Beastforged Bond

The lightning bolt zapped across the table without warning. It was fast and unforgiving, yet my hand–still holding a regular kitchen knife–shot upward and intercepted the attack. Nullblade triggered the instant the bolt and knife collided, cleaving the elemental projectile apart.

“What’s wrong with you!?” I gasped, ready to leap to my feet.

There was no need to welcome me with a parade like that. To be fair, I half-expected everyone to think I was dead. Color me surprised when I found out I’d been the first to return. The flying ship hadn’t come back to the Bastion, even though weeks had passed since my fall.

Neither my parents nor the Zerogs seemed particularly worried about that, but wasn’t it strange? I shouldn’t have been the first to return home.

Worst-case scenarios came to mind as I was dragged into the Zerog estate. What if the Bakurean had successfully hijacked the flying ship? What if it crash-landed, killing everyone aboard? The more I thought about it, the worse the images in my head became. So I forced myself to let go of the dark thoughts and focused on the food ahead, allowing the heavenly aroma drifting from the kitchen to distract me. If only for a moment.

Monarch jerky was great. It really was. But spending weeks eating nothing but jerky left much to be desired. I wanted something else, and the kitchen staff apparently agreed. By the time I returned from a quick shower, they had prepared a full feast.

I ended up consuming nearly everything the Zerogs offered me, partly because the food was worlds apart from the gamey jerky, but also because it was the easiest way to avoid their questions. The Zerogs bombarded me with just as many questions as my parents did, and I dodged most of them as best I could. Even simple ones, like Daniel’s whereabouts, went unanswered. I genuinely didn’t know.

To my growing misery, the more I avoided their questions, the more were thrown at me, leaving me increasingly unsure how to proceed.

If I answered everything truthfully, I would be putting my parents and the Zerogs in danger. Enough danger to get them killed. I trusted them, especially my parents, but telling them about the Spirits, about binding the sapling of a being that despised humanity and rivaled the Spirits in power, and about Volix… that would be madness. Even if I left Volix out of it, hell would break loose the moment someone let something slip at the wrong time, to the wrong person.

Binding the child of a human-eating World Tree would invite questions. Questions I had no intention of answering.

No one could know about the Elemental Phoenix, not until I was strong enough to face the Ruler of Fire and those backing him. That remained true even months later.

Lost in thought, I noticed the panic spreading around me a little too late. Everyone stared wide-eyed at Daniel, then at me, then back at Daniel. Confused, likely wondering what could have happened between us to make him react like that. To be honest, I was just as confused. I even considered hitting him before asking any questions, but the tears welling in his eyes stopped me cold.

“That… that’s really you, isn’t it?” he sobbed. “Y-You’re not an illusion, are you?”

He looked nothing like the Daniel I knew.

The teasing reply died on my tongue. He truly thought I was a mirage: a trick of his mind.

“I survived,” I said quietly. “It wasn’t easy, but I made it out.”

He didn’t believe me for a second. Lightning crackled at his fingertips. “H-how? That’s impossible. You should be dead!”

“Rude,” I snorted, conjuring a pebble at the tip of the kitchen knife and flicking it toward him.

Daniel didn’t even try to block. He let it strike him square in the forehead. His eyes went wide as his head snapped back.

The pebble was far from my strongest attack, yet it hit him like a runaway skytrain. He stumbled to the ground, hair standing on end.

“That… hurt. That–You… it hurt!” He squealed like a child, scrambling back to his feet and looking like he was about to vault across the table. “How did you survive that, you crazy fucker??”

Tears streamed down his cheeks, dripping from his chin even as his expression broke into a brilliant smile.

I felt my own chest loosen. If Daniel was alive, then Scott had surely made it out as well. That alone was enough.

“Well, you see,” I began, only to realize–far too late–that everyone was listening.

My lips snapped shut as I glanced at my parents. It would have been better if they never learned what happened at the Grand Camp. I could talk about the Beast Temple, about training, about climbing the scoreboard, but not about the rest. They didn’t need to know how close I’d come to never returning home.

Unfortunately, the drake was already out of the cave.

Mom trembled as she reached for my arm, her hand shaking. “W-What is he talking about, Adam? Why… why is he saying you should be dead?”

