I stare at the beast’s eyes, its small pupils shining like gems against the night as we both take position. Kid has been in the deep for hours already, with essence circling him like flies as he does, attracting any beast or animal close enough to sense it and causing us no small amount of inconvenience.

Despite that, for some reason all those crazy mercenaries refuse to wake him and free ourselves of such problems. They said that no practitioner should have his insights interrupted, that we need to protect him while he searches the deep for them, and a number of other things that I can’t remember while both angry and risking my life.

I’m not like them, those bunch of monsters that are happy to fight with every single living thing inside this damn forest, but they care? Even worse, what kind of answers would one find when he has yet to be asked? Yeah no, that’s bullshit, one so big that I can’t force myself to eat up, they probably are fighting simply because they want to, and fuck the others that don’t, it’s not like they already caused me enough problems right?

But even though I’m tempted to continue pointing how stupid our – my – situation is, my blabbering is cut down as the beast makes its move. Its hinder legs contract and explode in movement, compelling the huge scaled body in a leap of dozen meters using nothing but muscle strength alone as the creature bleeds the night, its shining armored scales reflecting the sparse silvery light of the moon as it moves in perverse speed towards my direction.

Moving without essence leaves it noticeable only by sight – not exactly, but true enough I suppose – and its dark scales fuse with the night making it really hard to follow, it would easily kill a slower or distracted practitioner, but thankfully I’m neither, so I have enough time to prepare myself.

And I do so doing the complete opposite that it did, staying completely still and allowing essence to fill me, soon feeling the unnatural urge and strength coming alive and bathing me in power. It orders me to fight the beast head on, to crush it beneath my sword, to flood the earth and teach those beasts their place, that, and a bunch more of stupid thoughts that are promptly ignored.

Even after all those years the small shadow of will contained within the essence still rings on my mind from time to time, but that’s not a problem that I can solve and nor it’s time for trying, so I free my sword from its sheath. It cuts the air aiming to the flying-in-my-direction beast that flies in my direction, the awkward two handed grip turning itself in a one-handed one as my left arm leaves the pommel, the extra unexpected range caching the beast unsuspecting and chopping it in two with a clean and perfect timed counter.

Or so I would like it to.

The beast does a grotesque caricature of a smile, eyes shining with intelligence as it reads my attack and uses the body of my “deadly steel” as platform to change ways in midair and jump once more, now coming for my throat while sneering at my weakness and slowness.

“Oh no, what will I do now?”- I drop my sword and mimic the same grotesque smile of cruel satisfaction and scorn that the beast gave me with one my own, half in joke and half not as the words of power leave my mouth and essence is brought forth with vigor and speed that I could never replicate on my own.

The world shine with the bluish aura of my element, small fonts that could be used against my enemies all over the place, but most are either too far or too small. Most. The small dozens pots of leathered metal hidden in my clothes burst in a single spear, the hardened liquid piercing the scales and heart of creature in a single motion as I stare at its eyes once more, now with its life escaping them.

It struggles in mid-air for a few seconds but soon both of us reach our respective limits and the raging flux of essence is gone, the lizard falls, blood gushing from it in small intervals as its pierced heart refuses to stop, its strong muscles working against itself. I try to command the water back into the pots, they are no simple tap water and I would like it back if possible, but unfortunately and to my displeasure I’m too tired to force it back, the high in essence blood of the beast making me use more essence than I actually can to get it both separeted.

I suck it up, what’s gone ‘s gone, and such is life. Trading control and sustain for raw power was my choice in the end, so this time I can’t blame anyone else for it. I could blame the ones that made me fight in the first place I suppose, but that would only bring me back to the beginning so I give the dead beast a glance, quickly calculating the gains and losses that the battle brought me.

I close my mouth in a grimace, the scales could fetch a nice price, but I would need to carry them for weeks before finding a city to sell them, and I don’t believe that those scales weight less than fifty kilos, making the task almost unworthy of what’ll get for them. That aside I can’t think in any other way to use the body, the meat can be smoked for later in a quite tasty jerk but that’s pretty much it. On the losses side though, I’ve used the last of my pots and it’ll take days to replenish them, this particular beast also has no core, making it for a quite bad of a trade where the effort surpass the profit.

