“What stage of tempering have you achieved, and what was the method you used?” she continued, as if his answer was expected.

  Fred’s look of confusion only grew. “Tempering? Is that what you do to become strong? The big bastards in the garden control all the information. They have no use for slaves that can break their bonds.”

  The bleak reality of Fred’s situation dawned on Lillian as she pieced together what she had seen from Fred up until this moment. The man was still burning from the mana, like she had when she first arrived.

  Lillian sat close to the man and looked deep into his eyes, searching for any hint of deception.

  The memory of her abduction flashed through her mind as she wavered.

  He helped me when I needed it, so I will help him now.

  “I can teach you what I have learned. I can show you how to temper yourself. You are going to have to trust me, though. I am not a slave master, and you are not a slave, but I need your word that you will not betray me. You can leave whenever you want, but you must swear to me right now that you will not harm me if I help you.”

  The resolve in Fred’s eyes seemed to glow as he put a hand over his heart and made a solemn vow. “I swear upon my life that I will never betray you. Please, help me," replied the man. His voice cracked as tears rolled down his cheeks.

  Lillian felt a unique thrum of mana as the man spoke. She felt the special sliver of mana enter her heart. The oath the man made was solidified by mana and gave her the power to at the very least damage Fred in the event of a betrayal. She couldn't tell exactly what destroying that sliver would do to him, but it wouldn't be pleasant.

  “Did you know that the oath would be enforced by mana?” She couldn't help but ask.

  Fred seemed unflustered by the oath, clearly having made one with his original captors.

  “Of course, the rulers of Eden insisted on us taking them."

  Lillian mulled over his words and decided to believe them.

  “Enter one of the larger cells. If we can reseal the cell after you make a mess, it will be better for us both in the long run.”

  Fred had so many questions he wanted to ask, but he entered the cell Lillian had opened and kept them to himself.

  “Mimic my posture. You will follow the rhythm I show you to breathe. The mana in the air will build up inside you and force impurities from your body. Then you will repeat the process and shed your skin. The scroll claimed that only 80% of us will survive this step, but luckily you have me here to help you out.”

  Fred did as she instructed. Lillian could feel the mana in the air moving as his body became covered in the disgusting black gunk. His body continued to expel impurities for over an hour as the cell began filling with pungent goop. Eventually, Fred shuddered, and his skin began to fall from his frame. The broken howls that escaped his throat made Lillian shudder. The pain was all too familiar for her.

  Lillian hoisted the whimpering man from the cell and placed him in an empty one nearby. Why did tempering have to be so disgusting? The man's skin slowly began regrowing on his chest before crawling across the rest of his body. She left his filthy blanket in the cell and waited for the process to complete.

  Lillian’s mind couldn’t help but wander as she waited for Fred’s initial tempering to conclude. She had thought she was unlucky, but compared to Fred, her foray into the woods was a walk in the park.

  Fred completed his tempering after several hours and climbed from his cell. Before he had a chance to speak, a bundle of handwoven clothes hit him in the face.

  “Put those on first,” demanded the embarrassed girl as she turned away from him and continued weaving the leaves and vines she had pillaged from around the perimeter of the hive.

  The man reemerged with the loose weave draped over his frame.

  “Thank you,” he said with an energy that had been lacking from his voice up until now. His voice had less phlegm behind it. The tempering seemed to have healed him to some degree. His crooked spine was much straighter, though his new skin still held the signs of illness.

  Lillian waved off his thanks. They had simply made an exchange. Not to mention how he had inadvertently helped her when he killed Zac.

  “No. Truly, thank you. Thank you for treating me like a person.”

  Lillian suppressed her guilt as his gratefulness flooded from him. The man swore an oath for her and was thankful for it.

  “We are all in this together,” she said mechanically in the same way the government artificial intelligence would when demanding things from the general populace.

  An infectious smile spread across his face before settling himself on the ground near her.

  “So, what now?” he asked. The eagerness to grow his strength was burning in his gaze.

  “That is up to you,” she responded as she put the finishing touches on the blanket she was making.

  “I received a tool from my teacher before I wound up here. It can allow you to opt out of this wonderful experience and join a slaver mining colony somewhere in the galaxy if you wish.” Lillian tossed him the finished blanket and began another, for herself this time. “The other option is to continue to temper your body. You choose an element of destruction and subject yourself to it until you break down your body enough to reach the second threshold.”

  Fred’s forehead wrinkled as he struggled to figure out what he was supposed to do.

