Eres barged through the door of the apothecary to the jolt of the elderly herbalist. “You set us up.” She accused. Banda took notice of the uncharacteristic indignation in her expression.

  “That’s right.” The woman spoke clearly now, with no hint of the senility from before, nor of shame or fear towards them. “If you’re smart, you’ll do the same. Life is as cheap as grass on the first floor.”

  Banda lunged but his hand was blocked by a dense wall of aura.

  “Otto punishes those who reduce his income!” The herbalist yelled in fright, startled by the speed Banda had moved. “You should not try that again.”

  “Who is he?” Eres demanded.

  “The lord of this slum some fools call a town.” The herbalist spat.

  “And he stands alone? No one else challenges him?” Eres snapped back, her composure starting to drop.

  The alchemist laughed in mockery. “He is a peak rank 2 monk. All who dared are dead. Only the gods know why he remains on this barren floor, but that is our burden to bare. And now it’s yours too.”

  The herbalist’s mocking laughter filled the room and Eres turned to leave, as she saw she would get no more information. The moment she stepped outside, her attitude returned to normal.

  “You changed to trick her.” Banda deduced.

  “That’s right. This is a dangerous place. Better for us not to move stupidly.” That last comment was directed to Banda, and it did grate on him, but this time he didn’t talk back. It was true that he had been too much of a rush to regain his power, and that had led them into the jaws of another.

  His renewed composure did not escape Eres’ notice. “What, have you finally accepted the situation?”

  “What next?” Banda had his own plans but human society was too unfamiliar to him. He wasn’t going to take anymore chances.

  Eres seemed like she had more to say but decided to let the matter be. “There’s nothing we can do right now. But we don’t necessarily have to fight him. We just need to find a way to remove these Soul Seeds. Until then, we get stronger. Pay his quota to buy time and find out more about him and this town. We’ll be here for a while.”

  “I thought you’d be angrier.” Banda had not expected her nonchalant acceptance of their dire situation.

  “...It’s just another setback.” Eres looked straight ahead as they walked. “I told you before. Something like this would’ve happened sooner or later. Though it would have been later if you listened more to me.”

  Banda didn’t respond.

  “What, feeling guilty?” Eres asked with a teasing tone. She glanced to the side at an abandoned shack with a roof that didn’t seem too damaged. “This is good enough.”

  “There’s still enough daylight to hunt.” Banda pointed out.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve slept. We can hunt all day tomorrow when I’m rested. Unless you want to rush into things again?” She took note of Banda’s conflicted silence with a smile, as she found an acceptable part of the wall to sit against. “You can take first watch. Be a good guard dog and consider everyone an enemy.”

  Banda snubbed her words. He already considered humans enemies. They were more sly and treacherous than beasts and the short time he’d spent in one of their lairs had only convinced him of that further. Though he kept silent as more important things were on his mind.

  The encounter with Otto had reminded him what it was truly like during his early days in the forest, when there were those stronger than him. The fear. The desperation. And the patience.

  A part of him was finally coming to terms with the fact that he lost his power, and how he needed to move to regain it. He had risen to the top once before, and he would do so again in this forest of humans.

  ---

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  Amidst a sea of black, two heavenly lights swirled into the shape of a man and woman. The two embraced in a dance of loving adoration, melding into one and separating once more.

  The woman pulled from her heart a golden flame and gave it all to the man, whose form now shone with its same glory. Brighter and brighter and brighter.

  Eres awoke from her dream with a frown. A new vision had finally been bestowed upon her, one doubtlessly for attempting to defy fate with the failed theft of Ishtar’s divinity. The Retribution she had been anticipating ever since.

  The two beings were herself and Banda, without question. The interpretation was simple, as was the temporary solution. The worst would not manifest so long as she did not lie with him, but that was as at its core, merely delaying the inevitable. Eventually, fate would force her hand.

  The crux of the prophecy was the issue. She was to hand him golden fire. A metaphor for divinity or enlightenment or perhaps power. Or more characteristic of fate’s cruelty, her power. She needed to find a way to satisfy the prophecy without losing what was hers.