Even Dad looked shaken. His posture remained rigid, but his eyes never left me.

“You see–” I hesitated. “How should I put this?”

There was no way to phrase it gently. I glanced at Daniel for help, but he only wiped his nose on his sleeve.

“What are you looking at me for, dude? I have no idea how you survived that damn fall after the Bakurean drilled holes into your wings.” He remarked, fully aware of how much chaos his wording was about to cause.

“Bakurean?” Daniel’s father, Peter Zerog, asked with a deep frown.

“Wings?” his mother inquired.

Mom looked aghast, her quivering eyes flicking to Daniel and then back to me, while Dad continued to stare, his complexion one shade paler than before. My parents were an issue for future me. Present me was more confused by Daniel’s parents.

It looked almost like they hadn’t heard anything about the ambush yet. That… actually, it was exactly what I had come to expect from the Council. It shouldn’t even have surprised me.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Organizing my thoughts as several pairs of eyes bore down on me, I spun a tale of as many truths as I could afford to share.

“On our way back from the Grand Camp, we were ambushed by Bakurean. There were hundreds of them, each as strong–if not stronger–than our Experts. Even worse, they grew stronger with every non-lethal wound they sustained, so… we had to kill them quickly to leverage our only advantages: our numbers and traits.” I glanced at my parents at the mention of cold murder and grimaced.

Mom gasped, and Dad looked even paler, if that was even possible.

Revealing that part about myself was odd. Speaking about murder, about how I’d killed Bakurean, was clearly not something my parents had expected. Not after not seeing me for only a little longer than a year. Before I left, I had been no more than a weak Blessed. A young boy with some potential. Now, I was… different.

Sighing deeply, I moved on. “Long story short, the Bakurean got to me. Several restrained me and dragged me into the sky, away from the flying ship. I managed to free myself and summoned Aureus’ wings.”

To demonstrate what I meant, I used Soulfusion with the Earthheart for a moment, and a small version of Aureus’ dragonfly wings grew out of my shoulder blades. Terminating Soulfusion once again, I added, “They damaged the wings and forced me to cancel the Soulfusion, or Aureus would have sustained some serious harm. After that, I fell from the sky. Plummeted to the ground from several thousand meters.”

Tears streaked down Mom’s face, and I couldn’t quite tell whether she cried because she was devastated about her son killing others or because she was too shocked by what had happened to me. She scrutinized me from head to toe before pulling me into a tight hug, shaking as she did.

Even my father got up to take a good look at me. It didn’t matter that he had already inspected me for several minutes; he started all over again.

My physical condition was no issue. I was better than ever, and my parents could sense that as well. I was sure they could, yet they… well, they were my Mom and Dad, and they deeply cared for me.

Warmth filled my chest, growing hotter as Dad joined the embrace. He pulled us into his arms, which felt warmer than I remembered. I could have stepped back at any moment, yet I didn’t. I savored my parents’ warmth, the knots in my chest I hadn’t even known existed untying slowly.

“So how did you survive?” Peter Zerog inquired when my parents finally released me.

“Yeah, how did you survive? Tell us!” Daniel quipped impatiently. He acted like the incarnation of impatience itself, and I couldn’t hold that against him. I’d be beyond curious in his stead too.

“I used fire,” I said hesitatingly, though I conjured a small flame above the table anyway.

Calm down. You can conjure flames. Daniel knows I have a Major Fire Aspect. I rebuked myself for feeling so jumpy all of a sudden.

He just didn’t know where the elemental aspect came from.

I would have to tell Daniel and the others at some point in the future. All that secrecy was eating at me, feasting on me. Every day I lied to friends and family, I felt like a fraud. Like I had betrayed their trust. And, in a way, I had done exactly that. I trusted them with my life, but Blessed like Wesley had Charm traits. Then there were people like Scott. I was still hoping nobody could see anything about me, just as Scott had failed to see my future, but it was yet another unknown in a cover riddled with seemingly endless holes.

You don’t want to endanger friends and family. Telling them puts them in danger. The more people know, the–

Volix reminded me, but I intercepted him before he was done.

I know, and I won’t tell anyone for the time being. But at some point, it will come out.

