To Save a World Ch. 05

Finally! I hope the long wait is worth it with this one. Any kind of comments and any kind of rating is welcome. Or more like...

Please comment, please rate. It's a very potent motivator. Your feedback is the water that nourishes the small, parched sapling that is my writing skill.

Also, thank you so much once again Janet, for the editing help. I hope you guys like it. Enjoy!

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Early morning mist still blanketed the ancient forest as Aaron huddled over the remains of last night's fire. He'd arranged kindling and twigs above the struggling embers, and was in the process of coaxing them back into a hearty blaze by carefully blowing on them. He was hunched over, his hands to the earth, his body close to the ground and his lungs heaving in measured breaths as the hot glow of the remaining embers bloomed and caught the dry fuel around them. The fire took readily, and after a few moments his cold skin was already tingling with the expectation of warmth. The young man sat back up, satisfied with his efforts.

Aaron positioned himself cross-legged by the blaze, and lazily soaked in the nourishing heat. His eyes stung slightly from the vague remembrance of sleep. His stomach growled loudly. He had to smile at the sensation.

He'd been taking being alive a little bit more graciously, ever since the run'an.

It's been three days since Aaron and his little group shivered an inch away from death on the shore of a deadly river, spat out from a legendary wall of plants after being terrorized by evil, unknown creatures of a deep, dark hole on the ground. The young man had thought about the recent events quite a lot. It had been so easy to die. If he'd put his foot wrong at the right moment, or if he tripped on something, slid on something, fallen at the wrong angle while they were being power-tumbled away by the plants, then it could have resulted in his death. Just like that. A snap of the fingers. Like snuffing out a candle. He was only alive because of an incredible string of luck.

Aaron shivered despite being warm.

Not only has he been unnaturally lucky, but he has also been blessed with companions that were astonishingly capable. Serche with her versatile magic, Trasnu with his knowledge and instinct of the woods, even Lydia's simple strokes of brilliance; they all had something to contribute in keeping their skins alive. Aaron couldn't help but feel like a burden to everyone, despite supposedly being 'master' of at least two of them. Even Lydia seemed to look to him for guidance, even though the only thing he could do is stand around and follow someone else's lead.

The one thing he could feel better about was saving Serche when she fell into that huge hole. And even that hadn't been possible without Trasnu's help. If the stronger Rakan hunter hadn't come to his aid when he did...

Aaron shook his head. But overthinking wouldn't help anyone right now.

"Smell something bad, Master?" Aaron jumped. Trasnu was right behind him. How the old beastman moved through the forest floor without making a single sound boggles the mind. "You have that look."

He wrinkled his nose as Trasnu came to sit beside him by the fire. The old hunter brought the day's fare with him dressed and already speared with smooth, sharp sticks. It looked to be pheasant and rabbit meat yet again. Apparently, they were incredibly abundant in this forest, even though he's never seen one himself. And besides, how could these creatures even move through such dense underbrush? He tried asking Trasnu once, but the old man looked so surprised, as if the question was so obviously stupid that nobody in living history has ever asked it before. Aaron felt that the old man's view of him lessened quite a bit after that. Anyway, he just chalked all of the mystery up to the Hunter's instinct and skills - which must be really incredible, since he's been hunting with rocks all these time.

"You say the strangest things, sometimes."

"Hah, coming from you!" Trasnu punctuated his words with a flick of his hand, launching a circular object into the air. It caught the light of the fire and gleamed crazily. Trasnu sat down and then snatched the spinning object out of the air. He nonchalantly began positioning the meat close to the fire.

Aaron rolled his eyes at the display, but couldn't resist the obvious ploy to gain his attention. "Show off. What's that?"

"Which one?" Trasnu tried to act ignorant, but chuckled when he saw the boy look at him with a longsuffering expression. "This," He deftly rolled the object with his knuckles, and presented it in his open palm with a flourish, "Is something that we completely and absolutely forgot about. Take a look!"

With that, Trasnu tossed the object towards him, the large, flat object spinning as it arced gracefully in the air. Not quite as skillful as the Rakan beastman, he fumbled with his two hands before he managed to secure it. "Thank you," He glared at the grinning Trasnu.

The object was a perfectly-cut, flat circle, about an inch thick. It was unnaturally light for what should be quite hefty. The smooth edges fit perfectly within his palm. What amazed him the moment he laid his hands on it was the recognition that the object was made of - or at least incased in - glass. It glinted in the early morning sunlight, the complete reflection of the light bouncing off its surface immediately giving Aaron a nostalgic feeling. It occurred to him that it was something that he wouldn't find out of place in the modern world.

He turned it this way and that, examining the strange trinket. It looked to simply be a black circle, encased in glass.

"Turn it around." Trasnu instructed him. He flipped it.

