A sun shined through my tent, and I grabbed a bar, ready to start the day. I rolled out of my sleeping bag and grabbed my pack, and grabbed some food. Then I froze. Where’s Robin? She was supposed to wake me. I Wrang’s tent and woke him up.

“You got Robin for the night shift, right? I asked, worried.

“Yeah why?”

I bolted out of his tent, and ran to her tent. I threw the flaps open. She wasn’t there. I ran to a spot on the clearing. I then saw her brother’s body. There was something written in the dirt. It took me a while to make out, but then I fell to my knees. Written in the dirt was, I’m sorry. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to know what she did. I cried softly. Wrang came a second later.

“Wha- Oh shit.” He breathed in, horrified. We found her body a few minutes later, she was hanging from a tree by a noose, just a husk of her usually energetic personality. It was just Wrang and me now. We gathered up all of our stuff, and a lot of the stuff of others. Then after reaching an agreement, we hiked out into the jungle.

We were both silent, and had been since we’d made the decision to hike out into the jungles. We’d already had to fend off a weird scorpion with antlers within the five hours we’d been here. As we were cutting through the brush I saw a hill, and motioned for him to follow me, both of us not wanting to talk quite yet. I took a breath of the familiar forest smell, but there was something foreign about it. Almost like it was more… alien. As we hiked up the hill through the strange tall aqua grasses, we heard the strange dragonfly like birds native to the planet, if you can call Infinity that, buzz their songs. As we reached the top of the hill, I let myself tune into the surroundings. Then I heard a rustling in the forest behind me. Suddenly a strange creature burst through the trees. It had sleek blue scales covering it’s catlike body. It had eyes like a praying mantis, and four antenna that were pressed against it’s long skull. It had a elephant’s trunk, and short claws. It’s long thin tail trailed behind it. It gave off an alarmed toot from it’s trunk, as it’s short panther like four two-toed legs propelled it forward at extremely fast speeds, and it kind of moved like a horse. It had two surprisingly long arms tucked into its chest, and it’s eye’s had hope in them. It was smart I could tell. I guess that’s why it reached me, and before I could react, went behind my legs, as it was only a foot tall, and without the foot long tail only two feet long. Clearly a cub, or whatever you call it’s baby form. Then Mr. Alpha Wolfion came out of the trees, ready for some baby creature to eat when it saw me and Wrang though, it backed off back into the trees, lowly growling. I shot my pistol into the trees, and heard it let off a weird scream sound. Then the forest went silent. As soon as it went into the forest, the thing ran away from me into the forest, and immediately ran back out with The Alpha on its tail, then The Alpha saw us, and retreated. The elephant-panther-praying mantis thing got smart and stuck near me after that.

“Well you’re an annoying little fucker aren’t you? You can hang out with us.” I told the thing. I was just now deciding to name it Fiddleford, because I’ve been in a bad mood and wanted to do something terrible. We finally got to the top of the hill, and looked out over the forest. It was beautiful. The Dark green trees, with some giant whale looking flying pale things flew around in the distance. I decided i wouldn’t name the elephant thing Fiddleford, but I didn’t know what to call him.. or her, shit that complicates things. I went to check and confirmed that it was a dude for sure.

“You must be popular with the girls buddy. I’ll name you… Mantis, because that’s a cool fucking name for an absolute destroyer,”(You know what I mean by destroyer) I said. Me and Wrang decided to make base here. I set up a little blanket for him to curl up on. Then, we had a little dinner.

“Do you think we should keep the guy? He might be a waste of materials.” Wrang questioned me as we watched Mantis unfurl his long arms to poke at the food I’d laid out. There was some meat, some cabbage, some blueberries, and a few sugar cubes for desert. He decided to just gobble up everything, saving the sugar for last, wisely. He then coughed up the blueberries with a cute blast from his trunk.

“Let’s keep him, I like the little fella.” I said. The little guy tooted in agreement.

“Yeah he’s cute, but I still don’t know.”

I walked over to Mantis, and he backed away fearfully from me a little bit. I held out my hand showing him it had some meat in it. He nervously reached his trunk over, grabbed it, and quickly ate it. I inched closer to him and held my hand out again with some meat in it. Wrang was staying quiet through the entire process, just watching. Then once again Mantis reached his trunk over again, but this time I slowly pet his trunk as he grabbed the meat and pulled it back. Then I moved forward a little more and started to pet his body, and he relaxed and let it happen. I repeated this process until he finally trusted me, coming to set with me. Suddenly I got a monster headache.

“Oh… shit… this… hurts.” I grunted between breaths and through gritted teeth. Mantis went up to me and nervously trumpeted, putting one of his hands on my chest. Suddenly the pain went away, and when I touched his little hand, I heard a low voice in my head. This must be the bonding father told me about.

What the fuck! I thought.

Oh yep, definitely a bonding. We are now bonded in mind Rade.

Mantis!?

Yep.

Suddenly some green energy started growing around me and mantis’ hand. Sweet, a telepathic beast from another world is speaking to me in my head, and green energy is floating around my right hand. Whelp, I hope it doesn’t disintegrate me or some shit.

I heard that bitch.

Fuck you.

Thanks for the meat though.

Do you get any bigger than this?

Yeah, I can be around 20 feet tall, 40 feet long, and have a 20 foot tail.

Sweet.