With a big sigh and fighting a soon to be headache I take my eyes of the big lizard, freeing my mind from such materialistic worries as I deep in for an instant, slowly looking through my reserves of both essence and endurance as I savor the few moments of rest before searching for someone to help or some other beast to deal with, thankfully finding none of both. Not true of course, I actually find a few of both, but my essence is close to its end and there is no one that really need treatment in rush, some cuts and bruises but I couldn’t care less, I’m too under paid already.

I chose to fall back a little and give myself a well deserved rest time, leaving the few beasts remaining to the others, their number is way smaller now so it should not be a problem. Seeing myself free for the first time in hours I let my eyes wander, stopping right on the cause of all this, part because the image of a completely calm boy meditating is quite a contrast with the bloody scene of mercenaries killing beasts right and left, and part because I want to avoid eye contact with said mercenaries, last they notice that I’m idle and task me with something.

The boy did not even move since it started, he still sits there, oblivious of all, and every trouble caused. Not that it surprises me, it has been like that since this nightmare began with that faithful night.

Everything was going well, we had a few problems with transport but it worked for me, they pay for the day and I’m used to walking, it worked so well that even before entering Briddell I had already made two deichs without even having to lift a finger, a promissory start to a promissory campaign. Both the Frasan and the freumhan were pretty well known, in one side a big family, known for its weaponry business and their strength, being the fourth strongest powerhouse in the entire city. No complains there, they would pay well because not doing would be showing weakness and a loss of face, the chance is that they would pay more so to show off – no complains there either.

On the other, one of the most successful bands, with nine whole years without a single loss and with gains that outnumbered bands with twice the numbers. Even if they didn’t want to pay me for day like the Frasan I would still be taking a part of the total in the end, and every healing done to the mercanciares would also be paid me back. Everything smelled, tasted and looked like jackpot, what could have gone wrong?

Those were my thoughts exactly, what indeed? Maybe some beast that evolved in silence, shutting itself on a dark corner of the forest so to not caught attention until strong enough, a small but plausible chance that could sure turn this fortune into disaster. We could be its first preys, caught with our pants down, and if some of the Frasan died then so would we. No better if one the band died as my reputation would be gone and no one would contract me anymore, the healer that managed to let a band that had no deaths in almost a decade die, I would have to flee in shame to who knows where, begging for some coin until the rest of my days. My wife would kill me.

But that was if the worst situation possible came to the worst possible ending, a chance within a chance, and small ones to start with. I assured myself that was just my anxiety talking, the biggest contract ever, I was nervous and just that. Sure, I was, and until now there was no evolved beast jumping from a brush, but with this dog shit luck if one actually did it would be no surprise, and I’m almost thinking that a beast would have been better.

The boy came, dressed in blood, with wounds big enough to make me feel like throwing up as I forced myself to work. The stones lost power inside him and filled the wounds with earth and dirt, his guts were a messy hell of blood, shit and earth, one that I had to do something about. It took me hours of work and more than half of my pots simply to make the wounds clean and enough skin to just superficially close it, but it was not enough for them, I was worked to death all night, pressed by both the Frasan and the mercenaries. I did the best I could of course, I’m a healer because of the money and have no shame in saying it, but I’m a healer and I do my job.

Tired and essenceless I went to sleep leaving the kid to the Four and his own luck as exhaustion overtook me. There was nothing to do anymore, if he was going to die or live only time would tell, and there was nothing that I could do to change that. It was too much blood lost, the wound was too big and him too weak, I was certain that even after all my work it would still not be enough, that when I woke up in the next day I would find the Frasan gone, rushing back to their family in hope to find something to protect them from the heavens, and I sincerely wished they did, because when they failed I would be on their black list, marked to die, so better if they were far.

But of course, that was something to think about when my head was not being hammered by the invisible strikes of fatigue, so I let it go, it was set, and I would deal with the problems when it was time. It didn’t come to happen like that obviously, but at the time I had no way to know, and so, without conscience of time I slept for two days. The time was proof of my effort put and essence spent, and although it was a little longer time than the usual, it was not surprising. What was in fact a surprise was finding the boy alive and breathing, skin a little paler than normal but still way better that it should be, wounds way better than I thought I left them.

It made no sense, no sense at all, so I told myself that I did a better job than thought I did, it was dark and the last hours were blurry after all. Looking back there was a lot of those small and strange things telling me that he was not normal, I just failed to see them at the time.

