by Aaron Oster
Roy tuned him out, feeling his lips turn down in annoyance. The center of the Waterwood was over two-hundred miles away, but of course, Geon would have no concept of space.
He sighed, rising to his feet and beginning his morning stretches. If they ever found that Dungeon, it might be a nice place to visit, though in the Waterwood, he doubted they’d come up against anything that would pose much of a challenge. Even so, Dungeons carried valuable herbs and some of the ones growing there might be of use, even to the most powerful of Martial Artists.
Roy bent over, pushing his fingers to his toes and feeling his muscles twinge in protest. There had been a time when even doing this had been impossible, but as Hermit said, flexibility came with time and effort. He leaned to one side, then the other, bending his knees and straightening before starting a new one.
He was finishing up with his stretches when Aika finally woke up to go wash off in the small stream they’d camped by, which meant it was his cue to go wake Ferry.
Roy winced internally as he walked over to the sleeping Beast and began shaking her by the shoulders. Ferry stirred a bit, then pulled her tail in tighter and wrapped her fur-covered arms around it.
“Ferry,” Roy said, shaking her a bit harder. “It’s time to get up.”
Ferry tried to turn away, her black lips pulling down as she attempted to ignore him.
“Ferry, come on,” Roy sighed, shaking her a bit harder. “You need to get up. Aika will be back from washing up and then we’re going to leave.”
Groaning, Ferry finally cracked an eye, turning back to face him and squinting against the morning light.
“Roy?” she asked, sounding sleepy.
She had been steadily becoming better at speaking out loud, and she could now hold short conversations without getting confused or stumbling over words.
“Yes,” Roy said, already bracing himself.
Ferry’s large eyes opened wider and her lips pulled up in a huge smile.
“Roy!” Ferry screamed, then launched herself at him, wrapping her powerful arms around his chest and bearing him to the ground.
Roy sighed as she landed on top of him, nuzzling the top of her head into his face and laughing. She’d been acting this way ever since they’d been reunited, and the clinginess hadn’t diminished in the slightest. Every morning, she did this, acting like they hadn’t seen each other in months.
Geon kept telling him that it would pass and that she was afraid to go to sleep at night, thinking he would be gone in the morning. Roy thought that it was starting to go too far.
“Come on, Ferry,” Roy said, trying to push her off him. “You need to stop doing this.”
Ferry looked up at him, her big, black eyes, like pools of endless darkness, seeming to swallow him up.
“You don’t like me doing this?” she asked, her bottom lip beginning to quiver.
“Careful,” Geon said.
It was odd how nice the Dungeon Core was to her, seeing as he treated Roy like a drooling idiot on an almost constant basis.
“I don’t mind you hugging me,” Roy said, “But you don’t need to act like I’ve left for ages every time you wake up. I’m not going to leave you again. I promise.”
Ferry just squeezed him tighter, giggling childishly and nuzzling his face. It was strange, her behaving like this, especially with how she now appeared as a seven-foot humanoid ferret with a very distinctive womanly figure. She acted like a child though, which was a stark contrast to that very same appearance.
“Ferry, you need to get off me,” Roy tried again. “You’re squeezing too hard.”
“I love you, Roy,” she said, squeezing harder and leaning up to nuzzle and lick his face.
“I love you too, Ferry,” Roy said. “Please let me get up now.”
“Okay, but only if you let me hold your hand when we go today.”
“How did you…?” Roy began as Ferry got off him.
“I heard you and Aika talking,” Ferry said, still beaming.
“Good, you’re up,” Aika said, coming back into the camp.
Roy quickly wiped his cheek as Ferry turned to greet her, not wanting to accidentally insult her. She’d been licking him a lot lately, even though Aika had been trying to explain to her that that wasn’t how humans showed affection. As Ferry had been a Beast almost her entire life, there were a lot of habits they were trying to break, and some, according to Geon, were never going to happen.
