Tamer, there’s a messenger from another village, Rolls-a-stone tells me over the Bond. He must be on gate duty.

  Which entrance? I ask.

  The lower gate.

  Alright, I’ll come shortly, I say, then return my attention to the hatchlings in front of me. “I’ve got to go now, but remember the rules.”

  “If my stones are either side of his stones, I ‘capture’ his stones,” chirps one of the hatchlings.

  “And if I capture all of his stones, I win,” chirps the other.

  “That’s right, well done,” I praise them. “But you don’t have to continue until one of you has captured all of the stones of the other; just until the box we’ve drawn on the ground is filled in. Then whoever has the most stones present in the box wins.”

  “Got it,” they chime. “Thank you Tamer Markus,” one of them says, the other following belatedly behind.

  “No problem,” I smile. “I look forward to hearing which one of you wins most often.” I actually do – Othello might be relatively simple as a game to learn, but it takes a bit of strategy to master. Go would probably be better for training strategy, but I’ve never learned to play it.

  As I walk through the village, I notice a few other groups huddling around games – other ones I’ve introduced like Home You Go and chess, though some of the games of the latter are being played at a level beyond me now. Sticks has been willing to create game pieces for Energy Heart fragments – I seem to have accidentally created something of an economy. Inevitable, I suppose, when most samurans are earning a steady supply of the things through their farming, hunting, resource-gathering, or crafting. Even the Unevolved samurans are learning to craft things like utensils and weapons – less durable and finished than what the Pathwalkers can create with magic, but ‘cheaper’ for the Unevolved. They can then be sold to other Unevolved for Energy Heart fragments.

  I see a trade happening right now – Joy has discovered an artistic side of herself and her recent creations are more and more beautiful. The majority of the everyday weaving has been taken up by a number of Unevolved who no longer need to be hunters because of the increasing supply of meat from the farming efforts. As a result, Joy has more time to experiment and has begun weaving tapestries to beautify the village. Since Hunter found a combination of runes which, when engraved on a Core, offer a steady, self-replenishing, activatable and deactivatable light, more and more samurans have become keen on having the tapestries inside the huts too.

  Next to her side I see two of the danaris hatchlings. The danaris hatchlings came out of their cocoons not that long ago, and gave me a bit of a fright when one just started trying to climb up my legs out of the blue. They’re fortunate that the baby samurans have already tried to do that a couple of times, so my automatic reaction wasn’t just to start swinging.

  I did jump when I saw that instead of a cute baby samuran, it was an eight-legged horror, its six eyes glinting balefully at me. Not that it was actually trying to threaten me – the impression I got from it over the Bond was that it was more innocently curious than anything else. A bit of questioning revealed that it had followed the sense of our Bond when it had hatched which explained why it was climbing up my leg.

  That one, named Courage when it became clear that she has lots of it, was the only one brave enough out of her sister and brother to approach me – the other two hung back until they saw that I wasn’t about to kill them.

  Clearly recently hatched, they looked like football-sized versions of their mother except with much softer shells. By this point their shells have hardened significantly, but are still nowhere near the thick, armoured chitin of the danaris I killed. They’ve also grown a bit, about half again the size they started. Since their chitin hardened, though, they’ve stopped growing. I wonder whether they will moult their shells in the way most creatures with carapaces seem to. They haven’t yet, anyway.

  The two females have the venomous stinger of their mother; the male doesn’t, though they can all three spin sticky webbing. Only the two females can spin non-sticky webbing, though – I have to guess that the male isn’t supposed to take any part in building the ‘larder’ for his offspring.

  Once Joy realised that they could spin the same kind of thread which I can – but had been refusing to just for tapestries – she immediately leaped on the opportunity to get on the danaris females’ good sides. Bribing them with choice meats and beast Cores which she traded for with tapestries, she soon had them literally eating out of her hand and willing to produce as much silk as she wanted.

  The male hasn’t been completely left out, though. His sticky web is greatly valued by Shrieks for the defence of the village – everyone now knows to come into the village by the gates due to the sticky web that weaves in between each of the wooden stakes. It has to be replaced frequently as the stickiness reduces with time. The male, named Defender, doesn’t seem to mind that, though. As long as he’s kept happy with plenty of food and some Cores from time to time, he’s willing to spend his waking hours recycling the old webbing to create the new sticky strands again.

  I have to admit that I watched the development with interest – it seems like multiple partnerships have sprung up – Catch and Pride, Joy with the female danarises, Thorn and one of the hunters, and the male danaris with Shrieks. Not to mention the more casual relationships like between Trinity and the village as a whole and Komodo with Tarra and River – due to his ever-changing venom, they find him a very useful source of different poisons.

