This Beast Tamer Has So Many Questions

With the concoction ready and twenty-eight doses prepared through the night, Elias called for help bringing the pigs in.

Briar, Holly, Honey, and Hope all answered. Between the four of them—the vine spreading gentle tendrils to guide the slower pigs along, the three queens organizing the rest with their usual quiet competence—the old Care Pigs were soon gathered together and lined up in the soft grass of the flower fields, waiting.

They were so much calmer now than the frightened creatures that had first arrived. Comfortable with him at last, the pigs nudged at his hands and licked his fingers and leaned their heavy old bodies against his legs, plainly delighted by the attention. Elias took a moment to pet each one of them, scratching behind worn ears and along greying muzzles, before he began. There was no sense rushing. They had waited a long time to be treated gently; a few minutes more would not hurt.

Then, carefully, he gave each pig its dose.

One by one he tilted the tonic to their mouths, letting them drink every last drop, making certain none of the precious mixture was spilled or wasted. The pigs took it willingly, trusting him completely now in a way that still made something ache warmly in his chest.

At first, nothing happened.

Then, slowly, one by one, the pigs grew drowsy. Heavy eyelids drooped. Old heads nodded. Within a little while, all twenty-eight of them had sunk down into the grass and drifted off into a deep, peaceful sleep, right there in the flower fields beneath the realm’s gentle sun.

Elias drew a blanket over them, tucking the old creatures in as best he could, and settled in to wait.

The wait lasted two weeks.

It was a strange, quiet fortnight. The pigs slept through all of it, unmoving but for the slow rise and fall of their breathing, their bodies working away at the transformation happening within. Elias did not leave them untended. Together with Holly, Honey, Hope, and Briar, he kept the sleeping pigs clean and comfortable, gently washing them, shifting them so they would not grow stiff, and feeding them small amounts when they stirred enough to swallow. It was patient, unglamorous work—the kind he had long since learned was the true heart of breeding—and he did it without complaint, day after day, until at last the first of them began to wake.

And when they woke, Elias finally saw the outcome of all his work.

Every single pig had gained two new skills in common: Enhanced Intelligence and Telekinesis. Those, he deduced, were the two the second step had required—the core of the awakening, the abilities the evolution demanded each pig take on as the Mental attribute settled into them.

But they had gained more than that.

Just as his question had promised, the tonic had given them more than the bare minimum. Beyond the two shared skills, every pig had awakened at least one additional mental ability of its own—and these varied from pig to pig in a wonderful, unpredictable spread. One had learned Levitation. Another, Empathy. Others gained Sense Emotion, or Clairvoyance, or Mind’s Eye. Each old pig had surfaced from sleep carrying some new gift uniquely its own, as though the tonic had reached into each of them and drawn out whatever quiet potential had been waiting there all along.

Among them all, however, it was the oldest who gave Elias his greatest surprise.

Sebastian.

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The ancient, blind, deaf pig—the one over sixty, the one his family had given up on—had learned not one additional skill but three. Sense Emotion. Mind’s Eye. And, alone among all twenty-eight, Telepathy. Where every other pig had awakened a single new gift, Sebastian had blossomed with a whole handful, the most of any of them by far.

Elias could only shake his head in wonder. Perhaps it should not have surprised him. Sebastian had lived the longest, felt the most, endured the most. If any of them held the deepest well of quiet potential, it would be the old soul who had survived everything and still, somehow, had room left in his heart to trust again.

The pigs rose from the grass slowly, blinking, and Elias saw it at once—a new spark in their eyes, a clarity, a knowing presence that had not been there before. They looked at the world, and at him, with a comprehension that ran deeper than any ordinary beast’s.

And then he heard it.

A weak, old, male voice—saying, simply, thank you.

It was not truly a word. It had no sound at all. It was more a feeling than a sentence, an emotion pressed gently against his mind—and yet Elias understood it instantly, completely, knew exactly what it meant the moment it reached him. Instinctively, he turned toward its source.

Sebastian.

The old pig was not looking at him—could not look at him, his eyes long since gone dark. But he did not need them anymore. Through Mind’s Eye he perceived Elias all the same, and through Telepathy he had reached out across a lifetime of silence to offer the first words he had spoken to anyone in years.

Elias knelt down and wrapped his arms around the old pig, holding him close.

“No,” he said softly, his voice thick. “Thank you. For carrying on until now.”

For surviving. For not giving up, even abandoned, even broken, even when the world had given every reason to. For still being here to receive a little kindness at the end.

Holly, Honey, Hope, and Briar gathered close around them, and Elias could tell from the warmth in the air that they had heard it too—that small, weak, world-changing thank you—and that they, like him, would not soon forget it.

In the quieter stretches of those two weeks, Elias had returned, again and again, to the third step.

And again and again, it had stumped him.

He knew it involved a material—that much his questioning had established—and something else besides, some second component he could not yet name. But what that material was, or what the something else might be, remained completely beyond him. He turned it over from every angle he could think of and came away with nothing. The wall simply would not crack.

So, as he often did when his mind ran in circles, he decided to step away from it entirely. To clear his head, Elias set out to take a walk through the city.

It was a good walk.

Everywhere he looked, he saw the marks of the work he had done. Lifebloom Queens drifted over gardens and balconies, their presence turning ordinary greenery lush and vibrant. Here and there a Hundred Fragrance Vine climbed a wall or trellis, its elemental flowers shimmering faintly in the light. And in time, he knew, the Blood Crystal Butterfly would join them in the mix—its evolution spreading quietly through the hands of the breeders he had entrusted it to. The world was a little greener, a little healthier, a little more wondrous than it had been a year ago, and a fair share of that was his doing, even if no one walking past him would ever know it.

It was a strange, quiet kind of pride. He let himself feel it for a while.

Eventually he found a bench in a park and sat down, Briar coiled contentedly around his arm, the sun warm on his face. All around him spirit pets ambled along on their afternoon walks—ordinary companions out with ordinary families, the gentle everyday life that all his work was ultimately for. Elias watched them through half-lidded eyes, drifting toward a pleasant doze, his mind loose and wandering.

And in that half-asleep state, idly, almost without thinking, he asked a question.

After so long, after weeks of beating his head against it—the answer came back yes.

Elias shot upright off the bench, wide awake in an instant, startling poor Briar so badly that the vine’s flowers snapped shut all at once. Valentine, tucked against his chest beneath his shirt, did not so much as flutter, supremely undisturbed by his contractor’s sudden excitement.

He had it. The third step. At last.

And without another moment’s hesitation, a bright and certain spark in his own eyes now, Elias set off to buy the materials.