Sachihiro

Shea, Saya, Morpheus, Rayna, Lysandra, Kira, Serenity, Shiro, Orochi and Isis leave with Toura in an anticlimactic walk through the woods that sees them disappearing as soon as they are out of sight. We are all anxious about the safety of their trip but they should get home within the ten-day if the ancient’s buff still applies to Toura though we both doubt it since the old man’s words have fulfilled their purpose.

We’ve also broken camp, each of us lugging our artifact spiritual weapons on our persons with no other luggage visible like we are a group of mercenaries instead of the family of travellers we actually are. But then bound weapons cannot be placed inside storage items for whatever reason and so we wear most of our armaments openly and hopefully no one and nothing challenges us on this exodus off the continent. I look around one last time trying to ease my mind telling myself that the children will be fine with Shea and Saya. The latrine pit is filled, the camp fire is extinguished and scattered, the traps and wards removed all visible signs of our occupation of this little clearing at the cave mouth removed. Whatever lurks in those caves will hopefully take no offense at our passage and with that we are off, heading towards Sandersonian civilisation.

We move in arrow formation, taking it slow but steady as we cut through the thick foliage while keeping each other in view. The branches, vines, leaves, shrubs are thick in this area and tough to break so it is me with Razor, Da with his unnamed artifact axe, Selah with her twin blades and Iki with Reaper cutting the way forward as the head of the arrow. I am watchful as we can all feel the eyes of the wildlife upon us without the need for Vahe and the dawn elf Sirimiri to tell us we are being observed from their scouting ahead.

Watching the ease with which the fae and the elf transverse through the forest even without taking into consideration their unique abilities adopted for the environment I have been thinking a lot about inherent racial traits. Fae come in many different forms as far as I can tell but Vahe seems quit at home in the forest and one with his surroundings though he has never been in this particular forest before, similarly with Sirimiri. I know the dawn elves make their home almost on the other side of the Dawn Forest deep within its belly but because I know them mainly from interactions in the city I haven’t really observed them in their natural habitat before.

As we trudge forward lightly, each of us with the basic training in wood-lore, each of us watchful about stepping on twigs or leaving a blatant trail as we have the advantage of spending years in the wooded city of Paradisum Vahe and the elf seem to be on another level of adaptation though.

I look above quickly as I sense danger but three quick successive zaps of lightning later I’m blinking to clear my eyes but my dimensional awareness has already told me that a beast that was aiming to ambush us is now writhing on the floor. A quick thrust from a spear later and the thing is dead. A bath winged baboon type creature with sharp teeth and black hard claws.

‘’Can we harvest it?’’ Niki asks quickly but even as I’m shaking my head Michael is stuffing the dead creature in a storage ring. I nod to myself as we keep moving, Kuyoki told me about those two and I honestly don’t know what to say or do or if I should even get involved at all. My children are old enough to be mated now and know their own minds, Vigdis has never had an orthodox relationship with sex and men as far as I have observed and Nikita... well Nikita doesn’t like most of the men that have come pursuing her.

We keep moving, other similar creatures coming within the range of my awareness now and again but keeping their distance as we cut a path through the flora of this humid dense forest. We make steady progress, with our combined aura’s keeping most of the creepy crawlies away shielding those unable to condense their own auras in our party.

‘’Heeee! Get them off get them off!’’

A scream has me moving swiftly to my daughter waving her left arm around as it writhes perversely with hairy... things... undulating on her arm as they spread, eating away at her.

Moving swiftly with my o-katana Razor cutting through the air.

[CLANG!]

I stop Da’s descending axe only centimetres from Hannah’s arm even as Niki throws a balloon of acid that sizzles and smokes producing a putrid stench as the hairy worm things scream an grating low pitched scream that irritates my entire psyche even as Hannah screams. I gnash my teeth holding tightly to her elbow as the acid eats away at her while looking right at da, the air still ringing imperceptivity where our weapons touched.

Niki sprays water over the bubbling wound and Ingwe is there with healing powder then Thandeka bandages it quickly and efficiently. Da has never been part of the Conclave, not discipled into any of the enclaves so his training was not as extensive as some of ours is but still he should know better.

‘’We cannot lose limbs out here, we do not have a healer that can regrow limbs but with the potions, elixirs and magical fruit we can heal almost all ailments.’’ I say look at him then looking at everyone close by that reacted to the scream. ‘’Niki, you’re in charge of first aid from now on, I want you to move first if there is an injury of any kind, Michael you keep her safe. Go talk to Kuyoki, she has most of the medical supplies.’’

With that I look at a visibly distressed Hannah cupping her bandaged arm to her chest, she’ll be fine. With a kiss on her forehead I am back to my position and a minute later we are moving again, even more cautiously now as even with our auras permeating around some of the smaller dangerous creatures seem to be able to get through.

I always thought it would be Rigs I had trouble with and had to put in his place but more and more I’m starting to see it is da that I have to contend with. Even Shea at some point seemed to be a potential problem for me to solve and I think I did that, but I had not foreseen da, no, Damage laying with my first mate of all people. I thought that had been the result of whatever Eros had placed in me through my time as a Brothel Acolyte but maybe there is more to it. I flex my arm to dispel the strain that my forearm took to stop that axe swing, it was a one-handed swing with barely any intent behind it but it was decisive.