“Roy said I could hold his hand when we travel today,” Ferry said, practically bouncing over to her.
“Did he?” Aika asked, looking to Roy with a small smirk.
Roy sighed, then got to his feet and brushed himself off.
“Yes!” Ferry squeaked, hopping up and down excitedly. “He promised!”
“Why don’t you go wash up before we go,” Aika suggested. “You’ll want to be fresh and clean, right?”
Ferry nodded several times, then dashed off in the direction of the stream.
“It was the only way she’d get off me,” he said as Ferry vanished into the trees.
“Does she seem to be growing smarter?” Aika asked, running a long-toothed comb through her wet hair.
“She’s having almost no trouble with speech anymore,” Roy replied. “But if you think she’s growing up, I’m not so sure.”
“She’s getting close to advancing to Blue,” Geon put in. He had a habit of randomly chiming into conversations, even though no one but Roy could hear him.
Roy repeated what he’d said and Aika nodded.
“I think she is getting smarter,” Aika said. “I wonder if she’ll change much when she advances to Blue.”
“Well, maybe she’ll stop being so childish and clingy when she does,” Roy said, wiping at his face again.
“She still licking you?”
“More and more every day,” Roy said with a sigh. “It’s honestly starting to feel strange.”
Aika’s brows furrowed at that, looking back in the direction of the stream, then turning to face him again.
“I’m sure it’s nothing. She just missed you and Doragon did a number on her during his escape…”
“Roy!”
“Oh no,” Roy muttered as Ferry came barreling into their campsite, her body dripping with water and completely naked.
Well, naked was a bit of a stretch, seeing as her coat of fur kept her from seeming indecent, but still.
She tackled him, laughing as Roy cursed and tried to shove her off him. Aika laughed as well, doing nothing to help as Ferry continued to use him as her personal towel.
“Guess you’re going to have to wash up again before we go,” she said as Ferry finally got up, leaving him drenched.
“Yay! Another bath!” Ferry yelled, pulling him to his feet with shocking ease.
“I think we should let him go alone,” Aika said, snagging her arm as she turned to follow him. “And please put some clothes on. We’re going to be meeting people soon.”
Roy grumbled to himself as he heard Ferry starting to whine like a child who didn’t want to do something her mother told her to.
“She is still a child. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
Roy slammed closed his connection with Geon. He was allowing his emotions to leak through. At least he’d be alone for the short time it would take him to wash up. As Roy was getting into the stream, he sensed something. A brief flash of crimson – at least, that was the sense he got – from the very center of the Waterwood. He shook himself, feeling the odd sensation vanish.
He briefly wondered if the lack of sleep might be getting to him, then shrugged and sank deeper into the water. The day had just barely begun, and he was already feeling exhausted. Tonight, Aika would be taking the last watch.
3
“What’s that up ahead?” Aika asked as they pushed through the undergrowth. She’d never seen anything so strange before in her life.
In fact, there were a lot of things about the Waterwood that she found odd
.
“Looks like a Beast den,” Roy replied, leaning to one side and squinting through the trees. “You’ll find them dotted around the area from time to time.”
It was nearing midday by now, which meant stopping for lunch soon, but running across this presented the opportunity to do a bit of training.
“No challenge,” Ferry said, sniffing at the air. “Maybe 2nd Yellow,” she said, holding up two fingers.
Aika’s eyes flicked to her other hand, which firmly clasped Roy’s, and she felt a small pang of jealousy. It wasn’t that she thought Ferry was trying to move in on him – although it was getting harder and harder to convince herself of that with the way she’d been acting – but that Ferry had the confidence to do it.
Every time she saw Ferry grab his hand, hug him, or even lick him, Aika wished she had the strength to do the same – well, not the licking part. She had kissed him on the cheek last night and that had taken a lot of courage. When it came to this sort of thing, she had no experience whatsoever, but she found herself wishing more and more that Roy would just make a move.
