Control Comes from Within

We disembarked from the skyship around midnight of that same day, as we arrived at the first island of many in this ocean that was used to support a teleportation formation. The process was explained to me by one of the reptilian envoys while we walked towards the nondescript building.

We would essentially ‘jump’ from island to island, utilizing each island’s formation to travel to the next one, until we reached our destination of the northern coast of the beastfolk mainland.

I did not anticipate a good time ahead, as the combination of little sleep mixed with repeated use of spatial formations that were nausea-inducing, meant I would arrive in a particularly bad mood.

Not exactly a great first impression to give off while you were on trial.

The chain of teleports didn’t give me or my stomach too much trouble, unexpectedly. I hadn’t exactly had a hard time with them before, but I figured teleporting multiple times in quick succession would knock me on my ass like it hadn’t before. It was a pleasant surprise that I handled it better than I thought I would.

It took an entire day, a full twenty-four hours, to reach the final island. Most of that time was spent waiting for essence to recover. The mages that stayed on each island and guarded the formation were usually enough to power the teleporter by themselves, but as we had a larger than normal group, it took more essence to fuel each teleport’s activation. It was apparently the norm for passengers to offer some of their own essence to power the formations, but beastmen were exempt from that rule nearly all the time, as they quite literally weren’t built for it.

So yeah, I was drained in more ways than one as we reached the final island, and the fact that we had to take what looked like a wooden raft, made up of logs lashed together, didn’t help raise my mood.

I raised an eyebrow at the shelled duck that was lashed to the raft, which two bird-headed beastfolk were petting as they waited for us.

“Brother Afon,” I called out as respectfully as I could in my sleep and essence deprived state, “Is taming a common practice here?”

“Taming?” The panther-headed beastfolk asked me in confusion, before looking at the ducks and their…owners? Riders? He turned around to answer me, “They are bonded. You have not heard of bonding in your human lands?” I shook my head in denial.

He continued to explain while the others boarded the raft. “Beastkin have limited potential with essence, you know this. So we use our essence much more…frugally, than humans or elves, and instead draw upon a different well of power: our souls.”

I froze once I heard that beastfolk, or beastkin more accurately, used their souls regularly. It implied a high level of familiarity that was absent in the human kingdom. I quickly doused the hope that I could find someone who could determine what was brewing in my soul, the time counting down to something I doubted would be beneficial for me.

If I could find someone to help, great. If not…well, everyone had to die someday.

“While humans may tame many animals throughout their life, we beastkin only bond with one. Whoever we bond with, they become our friend and family, our closest companion and our most loyal ally. We walk through life together, never to be separated.”

While that was more…poetic, than I expected, it explained what I had seen, and simultaneously made me nervous. If taming wasn’t common here, then I would make the educated guess that it would not be seen as a good thing. I couldn’t even show them Spearmint or any of my other companions to illustrate my ability to do so, as that would reveal the existence of my beast space, something I would rather not see happen.

The trip to the mainland only took about two hours, as we were in relatively safer waters and the ducks maintained a steady pace the entire way.

I had known the terrain would be mostly grassy plains, so I wasn’t surprised when I saw them stretching out endlessly in all directions, the sea finally behind us. We had made landfall a few hours before sunrise, so the sky was only lit by the faint glow of the stars, the moon nowhere in sight.

The mild temperate climate was a welcome relief from the chill and blistering cold of the human kingdom, and I surmised it would only grow warmer as we continued to travel further south.

“Come on, little brother.” Skarl, the barely shorter of the two wolf-headed beastkin, said to me as he thumped my shoulder. “The nearest village is four leagues away, so you better keep up with us if you want to sleep on something that’s not grass or hard dirt!”

“He is crude, but not incorrect,” one of the scaled reptile-like beastfolk said in a characteristic hissing voice. We had never exchanged words beyond simple greetings, so I inferred he preferred staying away from me.

“You are soft, used to soft and fine comforts, and a soft lifestyle. If you are judged worthy, you will be remade into something harder. Better for you to experience it earlier, no?” He grinned, showing his narrow tongue and sharp teeth, and I nodded along, unsure if that smile was meant to inspire fear or…something else.

“Enough. Weil, Driss, you take the lead. Skarl, Tsol, on the flanks. Cuul, Mohl, at the rear. Zanth, with me and the human in the center.” Afon had taken command of the envoys, assigning roles for each person and position. I also learned everyone’s name finally, though there was a fifty-fifty chance I messed them up anyways.

“The journey might be difficult for you, but there is no other way. If you fall behind, keep heading south until you reach a small river. Follow it west half a league, and you should be able to see the tribe’s patrols. They will send word to us, and someone should allow you inside.”

I thought it was a bit…mean-spirited to make me run roughly ten miles as soon as I arrived in beastfolk lands, but maybe they truly ran around as a viable method of transportation. Their magical abilities may have been stunted, but their bodies' physical prowess made up for it. I was tempted to fall back out of sight and pull out one of my tamed creatures so that I could ride to the village, but that was just my laziness talking.

I could handle ten miles easy. I just preferred not to.

And that was without mentioning the possibility of wild animals attacking me.

Welcome to the beastfolk continent, I guess.

Every one of my escorts had better bodies than me, and not in the sense of them being stronger and faster. I quickly realized everyone had night vision, or at least, they could see in the dark better than I could. Now, there was a magical spell to counteract the problem, but it still irked me that they had natural night vision and I didn't.

I took a few seconds to cast the nature spell, nightsight, and now my pupils had dilated much more, to the point that the once overwhelming darkness became different shades of grayscale.

I could, theoretically, form a rudimentary stone wagon by magic and propel myself that way, but I figured it was better to play by their rules while I was with the envoys. I was already headed to a trial for disrespecting beastmen culture, and I didn’t want to compound the charges further and prove my guilt, so to speak.