  Eres glanced over at her meditating champion. “Do you have any runts back in Cedar Forest? Some monsters do look quite human. Unless you’ve been there so long you prefer beasts?”

  Banda didn’t know what she was talking about, so he ignored her.

  “A mate.” Eres clarified in the simplest of terms.

  “No.” Banda gave the simplest of answers.

  “None of the humans that ventured in ever caught your eye? There had to have been at least one.”

  “I am not human.” Banda corrected her for the second time. “I am the only one of my kind.”

  “Capable and convenient.” Eres spoke with a trace of relief. If he had no such drives, she would not be the one to instill them. “Be sure to stay that way.”

  “What do we do now?” Banda changed the subject to something more productive and something that would irritate him less.

  “We have three main goals. Gain power through cultivation. Search for a method to remove these soul seeds. And acquire shards so Otto doesn’t kill us in the process. With that said…” Eres shifted her attitude into one more serious, as she started to walk off. “We should get stated on the latter.”

  ---

  Banda knocked a seedy looking man into a wall. As a resident of this first floor slum town, he was no doubt guilty of much, though the only failing that led him to his current predicament now was that he had crossed the path of an ambitious duo.

  “Tell me everything you know about Otto.” Eres asked sternly.

  “He’s a peak rank 2 monk.” The man stammered, his face covered in new bruises.

  “If that’s all you have, you’re useless to me.” She gestured and Banda stepped forward.

  “Wait, wait! He’s a warrior, uses two scimitars. Has this high grade art, Crimson Edge. Makes his blades hot enough to cut through anything.”

  “And the Soul Seed art?” Eres’ cold intensity did not lower in the slightest. The man hesitated and Eres saw the mark of a someone swallowing information. “Tear off his arm.”

  “A-Alright! Shit…" Panic overcame the man, as he seemed to resign himself. "It puts something in your soul that he can use to destroy it. That’s all I know about how it works. But, he’s not a shaman. It doesn’t work well enough on other rank 2s, they can just remove it. None of the other slumlords have it… They answer to him, pay tribute to keep their territory because he has more underlings than anyone.”

  This was new information to Eres, one she considered a welcome surprise. “Tell me all the stages of rank 1.”

  “I don’t know… I’m still at Spirit Tempering.”

  “Where can we get martial arts?” Eres asked her second priority.

  “The Bazaar. In the town square.”

  "And how do we get to the second floor?" Eres asked her third priority, though her intensity subtly rose.

  The man paused for a moment, as though taken off guard by the question. "You make an offering to the Tower... 1,000 Manastones."

  “Alright, that’s all.” At her signal, Banda snapped the man's neck fast enough for him to fall before he even realized he was dead. “Cleaner death than I expected.”

  “Blood draws others.” Banda explained this simple knowledge.

  “Hmm~”

  “...what?”

  “It’s reassuring to have such a capable champion.” Eres smiled.

  “He was weak…” Banda didn’t know why they needed to bother with someone who would never be a threat.

  “And he could talk. A very troublesome combination.” Eres eyes narrowed. “Since there’s no way of knowing who is or isn’t, we should assume everyone is under Otto’s control. But on the bright side, this is a promising day. No need to take a risk with someone else, we just need to reach rank 2.”

  “How?”

  “It’s best to keep learning from Otto.” Eres noticed his disapproving stare. “He’ll know what stage we are anyway. Trying to hide it will only make things worse. I don’t know much about cultivation but I know there are three stages of each rank. We get the next two stages of rank 1 from Otto, then we find out how to advance on our own.”

  “But for now…” Eres continues as she walked up to the corpse and rummaged through its belongings. “We need martial arts. There’s only so far we can get with raw strength alone.”

  “I was the strongest in the forest.” Banda reminded.

  “You had divine spells.” Her expression changed as she found what she’s looking for. She held up a small dimly glowing light-blue crystal from the leather pouch. “We have some work to do before the bazaar.”