  “I used poison for my second tempering. I got jumped by an armada of snails and their slime mixed with a little venom from a murder hornet made me take that step in one go. I also ate the beast cores found in the bugs to heal.”

  The mention of beast cores caused the haunted look to return to Fred’s eyes. “We tried that back in the garden. My friend Derek took one from one of the beasts after an attack on the farms and swallowed it before the slavers could collect it. He was still a normal human like the rest of us and hoped it would allow him to become strong.” Fred paused, attempting to hold back his grief. “H-he exploded. I thought the same thing would happen to you when you ate that core from the ant.”

  Lillian felt a chill creep down her neck. She had eaten the cores before the book had recommended. Was an initial tempering enough to avoid all the pitfalls of imbibing cores? The cores could have a secondary component; a hidden facet that she had missed.

  “Do the slavers of the garden use cores?” she asked while trying to keep the unease she felt from showing.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  “Only when they are on death's door or when they have enough of their friends to suppress them until the effects wear off. The cores don’t blow them up; they mess up their minds though. There was a slaver who had to be executed because he ingested too many cores. The crazy bastard started slaughtering us and killed a dozen before the others put him down.”

  The feeling of malice that came from the spider core when she connected it to her mana vein flashed in mind as the pieces of the puzzle fit together. Mana held a cultivator's will to some extent, otherwise she would have died when her brain splattered from falling from the tree. If cores held the beast's will, it would explain the mental suppression and recklessness she experienced after each time she consumed a core. The cores had a type of poison in them; one she currently had no resistance to.

  “Well, I have used them and will continue to do so, though I don’t recommend you do so unless you must. The cores can heal you quickly, but they seem to come with side effects that make you... reckless.”

  Lillian tossed Fred the scroll. She believed that at its heart, tempering used outside mana to break down the body. The river water and the mud below had mana. In fact, everything did now. The only limits to what you could temper with was your creativity and your ability to find a reliable source.

  “What do you think I should use?” Fred asked. The man was a foot taller than her but acted so meek.

  “This is a decision you should arrive at on your own. I don’t know what the latter sections of “The Body” will tell us but I do know that after reaching the second threshold, the scroll will tell you to ingest the mana of choice and let it destroy you from the inside. I am stuck with poison and I’m still working my way through it. There is more than meets the eye in these choices. For my second tempering, I used poison that was destructive in nature. Destructive poisons haven't given good results while attempting to advance to the third threshold. The jelly that healed you is a different type of poison, one that causes unrestrained regeneration. The one session with the jelly did more for me than drinking a cocktail of over twenty venoms.”

  “What is the easiest to access mana I can use? I don’t expect this hive to stay empty for long.”

  Lillian didn’t expect the peace to last long either.

  “We have plenty of trees, but I can't think of how to extract the mana from them for a tempering. We are neighbors to an ant nest, but I am not sure what flavor of mana they would give you. Some ants have venom, but others don't. We have the earth below and there is a river not far from here. I can’t recommend jumping into the water though as it is filled with danger. We can make a fire if you have the stomach for it, or we could try using weapons like the scroll mentioned.”

  The man seemed to contemplate the choices before posing a question.

  “How does wounding oneself with weapons temper with mana?”

  Lillian was stumped; the weapon recommendation didn’t fit the model of tempering she had explained yet the idea had come from the scroll itself.

  “I don’t know, it could be a method to temper with the ambient air mana. It could also be used to temper against whatever the slashing tool is. I don’t think we will be able to figure that one out until we have someone try it.”

  Fred left to explore around the hive and Lillian continued weaving herself a blanket.

  The man can and found her again after wandering around for half an hour.

  “What the hell happened here?” he asked as he gestured wildly towards that dissected spider and the trail of blood that led to the queen’s antechamber.

  Lillian ignored him and continued her blanket while avoiding his gaze. She was almost done with it.

  “Just spit it out, you are wearing your emotions on your face.”

  “I-I have been experimenting,” Lillian stuttered as she pointed to the dissected spider not far from them. She removed her eye patch and opened her eyelid to help with her explanation. “My mana circulatory system is damaged. The Sect has no use for me unless I can find a solution. I have been attempting to find an…alternative eye that would make me whole.”

  The man seemed nonplussed as he waited for her to continue.

  “I took one of that spider’s eyes and grafted it onto my own mana vein. The results were…less than ideal. My mana is already laced with poison and the eyes turned to slop. So, in my idiocy, I decided to pull a vein from my heart and connect it to a core directly.”

