Beastforged Bond

As it turned out, I was oblivious to a lot of things. The first of which was the fact that several months had passed since the fight with the Ruler of Fire. I… had been in a coma for several months, and what I couldn’t remember was that I had regained consciousness several times since then. Four times, to be precise, and each time I had to be put back to sleep to protect my World and body.

Mom was hovering around me, making sure she wouldn’t have to call for help to put me back to sleep for the fifth time. However, even when she was certain that I was mostly fine, she did not leave my side and guided me back to bed. Against my will. As insignificant as it sounded at first, I tried to resist but failed miserably.

My mother, who had only been at the Adept-rank the last time we spoke and never really put much time and effort into tempering her body, managed to pull me around like I was a child when my physical strength should have placed me at the peak of the Master-rank, if not on the verge of the Grandmaster-rank. She shouldn’t be able to push me around, yet she did so effortlessly, and that was certainly not due to her advancement to the Journeyman-rank.

My body is broken, on the verge of breaking apart, just like the World. I realized, all while struggling and failing to understand how that could be. Sure, the weave was a little damaged, but it was not the first time my weave looked like that. In the past, this kind of damage wouldn’t have affected me, and I didn’t think it did now either.

My weave was fine enough, and if I had access to Sapsie’s Pond of Life, the minor damage would have been repaired already as well. Alas, that was a little difficult. Accessing Pond of Life now may help me recover a little faster, but it would shatter my World, and that was unacceptable.

Mom bursts into tears for the sixth time in the last thirty minutes, prompting me to rub her back. Pain shot through my arm, but my mother needed me to be strong now.

“So…we’re in Dracos now?” I asked after clearing my throat for what felt like an eternity.

“We are.” Chloe Zerog, my best friend’s mother, said slowly, sounding tired. Her features were riddled with exhaustion as well, and she looked like she’d aged ten years, even though I’d only been in a coma for months. Chloe Zerog may not be the strongest Blessed I knew, but she’d been at a high enough Rank to expand her lifespan drastically. For her to look so much older, a lot must have happened.

Glancing over at the others, they looked much older as well. At least Peter Zerog did. Daniel and his sister, Lea, hadn’t aged as much, but their presence and expressions now reflected maturity. I didn’t inspect them closely, but I was sure they had grown a lot in my absence.

“And how did we end up here? Or is that some sort of secret I’m not supposed to know?” I tried to sound nonchalant, but my words caused a wave of grimaces and… was that anger?

“We don’t know for sure what happened.” Peter Zerog grunted in displeasure. “Dracos was more of a myth than anything. The Council always treated this place like it didn’t exist. As if it was a fantastical place created by authors of children’s books. They lied, if that wasn’t obvious enough already.”

Peter, if no one else in the Zerog family, had trusted the Council. Up until the end, he had been sure that the Council would stop the Ruler of Fire. That they would step in and arrest Raffael Torch for attacking us and trying to kill me. That never happened. If anything, the Council would have supported Raffael’s acquisition of the Elemental Phoenix, if not for the Agency stopping any reinforcement coming for the Ruler of Fire.

At least, that had been the plan, which seemed to have worked as intended. Raffael Torch, one of the oldest and strongest Rulers, was dead now. And so was Merlin. I could see that much in the eyes of the Zerogs. Chloe didn’t want to say anything, but I could see it in her eyes–a mixture of guilt and selfishness.

She would be happier if her brother was in my stead. That didn’t mean she wanted me dead, yet Chloe Zerog would much rather be tending to her brother than standing there, watching the last man who had seen her brother alive being taken care of. Seeing me alive was like a punch in her gut, and she hated herself for the ill thoughts flashing through her mind.

That was at least how I interpreted the internal struggle I witnessed right there.

“A heavy presence knocked us out cold. It was hot and felt somewhat familiar, so we knew it wasn’t the Ruler of Fire coming after us, but that didn’t stop us from resisting.” Daniel stepped forward with a faint smile. His eyes lingered on my face for a moment before drifting down to inspect me thoroughly. “You look like shit.”

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I couldn’t help but grimace at that. “I do feel like shit. I can’t hear my Soulkins, my body is a wreck, and I don’t really know why because my weave is not all that damaged, and my World might as well fall apart just by looking at it.”

Daniel grimaced, his lips parted, but his sister shoved him to the side before he could say anything.