All I wanted was to tell my friends and family before someone else did. Or before the Ruler of Fire came knocking on our door, burning everything to cinders. That, too, was something I wanted to avoid at all costs.

Everyone was still staring at me, waiting for something, but it wasn’t until Daniel asked that I realized my mistake.

“Fire? Is that all you’re going to say?”

“Right.” I chuckled, embarrassed, cleared my throat again, and expanded on my initial explanation. “During the Katrak with the Caldera, I acquired a unique Soulkin. That isn’t the important part, though. Back to the fall: I was already injured, my soulshares strained and damaged, so I did the only thing I could think of. I used a massive amount of ether from my Gates to release flames beneath me. Doing so damaged the weave, but I managed to conjure flames beneath me and willed them to explode. That slowed the fall when I was only a few hundred meters from the ground. It wasn’t the best experience, and I had to stop the explosion or the soulshare with my third Soulkin would have been severed, but I survived. After that, a tree embraced me, nearly breaking my ribs and spine as I crashed through the canopy, before dropping me into a poisonous bush that knocked me out cold.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle at the last bit, but I was the only one having fun.

Nobody looked even remotely happy. If anything, they stared at me incredulously as more and more questions rose to the surface.

“W-We heard about the Katrak from Daniel, but–” Mom stopped, still teary-eyed. “I–no, we–don’t know what happened to you in there. Are you sure you are fine, dear? Your messages have been worrisome for the last few months.”

Right, the messages. Communication with the Bastions had been difficult. The Grand Camp wasn’t part of the regular Nexus network. Regardless, I had communicated with my parents weekly up until we left for the Katrak. After that, nothing was the same, and I didn’t know what to tell them anymore.

The urge to reveal Volix’s existence surfaced more often than I wanted to acknowledge, yet I had to squash it every single time. I struggled a lot during that period. I hated just about everything I had previously dreamed about, yet I couldn’t talk to my parents about it. After all, the Rulers believed I was Ruler Kazriel’s student, his Scion, and that I had known about their plans to betray the Caldera all along. And I had been too scared to prove them wrong. Too scared to give either the Rulers or the Council even the faintest reason to believe I would rather fight alongside the Caldera than help the Rulers.

For months, I was a mess. Honestly, I probably still was, but things were better now. There were a few things that pushed me to move on and work as hard as I could to grow stronger. To forgive myself.

Volix once told me that he expected negotiations to go wrong. He hadn’t anticipated the Ruler of Fire arriving with a Solar Orb, but the day four Rulers entered the Elemental Spires, both he and the Caldera understood that something was about to happen. I didn’t understand their reason for continuing the Katrak when they knew what was coming–I still didn’t–but the Elemental Phoenix assured me it was necessary.

That was nonsense. Clearly, far more than anticipated had gone wrong.

Still, putting all of that aside, I was glad Volix didn’t hate me. That he didn’t hold the events in the Elemental Spires against me.

You are not at fault. How often do I have to repeat myself?

Volix grunted, half-teasing, half-annoyed.

It wasn’t my fault. I understood that now. Unfortunately, that didn’t change much. I still had to deal with a few things, one of them being Raffael Troch. The Council might not be much better than the Ruler of Fire, but my biggest problem was Raffael’s obsession with the Elemental Phoenix. He longed for the power the Elemental Phoenix provided and was more than willing to do whatever it took to obtain it. Alas, Volix was with me, and I was not willing to surrender him. The Elemental Phoenix chose me, so he’d stay!

“I am fine.” I forced a faint smile. “Or I will be now that I’m home.”

My parents pulled me into a tight hug once more.

“Anyway, has Daniel told you about his World Aspect already?” I asked with a smile.

Now was not the time to talk about death and suffering. It was high time to annoy my best friend a little.

Daniel noticed my cue and glared daggers at me as Peter Zerog jumped up like he’d been stung by a bee. “Wait, you did it?! Your messages were never about the World Aspects, so we thought you failed. But that’s not it, isn’t it? You actually procured a World Aspect. That’s amazing!”

Peter rushed toward his son and pulled him into a tight bear hug, looking happier than I had ever seen him. Daniel glared at me for a moment, then gave in to his father’s embrace, his lips curling upward.