They were friends, yes, but as time went on, she found herself longing for more. It had been slowly building, and after his capture, she’d felt an almost irrational sense of worry that he’d never come back. But he had, and now they were together again.
Ferry pulled Roy tight to her side and let out an excited squeak as something moved in the dark entrance of the den. She’d said there would be no challenge in facing this thing, but Ferry was still a Beast, despite her transformation upon advancing to Green. She liked to fight.
Aika felt her stomach flutter as Roy looked back helplessly, his handsome face – so very different from the men back in her clan – looking both desperate and pleading. If she rescued him from the clingy ferret, would he be grateful enough to make a move?
Aika gave herself a mental shake, casting off the fantasy and moving in to help.
“Come on, Ferry, give him some room to breathe. Neither of you will be able to fight if you’re clinging to him like that.”
Ferry pouted, sticking out her bottom lip, but she listened to Aika for once and released Roy from her death-grip.
An angry squeal came from the dark entrance as they’d stopped moving and were now clearly trespassing on the Beast’s territory.
“A boar,” Roy said, his brows coming down and his hands balling into fists.
Roy hated boars. It was a boar who had once crippled him, damaging his leg so badly that he’d been stuck in a brace until he’d joined with Geon.
“Go on, you kill it,” Aika said, snagging Ferry’s hand and pulling her back. “It might not offer much in the way of training, but at least we’ll get some good meat out of it.”
Roy gave her a grateful look, even as Ferry whined about not being able to fight.
“If you behave, I’ll let you have one of the haunches all to yourself,” Aika said consolingly.
“Really?” Ferry asked, her voice almost squeaking in excitement.
“Yes,” Aika said, hiding a smile. “But you have to stay back and let Roy fight on his own. You know that a boar was very mean to him once, right?”
Ferry nodded vigorously, although Aika could see her mind was elsewhere – likely on how tasty the bloody haunch would be. As a Beast, Ferry didn’t need to eat meat. All she needed was the Essence and Qi of Beast Cores. Still, not needing meat and not wanting meat were two separate things entirely.
She backed away as Roy spread his legs and raised his arms in a fighting stance. The pig’s snorting grew louder and angrier, and a moment later, its head poked out, red eyes alight with anger.
Ferry had been spot-on about the Beast’s advancement, as Aika could feel its 2nd Dan Yellow Core blazing forth. There was a time, not too long ago, when this creature would have posed life-threatening danger where Roy was involved, but now, she doubted this Beast even had the strength to so much as cut him.
The boar pawed at the ground as Roy didn’t back down and finally charged. Roy didn’t budge, spreading his feet wider and allowing the Beast to slam into him full-force. He grunted as the creature drove him back a half-step, but that was all it managed to do.
The pig squealed as Roy’s hands both came down, snapping its shoulders and driving its face into the dirt. She’d wondered if he would prolong the Beast’s suffering, but Roy wasn’t a sadistic monster, and with a single stomp, he shattered the pig’s skull.
“Well, that was oddly satisfying,” Roy said, stepping back from the downed Beast. “And now we’ll have some decent lunch.”
Aika gave him a smile as he crouched and began skinning the Beast. Just a half-hour later, the three of them were sitting by a crackling fire as the pig roasted. Ferry was already eating, humming happily to herself as she tore bloody pieces of meat from the haunch she’d been given and barely chewed before she swallowed.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing that,” Aika said in an undertone as she watched the humanoid ferret devour her meal raw.
“She’s a Beast,” Roy said with a shrug. “Can’t expect her to change just because she looks different.”
Despite what he said, Aika could tell that it made him uncomfortable as well.
“So, what are our plans when we reach your old clan?” she asked, changing the subject.
“There were two people who saw what happened on the day my mother died,” Roy said, his brows coming down. “The leader of the clan, and a man I’ve never seen before. If anyone has the answers, it’ll be Korgo.”
“And how do you propose we reach him?” Aika asked. “Do we tear our way through the clan to get to him?”