I also knew that asking one of them to carry me or do something similar would be crossing the lines of polite behavior. I would indirectly be telling them that they were beasts of burden, which, if the diary was accurate, was grounds for them to kill me. Immediately. I stopped thinking of ways to get out of the run and accepted my fate.

As I expected, everyone overtook me within minutes, though I could make out the outlines of their bodies as we all continued running towards our destination. I lost sight of them within an hour, and followed the directions Afon gave me as best as I could.

I focused on maintaining a steady pace and avoiding any pebbles or small divots in the ground that might trip me up. I had to take multiple breaks along the way, either to drink water or catch my breath, but I eventually saw a flag atop a tall wooden pole, fluttering and snapping in the wind. It was a good thing, too, as my stomach had been rumbling for the past fifteen minutes. I had been served a thick, hearty stew on the skyship, but I was looking forward to getting a proper meal in me. Beastfolk hospitality was no joke.

The flag depicted a lizard head in profile, its head facing sideways and its scales blue in color against the white of the flag’s material. It was extremely simplistic, but I supposed they were limited by what was on hand.

As I gazed up at the tribe’s flag, I heard heavy footsteps, no, the steps belonged to something bigger than a humanoid. Two blue-scaled lizardmen mounted on agile salamanders approached me at speed, one on each side of me as their mounts hissed their tongues at me. I put my hands up in surrender, as I figured exchanging greetings was unlikely to go over well while I stood on the outskirts of their territory, as a stranger in the night.

They spoke from atop their mounts, their tones curious yet wary. Neither of them were armed, but their giant salamanders were more than enough to pose a threat to me if they wished.

“A human, alone, at the edge of our home. Were we expecting any human guests, brother?” the one in front of me asked his colleague.

“I’m not sure. The chief never said anything….should we run back and ask him?” his friend responded.

“Peace, friends.” I said, startling them both with my speech, or perhaps it was the fact I was speaking their tongue…moderately fluently. “I was travelling with a group of envoys from the coast, and got separated from them on the way here. Their leader is named Afon, a panther tribesman, he can vouch for me,” I said.

“You speak our tongue, human cub?” the one behind me asked incredulously.

I slowly swiveled to keep them both in my field of view as I responded, offering them a polite greeting along with the accompanying hand gesture. “I studied your tongue in the human lands, from a woman of the rabbit tribes. She taught me everything I know about dragonspeak.”

At that, both of them went silent…before bursting into honking laughter that made me flinch. I wouldn’t have expected a reptilian species to make a sound that resembled a goose.

“Dragonspeak, he says,” the one on my left said, as he tried and failed to restrain his laughter. “No one still calls it that…except for maybe the dragons.”

“Our teachers played all kinds of tricks on us to keep us interested in studies. It’s good to see that human cubs can be tricked just like us.” the one on the right said with a wide smile, which caused me just as much discomfort as the last time a lizardman smiled at me.

“What did you say your friend’s name was, little human?” he said after a few minutes of chuckling to himself.

“Afon. A panther tribesman.” I responded, in equal parts frustration that they were laughing at me, and bewilderment that Professor Tu had evidently used a child’s trick, to great success, to retain her class’s attention.

“I’ll go look for him. Uvil, you stay here with the human,” he said, before urging his mount back to the village, the tents easily visible with the faint rays of sunlight showing through.

“Tch,” the lizardman named Uvil clicked his tongue. After a minute of staring at each other, he dismounted and began stroking the head of his salamander, while making occasional glances in my direction from time to time.

I reached around my head for topics of conversation, and hoped that what I had recently learned wouldn’t be too controversial if I mentioned it.

“Are the two of you bonded?” I asked Uvil, making sure to get the pronunciation right.

His glance towards me lasted a second longer than the previous one, as he made eye contact with me, before replying, “Yes. You know of bonding as well? Did your rabbit teacher tell you about that?”

“No, Afon mentioned it to me once we arrived here.”

I was about to say more, and maybe get his opinion on taming to probe how the average person felt about it, when the previous guardsman returned, or at least, one riding the same mount did.

“He speaks the truth. A team of envoys is escorting him to the council.”

“The council?!” Uvil asked incredulously. “Why is a human being brought to the council?”

I sighed and told them. “I…may have made a small…ash house…” I mumbled the most important part subconsciously, but they still picked up on it, and their reactions were not what I expected.

They stared at me like I was a ghost. No words were spoken, no movements were made. The three, well, five of us if you counted the mounts, were standing in silence as the sun finally rose and turned the sky pink and orange.

Uvil finally found his voice as he quietly said, “You…you speak the truth?”

Knowing how much beastfolk loved, and revered, this sort of thing, and seeing as how it wouldn’t be permanently harmful to me, I sliced my open palm with my finger, the tip of it sharpened with blood magic. Tiny droplets of my blood fell onto the ground, and I controlled the flow so I wouldn’t lose too much.

“I swear on my blood, to the Mother, and to the sun and moon above. I, Rhaaj, human mage, created an ash house in the human kingdom with my own strength.”

With blood oaths carrying the weight they did, I expected my statement to trigger some sort of response in the two guards.

Instead, Uvil’s friend looked at me and said in that same shocked tone he used before, “Your mother named you after a beast?”

As I was laughed at, once again, by guards who were hearing my name for the first time, I wanted to reach back in time and smack my former self for not choosing an alias when making that first introduction with Elius and the caravan guards. Who would have expected that the same word was used across two languages for the exact same beast of burden?

I suppressed a sigh as I healed the cut on my hand, collecting the blood that had fallen on the ground and sending it to my beast space. Waste not, want not, and all that.

The two of them herded me forward to the tribe, snorting and chuckling all the way.

Welcome to the beastfolk continent.