“What the fuck is going on!?!” Yelled Wrang, for a good reason.

“Shut up, I got some good telepathy with this thing going on.”

“What the shit?” Wrang said, confused. Mantis also didn’t like that he was interrupting our cool magic going to work, so gave Wrang an angry stare and a mad trumpeting session from his trunk. We chatted a for a few more seconds in me and Mantis’ head, before we disconnected our magic. The green energy fell away from our hands like it was fabric, and pooled on the ground, before evaporating into the air.

“Can I ask questions now?” Wrang asked.

“Yeah sure, shoot.”

“What. Like everything fucker. I’m severely uninformed on this subject.”

“Well, when I fed him I apparently created some sort of bond. I’d gained his trust, and trust is a powerful thing. It connected us, and it gave me an ‘initiation’ headache. It happens when you learn some new magic. When you finally use it, the headache goes away. I think it’s like having an excess of energy. You need to release the buildup, and that’s how you do it. I think that the energy is like magic fuel.”

“Sounds like some shit from a shitty sci-fi book.”

“Yeah definitely, still doesn’t change the situation.”

“Yeah, seriously though, like it’s from a crappy as all hell sci-fi book.”

“Definitely, who would write that?”

“Only an idiot.”

Then me and Wrang decided to go explore a bit, before we slept. There was still plenty of time. However, Mantis was all tuckered out and went to bed, curling up on his blanket and fall asleep.(aww) Then we and wrang left base to enter the forest.

“Look a river!” Wrang whispered. We’d been in the forest for around 30 minutes. We hadn’t seen any life other than birds and insects, so we were fairly confident we were good. However, we still wanted to be quiet, just in case. We grabbed a drink from the river, and filled up our canteens. Then we heard a few yells echo through the forest. We both were somewhat good people so we ran toward the noise. We heard a few more yells, and some zapping sounds. Then a red bolt of… something flew by. We kept running and soon broke into a clearing.

There were about ten of these strange four-armed aliens, with tentacles for legs. Everything about them seemed blend in with the environment, like some form of camouflage. They were all shooting red energy beams at a crazy snake looking thing. It had to have been at least 20 times the biggest snake I’d ever seen, but with three heads, and a long blade on the tail. It had a sort of shield that the bolts were deflecting off of that shined when hit. I immediately went for the strange snake thing, pulling out my rifle, and shooting two shots. One deflected off, but the other shattered the thing and penetrated through, blasting the thing in the face and blowing off a lot of scales and tons of fluorescent blue blood. Wrang was not far behind and fired where I had shot, blowing it off with an assault rifle that shot the rounds straight through that bitch’s head, and as that head went limp, the other two turned to us, murder in their eyes. The strange tentacle dudes just kept shooting, until they broke through that portion of the shield, obliterating another head. We finally worked together to end the next head over the following 5 seconds. Then as me and Wrang reloaded, the leader of their group walked over to us. Or scuttled? Shuffled? I don’t know.

“Thank you strange ones. What species are you two?” He asked politely.

“We’re Humans, you?” Wrang replied.

“Very well. I am one of the Viknorin. Me and my tribe were hunting when we ran across this beast. My name is Chief Krri’to’yok’no. We must stick together, no? Follow me to my homeland.” He said, introducing himself. Just then Mantis came out of the trees slowly, checking to see if it was safe. Chief long name’s eyes widened, as he whispered, “Mugani” as if scared.

“Mantis, meet our new friends.” I called.

“You tamed that beast? How did you steal the cub?” He(sorry for assuming.) asked, terrified.

“I didn’t. I saved it. You know this species?” I asked him suspiciously.

“They travel through the land, dominating any that dare challenge them. One day we tried to hunt one, and with a single tail whip it slaughtered two of my men. A rival village once stole a cub, and now it is a beast of power. The village that controls the Mulgani, controls the jungles.”

Mantis then unfurled his left arm, and held it out to me. I touched it with my hand, and the green energy spread from the point of contact.

I believe this to be true. If they can show us the location of the village, I can tell others of my species, and they will surely raid the village and raid the stolen one. Mantis thought to me.

“How do you have a magician’s connection with one of them?!” He screamed.

“You need to explain things to me, I am new here, what the fuck is so crazy?” I asked him.

“That is what we call the magician’s touch, a powerful bond between two creatures. It can be forged through saving someone or something from death, nursing them back to health, and other things.” He stared at Mantis with wide eyes. “And you just made one with one of the most powerful creatures on this planet. The power of these beasts is unlimited, these things are priceless. The tribes here would start a war over one, and every single alliance would send an army and there best tamers if there was a chance they could have it. As of now, you need to hide it and yourselves. Come to our village. Train yourselves, study spells, and make your weapons.”

“Really? There is no way that’s true,” Wrang said.

“It is true. Follow me, you two just became officially protected by the Almani tribe. My other Viknorin may not be as kind, but there are at least two other tribes I know we can trust this secret to. We may become kings of the jungles as a result of this. You two have undoubtedly started a new age in the jungles. We must buy our time. There is much we wish to change but cannot. With your friend Mantis, this could all change.” He said wildly gesturing to the trees.

We suddenly heard a clicking sound that I all too well recognized. Wrang suddenly pulled out his rifle and aimed at the trees. At least 30 Wolfions stepped out of the trees.

“What are those?” Asked Krri’to’yok’no.

“Run!”