  Lillian didn’t think the man could open his eyes any wider than they got at that moment.

  “Through my experimenting and your recounting of the slavers, I have found that the cores hold consciousness, or a remnant will to some extent. The spider drew all the mana from the core and detonated the eyeball I was trying to integrate. I was on my last legs when I found the jelly. The only reason I survived was luck.”

  Fred wiped the sweat from his brow. His nerves were already shot from the tempering, and he needed to rest.

  "Your fuckin’ crazy, you know?”

  Lillian rubbed the bridge of her nose.

  “Yea, I know,” she answered. “With how things have been going, crazy was the best option.”

  “Crazy is good. I could use some of that myself. I am going to kill those bastards back at Eden,” Fred said with a wild look in his eyes. The trauma he received in the garden would not fade overnight and there weren’t therapists working in this neck of the woods.

  Lillian asked “Did you make an oath to them? I felt the mana thrum when you made your oath to me and I can feel it even now, if you break it there will be consequences.”

  Fred’s grin stretched all the way to his ears.

  “Let’s say that they were not specific enough when they called for oaths. That is the reason I was able to escape after all. They should have taken more care in recording who was holding each oath.”

  His reasoning made sense, but she could tell there was more that he wasn’t saying. They both had their secrets, and she saw no reason to pry any deeper for the time being.

  Fred sealed himself away in an adjoining cell. He passed out long before the moonlight could show the true majesty of the hive.

  I hadn’t even considered taking an eye from a human before today. If only I had known.

  The moon rising gave Lillian a chance to finally explore the entirety of the hive. The cells at the bottom were by far the smallest. Many were still filled with dying larvae that would soon perish without the nourishment the worker hornets provided. The mid-levels of the hive were still filled with the glistening honey that almost seemed to glow under the moonlight that spread through the hive. Lillian climbed her way to the upper cells for the first time and was shocked by what she found.

  There were hundreds of desiccated corpses trapped in the larger cells, their bodies having been drained of their essence long ago. It was suddenly clear why the royal jelly had such dense amounts of mana. Some of the beasts were familiar enough to make out, but others were a mystery. The unmistakable silhouette of a human was seared into her brain as she returned to her cell.

  The sunlight that broke through the holes in the hive happened to hit Lillian’s sleeping eye perfectly to wake her up. The hive had remained quiet through the night. She woke up expecting a fight, but the empty hive continued to provide safety to both her and her new companion. She wasn’t sure what to make of the man, but she was thankful for the company. Things hadn’t felt the same since Genius was taken from her. Fred was no replacement for the dashing crow but at least he was someone to talk to.

  Fred was removing the husks of the spiders. There was no struggle on his face as he pitched the carcasses from the tree towards the ground below. He seemed lost in thought as Lillian approached him.

  “I never thought it would be like this.” he said with tears in his eyes.

  Lillian tried to cheer up the man.

  “I’m sorry, we will find somewhere better to live soon.”

  “Sorry? This is amazing! Watch this,” he exclaimed as he jumped three feet high. The tempering had improved his constitution, just like it had for Lillian, but his starting point was lower due to his illness.

  “This is amazing! It's like I've been reborn.” he giggled. The laughter stopped abruptly as he caught sight of movement.

  “We have company,” he whispered; the brief bit of happiness melted away like a snowflake on a warm palm.

  Lillian stuck her head out of the hive far enough to see the ants bridging the gap between their tree and hers. They hadn’t forgotten about that lone warrior after all. She ran towards the royal jelly cell and filled a small container she had fashioned out of leaves with the lifesaving substance. It wouldn’t hold a liquid, but the jelly stayed inside for the most part. She gathered her freshly made spears, giving one to Fred as she exited the hive. She would defend this place for as long as possible.

  This is my hive. I claimed it fair and square.

  The ants had formed a long chain by linking their bodies together. The magical feat of teamwork and ingenuity only made Lillian more anxious. The line of insects seemed endless, stretching beyond her view.

  “Fred, the cores will heal you, but they are very risky to use. Make sure you stick close to me.”

  “We don't have any cores, Lillian,” he replied, the fear of the ants coloring his voice.

  “We will have more cores than we know what to do with soon enough. The ants shelled carapace acts like plate mail. Aim for the joints or push them off the branch.”

  The pair waited with bated breath as the first ant touched its foot down on their turf. It would be the first of hundreds.