His brain took several moments to process what he was seeing. And then he was instinctively throwing the object to the ground in surprise. It fell straight into the unsuspecting campfire, throwing up an explosion of cinders at the impact. Not even an instant later, Trasnu's inhumanly fast hand blurred towards the fire, and then the thing was back in his hands like magic.

Aaron couldn't decide on which he should be more surprised about; how Trasnu casually snatched the object out of its fiery resting place, or the fact that there was an honest-to-goodness finger embedded in the glass.

Because that's what it was. There was a gnarled, blackened, sharp-nailed stump of a finger, removed at the first joint, resting right in the middle in the piece of circle glass as if it was the only place for it to be. Aaron stared wide-eyed at Trasnu, a look of utter confusion on his face. Trasnu laughed at him.

"I knew it! You and the honored Serche have the same problem!" He chided, at least as soon as he got his breath back, "You are like a human machine. You have these intricate gears, these itty-bitty parts - and they work fine for a while, make no mistake. But then throw a twig at 'em and then they get stuck pretty easily. Now, a vine. See, there's a real way to think. A vine just grows over everything, climbing over everything - every inch of obstacle becoming another inch of foothold, ever-evolving and ever-adapting; swallowing everything in its path.

You, my dear master, should think like a vine!" Trasnu finished his spiel with a flourish, his arms thrown wide as if indicating the forest all around him - which was, indeed, thick with vines.

"Damn, Trasnu, it's too early in the morning for that sort of thing - and my head started hurting halfway through that shit. Aren't you supposed to be telling me what that is?"

Trasnu initially gave a long-suffering sigh from his heartfelt advice summarily dismissed. He perked up, however, as he started to give a showman's account of what had led up to their group possessing the strange object. Aaron absorbed it all with unconscious, wide-eyed wonder, captivated by Trasnu's manner of storytelling. The old man used his whole body to tell a story, the speed by which his limbs moved setting the tone, every meaningful twitch of his tail and flick of his ears seeming to convey something just out of reach - until he would say something to complete the meaning. Aaron felt like a child again, sitting with his knees bunched together in the early morning campfire of the foggy rainforest.

"Oh, foolish thing. Have mercy on the child, old dog! He's eating it all up! It's too early for your kind of nonsense." Serche interrupted, her voice thick with sleep. She made her way to the campfire, her wild hair sticking out everywhere, passing a hand over her face. Meanwhile, Aaron not-so-subtly gawked at her form. What was once a body ravaged by ill health and near starvation had recovered tremendously even after just a few days of rest and proper nutrition, and what it revealed was a lean, deadly predator.

Her curves had filled out with flesh and muscles, revealing the gentle slopes of her hips. It struck him how statuesque she seemed with her shoulders, arms and thighs significantly developed. Serche's breasts looked quite adequate before, just a little bit over a handful - and now they were positively luscious, while her legs stretched down powerfully to support her recovering frame. Even her hair and fur seemed shiner, glinting with health under the morning light.

Aaron tried to just glance, he really did, but the moment he laid his eyes on that sunlit, silver vision, it became very difficult to look at anything else.

"Aww," Trasnu made a sound of disappointment, "You've gone and stolen the show. Now he won't listen to my story because he's so busy gawking at you."

"I am not." Aaron replied. He somehow found it within himself to keep a neutral facial expression as he turned away to look elsewhere, even as he felt the blush spread on his cheeks. He began to senselessly poke at the blazing fire.

He wasn't looking, but Serche spared him a small smirk. Her tail swished behind her ever so slightly, her ears standing ever so straighter on the top of her head. Such gestures didn't go unnoticed by Trasnu, who still took a somewhat lighthearted affront to the interruption her arrival caused. "Well? Is your spirit so callous that you aren't going to give this old man an apology?"

Serche rolled her eyes as she settled down a little bit on Aaron's left by the fire, amusedly noting that the young man studiously avoided looking in her general direction. "There's nothing to apologize for. What you were telling him were utter lies. You did not fight off five packs of evil wolves all by yourself."

"What! Are you calling me a liar?"

"Yes I am." She turned to Aaron, who was smiling at their lighthearted banter. "Let me tell you what really happened, master.

After you fell unconscious due to that injury, we had to carry you through the forest."

This came as a shock to Aaron, whose mind immediately jumped to his own experience with the god-forsaken terrain. It dawned on him how much of a hardship it must have been, but before he could interrupt the woman continued with her story. It just got worse from there. By the time her narrative took them to the events leading to the appearance of what she called the Scarred Thing (whom Trasnu called 'our ugly friend'), Aaron's jaw was brushing the forest floor and drool was dripping out of it.

"Holy shit. Wow, I don't even know where to begin! That's just- and you think you owe me? You've been saving my life several times over since we met!"

"Well, of course. But that only happened because you saved us first."

"What? That doesn't even make se-"

"Breakfast is ready!" Trasnu interrupted, sensing a long and entirely predictable back-and-forth from the scenario.

