Kellen awoke to the sound of raised voices outside of his tent. Blinking, he sat up. After a moment of listening, he recognized them as Ishtas and Totoso, among others. The hunters had returned.

Nudging Vex awake, he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and ran a hand through his tousled brown hair. It was time to ask the professor for a haircut. Vex muttered and smacked his lips. “Pass the pizza bites.”

“Sorry, all out of pizza bites,” Kellen said through a yawn. He felt like someone had tied him behind a storm horse and dragged across the plains. “But Nokom and the rest are back.”

After pulling on his boots and ice vicuña poncho, he pushed outside the tent, Vex at his heels. The sun had just broken over the plains, reflecting a sheen of frost across the grass. He guessed they’d only slept three or four hours but it was enough for his beast heart to feel somewhat recovered, even if he physically felt like crap.

Kellen spotted Kiypu and Hannup speaking with Chief Tama and Nokom. Shani stood with them, her dark hair braided back to show sharp features and a sharper expression. Ira and Inferi stood at the sides of their Beastcallers, until a word from Nokom sent Ira back into the sky, no doubt to look for signs of their retreating raiders.

“I liked Ira better when he was fun-sized,” Vex said out of the corner of his mouth. Ira, the winged coyote had only recently returned to his Companion-strength form. In the last battle he’d fought against Ubira the slavers, he’d been defeated by a possessed Shakraa and had spent the better part of the next month as a grouchy, wrinkled, Ward strength chihuahua. “And I like Inferi better when she’s… away.”

Inferi opened her mouth in a wide grin as they approached, her tongue lolling out over bone-crushing fangs. “Well, if it isn’t the mighty warriors awakened from their slumber. I hear you made a good show of yourselves last night, even without our help.”

Kellen couldn’t tell if she was mocking them or not. She, at least, seemed to be past the training incident.

“Without Kellen and Kiypu, I fear the band would have been lost,” Hannup said. “At the very least, our old ones and children would have been in great peril.”

Tama, who looked like an older, less intense, less scarred version of her daughter despite the mantle of chieftain, gave Kellen and Vex a nod of thanks. From the leader of Gray Dawn, that was worth as much as a round of applause and a slap on the back. Kellen nodded back, not feeling especially heroic but appreciative of the gratitude.

“These white-paints have the look of the Snake Cult,” Shani said. “Do you see the resemblance, Kellen?”

“What?” Kellen glanced over the dead raiders, laid out in a row. It was hard to make out any distinguishing features beneath the spiked hair and chalky white paint but many of them wore the same garb as the cultists had. He saw the woman he’d fought and one other swathed in bandages. “Yeah, I’d say so.”

Nokom sucked on her teeth as she studied the corpses. “Maybe some Fire Bison in their number as well.”

As Nokom said, some appeared to have a ruddier, red-brown skin beneath the paint that potentially marked them as the Fire Bison people. Though the Snake Cult had been behind the kidnapping attacks that stole Kellen’s sister and members of the Gray Dawn band, according to Professor Gates, they’d been largely made up of Fire Bison mercenaries who’d joined Ubira as slavers for hire.

“The Fire Bison Tribe has never needed much excuse to come raiding in Storm Horse lands,” Shani said, a hard edge in her voice. “But where did the Snake people come from? I thought we left them behind us in the mountains.”

“What are these wrappings?” Nokom asked, kneeling down next to the dead woman to examine them closer. “I have not seen them before.”

“They repelled mana attacks,” Kellen answered, trying not to look at the stiff body that had been a person trying to kill him less than half a day ago. Yet he couldn’t look away from the wine-red stain in her bandages where Hannup’s spear had struck. “Her weapon broke my sun shield, too.”

“The other was much the same,” Kiypu said.

Nokom cut off a length of the cloth and ran it through her hands. “I have never heard or seen anything like it, have you, ancient one?”

“Maybe?” Kiypu shrugged. “There is still much I do not recall. It was a surprise when I faced the other who wore those wrappings last night. As Kellen said, any direct mana working was useless against them.”

“There is nothing more they can tell us in death,” Tama said. “And we have more pressing matters. We must raise and honor our dead, then smoke the meat from our hunt before we can break camp.”

“Where do you plan for us to go?” Hannup asked.

“South and east,” Tama said. “How far, I do not know. We will see if we can winter with another band or perhaps a larger tribe.”

This sounded like a sensible idea to Kellen. There would be strength in greater numbers. Judging by the looks on his face, Hannup wasn’t so sure. His role as peace chief made him sort of Tama’s second in command but whatever concerns he had, he kept them to himself in front of the rest of the band.

Out of the corner of his eye, Kellen spotted Shani gripping the hilt of her saber sword so tight her fingers turned white. No doubt she regretted not being there when the attack came. If the hunters had been in camp, chances were, fewer of Gray Dawn would have fallen or the attackers might have fled at once. Two more Beastcallers would have ended the attack as soon as it began.

“Do you think they followed you from the mountains?” Hannup asked Tama.