  Thorn still hasn’t Evolved, and has chosen to refuse a deeper Bond with me even for the purpose of helping him with his damaged Energy channels. I find it a bit of a pity, but ultimately it’s his choice. He seems happy enough going out with Bites-his-claws to hunt. The two apparently work well together as a team – the samuran leads or drives their prey towards where Thorn is lying concealed in preparation for an ambush.

  I feel that in the last three months the village has leaped ahead in multiple ways. I don’t know whether it has anything to do with the blessing from the end of the Festival or is simply that the Evolved, feeling that my different ways have been validated by the acceptance and admiration of their peers, have been more willing to open their minds to new ideas. Certainly, I’ve felt the difference – my suggestions in the regular councils have been met with less scepticism and some of the others have even started suggesting changes, something which had been rare before.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  I was very happy when the Unevolved members of the council started taking a more involved role not long after, and by now the division of the Tiers is barely felt in the council at all even if it’s still evident in every day life. I know that that’s mostly due to my influence and maybe it will go back to the way it used to be after I leave. I hope that they’ve seen enough benefit that it won’t, though.

  Another positive change is that the village seems to have leaped ahead in culture – the relief of the constant pressure to hunt and resulting exhaustion has allowed an explosion in creativity. I would never have imagined that they would be capable of everything I now see, but I’m glad that they are. It seems that samurans, when not regularly on the edge of starvation, are indeed artists at heart.

  Instituting a ‘rest day’ was a good idea, too. The council resisted it at first – they were worried that it might lead to trouble as bored samurans with nothing else to do might just start challenging their superiors. And yes, there was a bit of that, but the majority of the time the challenges ended up turning into educational sparring with no hard feelings remaining – intentionally steered that way, of course. As they got used to the idea of having one day in ten free of obligations, the samurans found other things to do with their time.

  Of course, not everyone is able to rest even on a rest day. The guards still have to patrol around the village and watch over the gates; the broodmothers still have to care for the hatchlings. They were ecstatic when each of the Pathwalkers laid a clutch of eggs not long after we got back from the festival. In total, there were a hundred and thirty-two eggs laid and all but seventeen of those hatched. And due to the fact that I’m determined to do things differently for this clutch and have forbidden them from going out into the forest until they’re big enough to fight properly – and then only after they’ve trained and are accompanied by older samurans – we’ve only lost three more.

  So now, three months on, there are over a hundred half-grown baby samurans running around the place and getting in everyone’s way. I have to dodge a small gaggle of five who run obliviously across my path with an air of mischief. There are too many for me to recognise them by sight, and they haven’t yet got to their naming day so I’ve got no chance of stopping them unless I want to chase after them and physically grab them. Since I’ve got someone waiting for me at the gates, I decide not to do that.

  Instead, I send a message over the Bond to Elder Twig, warning him of the potential trouble-makers. Although I was unable to help him to Evolve because I can’t figure out what the issue is with his channels, I decided that maintaining a Bond with one of the broodmothers would be a good idea.

  He promises to investigate what the hatchlings are up to with a faintly accusing air – though the Elders are overall happy that fewer of their charges are dying in their infancy, they haven’t been as pleased with how the changes have dramatically increased their workloads. I might have to find a way to keep the hatchlings occupied other than just with board games – otherwise the mortality might creep up again as a result of the broodmothers strangling their charges.

  Walking through the village, I pull up my status screen, looking once more at the differences between where I was three months ago after I killed the fellapodil and re-Bound Windy after she Evolved.

  The last few months haven’t just been a period of growth for the village but for me as well. I’ve managed to go up five levels which, honestly, is quite an achievement considering just how much Energy I need per percentage point now. I’ve worked out that at level twenty-five, I need about one and a half thousand units of Energy per percentage. From what I remember, that’s about the same amount per point as it took me to increase by a whole level from zero to one!

  And I thought that that was hard to achieve at the time.

  The fact is, though, that I’m in a far better position now than I was when I arrived. I don’t have to go hunting for my food – in fact quite a few things are done for me now – and magic helps me speed up other things that I still have to do for myself. Of course, those mundane tasks have been replaced by a number of others linked to running the village, but I’ve managed to set aside a good few hours most days actively meditating in one of the high-density chambers in my den.

  I’d love to do more than that, but even aside from my work load, I’ve noticed that too much time spent in Meditation in that area starts corroding my internal matrix, starting with my exterior channels and moving inwards if I let it. Sure, I can heal the areas and I do if they corrode, but it seems like the healing takes some time to fully settle as corrosion happens more quickly if I return immediately to the area after I’ve healed myself. It ends up better for me to withdraw from the high-density area after a period of time and avoid the corrosion at all. Besides, it’s not as if I don’t have enough to do.

  here!

  here!

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