The arm was barely holding on to the axe now and Ashton made a quick decision. He pulled up with all his might then grabbed onto the axe with his other arm and as the broken arm gave away, still clutching the handle of the axe.

“G… Get it! I can fix it, just bring it close!” cried out Ash who was experiencing the same pain as Ashton.

Ashton grabbed his arm and held it next to his shoulder socket. The muscles and tendons weaved back together, tugging the arm, fixing it back into place, followed up by the blood vessels realigning, the flesh stitching together and then finally the skin bound itself back together.

“Never gets any better,” grumbled Ashton.

“You’re bloody lucky I took control before. If not, it would’ve been a lot worse than just a single arm. That fucking tree though. Thinks it’s sooo clever, sacrificing a branch to kill us,” spat Ash venomously

“W… Wait. Since when could you take control of my body like that?!” question Ashton.

“Not that long ago, I got bored while you were sleeping and gave it a go. Wasn’t that difficult really, I can’t last that long though, only up to an hour,” admitted Ash.

“W… Were you considering telling me any time soon?” asked Ashton.

“What? You have a problem with me taking control? Or is the body only good enough for you?” accused Ash.

“N… No! I… I… I just thought it would be helpful to know that,” stammered Ashton.

“Well now you know and that’s that,” concluded Ash.

Wary, Ashton continued with the task at hand. He worked his way all the way back up to the top of the tree, not stopping to take a break this time. He then savoured the feeling of hacking off every individual branch as the tree desperately tried to stop him. By the time he’d clipped off all of the branches the tree had exhausted all of its mana and could no longer stop Ashton’s chopping. Eventually, after two hours of hacking away at the trunk, the tree fell, knocking over another two rather large trees in the process. Happy with himself, Ashton then walked over to the ogre in charge back at camp and told him what he’d done, requesting assistance to drag them back to camp through a rather long, overcomplicated game over charades. To which the ogre answered with a fist to the face. Another three hours of hauling trees back to the village, Ashton was finally permitted to rest, drifting off to sleep once again within a minute.