“He was pathetic, you know?” Lea waved dismissively toward her brother. “Don’t listen to this idiot. He said he resisted the presence, but that’s utter nonsense. He was the first to collapse.”

I knew she was trying to cheer me up at Daniel’s expense, and… it worked. The corner of my lips curled up as the siblings engaged in a fierce verbal fight about who was stronger now and whether the heavy, fiery presence pressed harder on Daniel because he was resisting. Daniel even said that Lea was pathetic because she didn’t even try to resist. After that, the verbal fight nearly transformed into a fistfight, which Chloe Zerog put an end to.

A heavy, very hot, and somewhat familiar presence? Was that Volca? I mused to myself before asking out loud, “Do you remember anything else after getting knocked out, or did you just pop up in Dracos? Where exactly is Dracos, in the first place?”

Was Dracos close to any of the Bastions? If Volca really brought us to Dracos, why did he do that? Memories of hovering above a lava sea and listening to his words popped right back up in my mind, but they only filled me with more confusion and a lot more questions than anything else.

“Nobody remembers anything after the presence descended.” This time, my father answered. He had been watching me, looking guilty and… ashamed? There was no reason to be ashamed of anything, but I listened as he continued rather than pressing him. “We appeared in Dracos and tried to get used to this place. Since we’re not the first or the last humans to come to Dracos, that wasn’t too difficult. Life is not much different here.”

“Not different?” Peter Zerog raised an eyebrow at my father. “There are more than a dozen Outsider races in Dracos, some of which hate us.”

“And others don’t.” Dad shrugged. “Honestly, even those that hate us don’t really hate us. They hate the Council and the Rulers controlling the Bastions. I’ve befriended some of the people who ‘hate’ us, and they’re not bad. Some are very angry, but that’s mostly because their lives haven’t been easy. They’re angry at everything and not just humans.”

We were neither the first nor the last humans to arrive at Dracos? That was curious.

“We also know where the Bastions are located. They’re not exactly close, but if we wanted to go back, we could.” Daniel answered my other question when no one else did. His sister wasn’t done arguing with him yet, but their mother made sure they would pounce on each other’s throats outside later.

Being able to go back was great, yet Daniel’s tone caught my attention. “But we don’t want to go back?”

“There’s no reason to go back. I, for one, am not going to fight the Council’s fight.” He snorted.

“What about your friends?” Lea shot back from the side. “And the innocent people? Are you going to watch the war go on when you could make a difference?”

From the look of it, this kind of discussion was not rare.

“I will go back to rescue our friends as soon as I’m strong enough to make a difference, but I will not fight for the Council and its Rulers. I know they’re not all bad, but that doesn’t mean they deserve my help,” Daniel grunted. “Dracos can help us grow much stronger. If we leverage that, we can return to the Bastions together and remove the corruption. Maybe throw these corrupt pieces of shit at our enemies to appease them. Then, if and only if they still want to raze the Bastions to the ground, we can think of fighting for the Bastions.”

There were multiple gaps in Daniel’s plan. For one, killing or throwing the corrupted Rulers and Council members at the Outsider armies would weaken the Bastions drastically. Even if the war would end, which was unlikely to be the case, several powerful, sentient beasts would take the opportunity to destroy the protective dome when mankind’s defenses were at its weakest and devour millions of humans to consume the Essence stored within their Worlds.

That didn’t sound too good, and that did not even include the threat coming from the Fithar Alliance. The Fija and Tarthon were both very aggressive races that wouldn’t stop fighting even if Daniel sacrificed several corrupt Rulers to appease them. If anything, doing so would provoke the Fithar Alliance to push even harder. Or so I theorized.

Daniel and Lea engaged once more in a verbal spat, and this time their mother didn’t stop them. I listened to them only for a short while, thinking about my friends, wondering how Sophie and Fabienne were doing in the Ninth Bastion. I could only hope they were alive.

As for Scott, he–…

“Where’s Scott?” I blurted out when I realized that he should be here with us.

Nobody answered, but only silence followed my question. Even Daniel and Lea stopped bickering and looked over with complicated expressions on their faces.

“Where is Scott?” I repeated myself, which only increased the awkward tension hanging in the air. It took them several minutes before Peter Zerog let out a heavy sigh and answered.

“We have no idea.”