“No, I do not think so. More than likely they were looking for supplies and waited until we left to hunt or just happened upon you after we’d left. But that is just as concerning to me. It means there are many more of them than we suspected.”

Murmurs of concern rose from everyone else nearby. Tama raised a hand to silence them. “Which is why we move southeast. There is nothing to fear while we are together, especially with four Beastcallers in our band.”

With that, the band dispersed and set about their various tasks. Nokom and Kiypu fell into deeper conversation, as did Hannup, Tama and some of the other respected members of Gray Dawn. That left Shani, Kellen, Vex and Inferi standing together.

“Did you miss me?” Inferi asked in a smoky voice, rubbing her head and tufted mohawk-like mane on Vex’s side. Vex shrank away, the tip of his tufted tail and ears bristling.

“I uh… noticed you were away,” he said at last.

Kellen glanced at Shani. Given the level of emotional connection they shared with their Mana Beasts, it made things super awkward for everyone when Inferi teased Vex like this. Worse, he didn’t know if she was faking it or if she actually was enamored with his companion.

“Leave him alone, Inferi,” Shani snapped.

The hyena bared her teeth again in a somewhat forced attempt at a grin, snapping the tension between her and Shani. In the end, she padded away from Vex who did his best not to breathe out a huge sigh of relief. Inferi was a manifestation of everything Shani had been when Kellen first met her: impulsive, eager for violence and quick to act. But she also had a wicked, almost tortuous sense of humor that galled Shani to no end.

“Well, this isn’t awkward at all,” Vex said.

Shani tensed and turned to leave.

“Wait—tell me about the hunt!” Kellen asked, going with the first thing that popped into his head.

Together, they walked away from the center of camp, Shani recounting—if somewhat reluctantly and plainly—the abbreviated report of the hunt. To their success, the group had stumbled on a large watering hole with gray deer and striped antelope herds.

“It would have served us better to find a herd of fire bison, or regular buffalo,” Shani said as they walked, Inferi and Vex separated on their outsides. “I wonder if these groups of Snake people have chased them away trying to hunt themselves. But they also go north with the winter so it is not surprising. Now, tell me about the attack.”

Though he wasn’t eager to relive the night’s events, Kellen related his part, brushing over some of the fear he’d felt. Shani wouldn’t understand that, anyway. Though they’d reached a level of understanding and acquaintance during their time in the depths of the Wakar mountains, Kellen didn’t think she counted him a friend, or if she ever would. It seemed being a Beastcaller made him some kind of coworker she felt ambivalent toward most of the time. Inferi creeped out Vex to no end, but Kellen suspected the hyena did that on purpose for her personal enjoyment. Still, it was a vast improvement over the weeks they’d spent when Kellen first met the Gray Dawn hunters and Shani had struggled not to murder him each day.

“You are turning into a warrior,” she said when Kellen finished. For an instant, he thought she might be joking. But Shani didn’t joke. Kellen didn’t feel the pride that should have accompanied what was tantamount to a major compliment from Shani. The doubt must have showed on his face.

“You do not think so?”

“If you and Nokom had been here, we might not have lost so many,” he said in a quiet voice, eyes falling to the ground.

“Remember that when we are training. Use it as we strive for Guardian. Someday, we will have the strength to protect everyone. The power to strike fear in our enemies. That is what being a Beastcaller is about.”

Gray Dawn built six platforms by driving tipi poles into the ground then lashing more together. Each bore one of the dead members of the band, laid to rest beneath the sky with their most treasured possessions and a short prayer to the Storm Horse that she might carry them into the Great Beyond to be with their loved ones who’d gone before.

After weeks of living together, he knew each of the names belonging to the dead. Knew who was related by birth or marriage, which ones were serious and which ones liked to laugh. They were sons, daughters, mothers, fathers. Nukihenya had taught Kellen how to tan hides. She was Clouds-that-Burn’s great aunt. Ortoh walked with a limp from a bad fall when his horse had stumbled into a gopher hole years ago. He had a young grandson, now standing beneath his platform, tears running down his face.

While Kellen, Vex, and Professor Gates watched, Nokom led the band in a keening dirge, the words and meaning lost to Kellen, even though his spirit traveler powers granted him understanding of every language he’d heard so far in Oras. The wails and cries of the band rose, accompanied by a howling wind.

Each platform’s upright poles had dozens of ribbons and strips of colored cloth tied to it. As Kellen watched, they flapped in the brisk autumn sky, the swift breeze apparently a good omen for the journey of the departed. He wrapped his poncho tighter around him and shivered, unsure if it was the chanting or the wind that gave him goosebumps. To him, the platforms looked cold and forlorn but he supposed this was the greatest honor the living could give to the dead among the Storm Horse tribes.

“Do you think they go the same place we do?” Kellen asked. He had his own beliefs, but the subject hadn’t come up with the professor.

“We are ever dying to one world and being born into another,” the professor muttered. “Though I don’t think Thoreau knew about Oras when he wrote that. I’ve seen a lot of bad things in my time journeying across this land. I was not a religious man on Earth, but yes, I’d like to think there are beings out there that hear the prayers of these people. If magic is real, why not heaven?”