Like, how can a boy, no older than my own son not scream when I’m touching his insides with bare hands, pushing and squeezing it to stop the blood and other things? That’s not even the point, he shouldn’t be able to keep himself awake for that long, not one should, no with that wounds. Even if for some reason the rush blocked the pain, what about the nights and days later on, I slept at his side and even tired, there isn’t much needed to wake me up, one of the reasons that I kept my life for this much in that line of work.

Again I convinced myself of a reason after I worked more on him that day, broken bones, fractures, missing nails, buns, small cuts, big cuts, we found them all, more if the scars were counted, it was scare and I found the craving to throw up a second time. I now pretty well that life is not a flower garden and I’ve seen my share of blood and gore but it hit me hard nevertheless, I couldn’t help but think about my child, no one that lived for so little should have that amount of wounds and scars. They gave us a little reasoning of how the boy was able to deal with the pain though, he was used to it.

Fired, I worked until my body gave up and was once more filled with exhaustion then I crawled my way to sleep, this time satisfied with the healing progress and sure that the boy would not die in my hands. He was no healed, the wounds were hard and his body too frail, it was also a bothersome and slow work, to start the healing I needed stronger essence than the ones that wounded him, a hard job for itself as the other was in a higher level. But not only that, I needed to be careful enough to not destroy his body while destroying the residual essence within it, like I said, a slow and bothersome work.

The circle repeated itself, wake up, meditate, eat, heal, meditate, eat, heal, meditate and sleep, so after a few days in it and after another one of the treatment sessions with the sleeping boy I was gone to rest again, sure that in the next day I would find another new old wound in need of work like the days before, a circle of never ending, under paying work. I didn’t know for much I’ve slept, my body was still tired and my essence was still gone but I opened my eyes in rush nonetheless, exploding in motion, searching for the familiar hilt and pommel as something woke me, instincts and experience solidified in an alert. I jumped to my feet searching for the potential treat as the morning light of a new day welcomed me, just as did the now awaken boy.

It made me happy to seem him awake, we all knew that he would not die, but still made us glad, for different reasons. Mine was that now he would recover naturally within a month or so! No need to keep rushing his body to heal. The end of my problems right? No. The boy still needed work, like the two groups of people made clear.

It took me a few more days but I finally left him in top notch condition, “top notch”. He was skin and bones but that was a small price for the amount of healing that I did. Now, I sure was free right? Although high leveled healers could use their own essence to nurture the body and skip the eating part I was not even close from doing it, so with the risk of taxing his body too much and without like threatening wounds to heal I was not necessary to over work anymore, right?

Well, yes. For two days. The boy that I literally fought death for was once more dying, and I didn’t even know how. They just shook my poor tired self out of my deserved rest and forced me to once more save the damned boy’s life.

Actually I still don’t know how they managed to almost kill him again, at the time I was too tired – and too rushed – to ask and after the healing I’d gone to sleep without knowing. Later after waking up people refused to talk about it and when did just keep complaining about the other side, giving me little real information about what happened. Another one small hint ignored, if only I cared more at the time and was not fearful to inquire such people I would not find myself in such situation now.

But well, I did, I ignored it. The boy was now in “top notch” condition once more, and I was pretty clear to not let it suffer another wound or his body would not hold the treatment, he would need at least two weeks to even walk, two weeks at least of free payment and more if the band kept the plan of helping him. In the end, it would be a good trade. Right?

No.

I breathe deep once more, counting until fifty before calming down. It would be a good trade if those people were not a bunch of crazy monsters. Just as I healed him the chief of the fucking band started teaching him, just as did the representative of the fucking Frasan. Not that they teaching him was a problem, I was happy when they said they would, the actual problem was when after half the time that I gave to the boy, to like I said, “even walk” he was already able to started taking armed practice with the chief, and I was left to heal every kind of wound that he inflicted on him.

Thinking it back now, that fast recover was again unnatural, but that one was more easily explicable, he was young and had more than enough food to fuel his body so I let it slide. The combat practices gave him the need to eat an enormous amount of food to replenish the energy use on healing and to build up muscle mass, what of course, make needed more hunting and more going inside the forest, task that I was not spared from.

Animals are not stupid as most think, even if they are not smart one can hardly say that they are stupid. Every day we needed to go further inside the forest as the wild game got harder and harder to find, mostly if you talk about enough normal game to sustain seven practitioners. I almost cried of happiness when they said that we were short on time and needed to enter the forest soon, it was finally over I thought.

And it was. For two days.

Little did I knew that a crazy horde of beasts would be waiting.