“Though I’d like nothing less, it won’t be necessary,” Roy said.
She noticed his muscles tightening and his brows drawing down the longer they spoke of the Shah clan, not that she blamed him. They had mistreated him his entire life, from the moment he’d come into their care to the moment they’d left him for dead in Geon’s dungeon. Though he’d said that he’d gotten over his need to come back and destroy the clan, now that they were here, Aika didn’t really know what he’d do.
“What then?” she asked. “Do we just walk in and ask nicely?”
“That won’t work either,” Roy replied. “I’ll be recognized almost immediately and they’ll either try to kill us or take me into custody the moment I’m spotted.”
“But you said none of them were strong enough to beat you, right?”
“That would be a very Shah thing to do,” Roy said bitterly. “A very Martial Artist thing to do. ‘I’m stronger, so I’ll just kill anyone in my way.’ That’s exactly how the Shah treated me, and despite them deserving far worse, I won’t kill dozens of those weaker than me, just because I can.”
She hid a smile as he leaned forward to turn the spit to keep the meat from burning. Roy had come a long way since they’d first met. The old Roy would have killed them all without a second thought.
“Are we going to let ourselves be captured then? Maybe they’ll take us to see the leader of the clan if we do.”
“No,” Roy said, leaning back from the fire. “I’ve spent enough time in a cage. I won’t do so again.”
Aika nodded at that. Roy had told her all about his time in the Arena, what he’d been forced to do, and who he’d been forced to fight. It was still hard to believe that he’d faced a Scion and lived, but she didn’t doubt him for an instant.
“Do you have a plan then?”
“Sort of,” he said. “Not really,” he admitted a moment later. “No matter how I look at it, we’ll have to move through the bulk of the Shah clan just to reach his compound. He might be at the meeting hall with the other elders, but that isn’t any closer to the perimeter.”
“What about running in?” Aika asked.
“Running?” Roy gave her a dubious look.
“Sure,” Aika replied. “We’re far too quick to be caught by the likes of the Shah, especially if we use our Movement techniques. We can r
each the spot where this leader lives before they even know what’s happening. On top of that, both Ferry and I can cloak ourselves, and if you stick with us, we can be all but invisible to them.”
Roy thought it over as the meat continued to sizzle. It seemed that it was still hard for him to accept that he was growing stronger. Having been so weak for most of his life and having to constantly fight stronger opponents than himself once he actually got his Core, Roy had never really felt all that powerful. But here, in the Waterwood, they would be the strong ones by a wide margin.
“That could work,” Roy said after a few minutes. “But what if we arrive at his compound and he isn’t there?”
“We can always just grab someone before we enter and ask,” Aika said.
“That could work,” Roy said, nodding slowly. “We snatch someone from the perimeter, question them, then knock them out. By the time they wake up, we have everything we need. I like it.”
“What will you do if they try to put up a fight?” Ferry asked, pausing in her mauling of the meat to pose her question.
Roy’s face darkened at that, and he shrugged.
“I’ll give them a chance to back down. If they don’t, I’ll show them as much mercy as they showed me. The Shah claimed that I was lucky to be part of their clan and that they’d taken me in out of the goodness of their hearts when my mother died. But I know the truth now. The Shah were responsible for my mother’s death.
“I don’t know how they knew where we would be or even why they attacked, but if what Azure promised is true, then we’ll be finding our answers soon.”
Aika nodded, agreeing with him wholeheartedly. She’d heard the stories of what those people had done to him. Yes, Roy was a better person than he had been, and he would show mercy. But if they fought back, tried to take advantage of his mercy, she would help him put each and every one of them in the ground.
4
Roy crouched in the underbrush, his eyes tracking the movements of one of the perimeter guards.
It had taken them the better part of a week to make it back here, especially seeing as he’d been dragging his feet. No matter what he said, he was not looking forward to seeing this place again. He had put it behind him and thought he’d never come back. Well, he’d hoped it would take a couple more years, at the very least.