*

We travel without stopping through the whole day into dusk, through dusk into the night and through the night into the dawn. Those that need to eat do so as we walk, our pace allows it but with the little kids no longer slowing us down we can push on without relying on stimulants and enhancers to keep the pace going. Had we no mundane in the party we would be able to run most of the way but that would also bring its own kinds of dangers leading to careless injuries or pursuit by some of the more dangerous beasts into whose territories we occasionally have to cross.

This way we are watched much easily as we currently are by the family of complexly jet black panthers lazily eyeing us from both flanks as we cut across what Zhen swears is territory close to the infamous Red Forest where no sane man wants to be with his mundane kids in tow. Of my children only Saya, Didi and Ikigai are Awakened though Aura has some interesting abilities and Niki has a mind like a death-trap spell. Hannah... well Hannah is Hannah and I’m curious to eventually see what she will Awaken into if she even Awakens the way us humans do.

The panthers don’t attack because Vahe has apparently gotten us passage, how he did that I’m not sure but I am grateful though I still wonder what he’s even doing here in the first place.

The fae has never given me anything without asking for something in return and speaking to Ava, Shea and anyone else that had tried to recruit others to make this trip with us none had even thought to try and recruit a fae. They are not known for being generous and though I am yet to question him he knows its coming and hopefully it will be he that owes me a favour for allowing him here instead of the other way around.

I am startled by a spirit communication probe from Katya my slave and I immediately open my channel to allow us to connect.

‘’Master, I am receiving a communications request in the spiritual realm,’’ she says without preamble.

‘’What from?’’

‘’I do not know,’’

‘’Take it but take all precautions to minimise danger to yourself, inform me of everything.’’

‘’Yes Master.’’

Katya is still very quiet and prefers to be used almost exclusively as a sex object but as my slave I had taken it upon myself years ago to ensure she received basic training as a house servant at the Academy, basic sorcery training at the Conclave, basic positive sex training at the Brothel and basic self defensive training at home. Everyone of the van Damages use her to their own discretion sexually but there is a modicum of respect and a sort of packing order that established itself years ago as to who’s commands take precedents over whose and of cause she is not to be delayed when conducting a none sexual task.

The sorcery training from Spiritus was vital in teaching her to better use the many advantages of her unique circumstances and thankfully the teachers there were happy to have her so I didn’t really have to pay for her training even though she isn’t part of the organisation. Now she can almost easily heal herself of all physical wounds, sense spiritual disturbances both in the physical and in the spiritual and is for all intents and purposes immortal.

‘’It is a spirit some distance away, it wants to burgeon for shared possession of my body.’’

‘’Why?’’

She is quiet a moment and I’m tempted to insinuate myself in their communication, spirit communication is almost impossible to eaves drop on from all I know but as she is intimately connect to me spiritually as my ‘summons’ there is nothing baring me from the act but I refrain. Already trying to imagine what this spirit can tell about what she is for it to make such a request. ‘’Never trust spirits,’’ Crysta once said and she is a sorcerer that acts as a vessel for a spirit herself, I didn’t take those words lightly.

‘’It says it will reveal itself to you when you are close enough to hear it directly,’’ she communicates.

‘’What is your impression?’’

‘’I believe it is desperate Master but I know all spirits to be clever beyond mortal understanding so it may just be trying to fool me. I believe it clung on to the first unaligned spirit being to come within its questing vicinity as it clearly was searching for aid in some form. It may be genuine but it may also be a ploy, I cannot say Master.’’

‘’Why didn’t it contact me directly?’’

‘’I believe it is too weak to contact a being as physically present as you are, it needed another spirit being but any other spirit being would likely devour it for strength if it is as weak as it implies it is.’’

‘’Very well, let me know if anything else catches your attention.’’

‘’Yes Master.’’

With spiritual communication not a mod of effort is used and so I don’t even lose stride or have to tilt my head, no ability in any way I understand abilities is used really, its like thinking. This is how I prefer my slaves, thinking, active, even proactive and it has taken Katya many years since I named her for that to sink in. But even now I somewhere at the back of my perception of our spiritual connect I can feel her pleasure at having pleased me. A strange creature Katya, but a useful one, I take a deep breath to dispel the swelling in my loins triggered by my perusal of that connection I have to her.

Slaves have more power in a proper master-slave relationship than most people seem to understand, they have ways of negotiating their points and like children are a responsibility no one should take on lightly.

Stopping for an hour where all the mundane in our party take a toile break and sleep is all that is safe to allow. After which we are off again travelling throughout the day and into dusk, through dusk into night, through night into dawn. Protected by the presence of the watchful panthers leisurely watching our every move and interaction curiously, but they stay just out of reach with only a shadow or a set of glowing eyes spotted between the trees by one of the kids now and then. But with my awareness I watch them closely, ma watches them closely, Zhen watches them closely, Mira watches them closely, all of us that are able to watch the majestic 400kilogram cats closely.

Day, dusk, night, it makes no difference to our travelling as we struggle, cruise and trudge through these lands until the rising of the majestic blue giant to bless us again with the dawn. We stop for an hour, then travel through the day into dust into the night into the next dawn. The bad omen of Lacuna the dark moon hangs heavily in the sky for seven days as we cut a path through the interesting lands of Sandoria. By day like a scare it sucks in the light of Rigel, by night it pushes down on all on the ground, making all things heavier.