"I'll wake the small one." Serche volunteered, extricating herself from Aaron's astonished arguing.

The young man huffed at Serche's escape, Trasnu's gaze meticulously avoiding his as the old beastman puttered about the fire. He brought out the simple handcrafted, wooden utensils that the pair had made. The past three days may have been for rest and recuperation, but the Rakan beastmen hadn't been idle with their hands.

Lydia stumbled by the fire, yawning and rubbing her eyes. Her hair stuck out every which way, reminding Aaron of a small, flickering candle. He smiled at the young woman as she wordlessly snuggled on his right side by the fire, boldly making use of his vacant arm and wrapping it around her. "Cold," She murmured, long lashes still droopy from sleep. "Hungry."

Aaron chuckled and hugged her tight, rubbing her arms, his previous worries about past events dissipating for a while. Hot, freshly cooked food was passed around, having a better place to be other than in their hands. He could tell even Serche was proud of the things, the plates were perfectly round and smooth, and all four of them looked uniform enough that they could have come out of a factory. It amazed him to no end to see them being made, a combination of sharpened stones, magic, and simple determination produced six plates and four cups of excellent wooden quality in less than two days.

The young man hadn't realized how inconvenient eating with his bare hands was until he had the utensils, and he now had a place to put the roasted meat-and-vegetables combo, and even a place to secure a handful of dessert berries and fruits before others could claim them. There was even a crude table, sitting just a little bit to the side of the fire. It lifted a foot off the ground, made of a log that they managed to somehow split with the aforementioned sharpened stones and propped up by thick branches held together with tough vines. It was crude, and functioned more as a place to put the food on rather than an actual eating place, but he wouldn't have ever dreamed of creating such things if a knife was held at his throat.

Now that he thought about it, their camp life had improved considerably from their near-death through the run'an. They had a steady supply of crystal clean mountain water from the rapidly flowing river just shy of five minutes' walk from their camp, and a safe, rocky spot a little further downstream for baths. Their shelter had upgraded from a large, hollowed out trunk into actual lean-tos, propped up with strong wood and covered with fresh leaves and sprigs, held together with tough vines. There were three leafy huts, as Aaron called them in his mind, and both Aaron and Lydia shared the one closest to the fire, with Serche's a little bit behind and to the right. Trasnu's was supposed to be on the opposite side of the young 'uns, but as far as Aaron knew the Rakan hunter preferred to sleep on the branches of trees, and kind of used his hut as a storage place for various odds and ends.

It was a very simple way of life for the past three days, consumed as they were with recuperating from their injuries, securing their shelter and raising their standard of living. It was a relief to both Aaron and Lydia, but he could tell that both Rakan beastmen actually needed the time-off on deeper levels. It took him one strange early morning sight of Serche to realize that.

He was in the process of sleepily untangling himself from Lydia's embrace on account of a bursting bladder. The darkness was just beginning to fade, and their hut was just close enough to the campfire for Aaron to notice the woman's figure in the early morning light. Serche stood mutely over an extinguished, smoking campfire, close enough so that he could note details of the woman's actions. How her ears stood straight on the top of her head, how her tail shot rigidly out from her. She was looking around the area slowly, warily, as if trying to identify a hidden threat and memorize every detail of their crude camp at the same time.

Suddenly, she bolted. The motion was so inhumanly quick that it made him jump a little bit in surprise. The urgency in her actions alarmed him, and he could plainly hear her crashing through the underbrush, so unlike her graceful, stealthy manner. He hurriedly straitened himself out and was in the process of crawling out of his hut when Serche strolled back into his field of view. She was panting, the action so reminiscent of a canine, and it appeared as though her mouth was grinning wide - but tears were also falling down her face, and she was wiping them unconsciously with the back of her hand. After that, she dropped down to the campfire and stoked it back into life.

It puzzled him, rooting him into his awkward spot, until the answer struck him like a bolt of lightning. Serche hadn't been free in so long. The concept hadn't really sunk in until that moment. He had just witnessed Serche's private, childish urge to revel in her newfound freedom.

He hadn't really thought what it must have been like, until then. He laid back in his bed of fresh leaves and ignored his throbbing bladder. When he couldn't take it anymore after half an hour or so, he hurried outside. On his way back, Serche greeted him with a small smile and a nod as she lazed in front of the crackling fire. Something about her looked at peace.

"... What do you think, Master?" A voice pierced into his reverie.

"Aww, look at him! He isn't listening. He's wagging his tail thinking about your voluptuous, oh-so-visible body, Serche." Aaron heard Trasnu sigh mockingly.

"I am not." Came Aaron's rote reply, immediately squirming in discomfort. He accidentally met Lydia's eyes and the small woman smirked at him, her knowing, lava-hued eyes shining with mischief.

"Well, what were we talking about, then?" Trasnu delightedly asked him.

The young man struggled to think through the snippets of conversations that pierced his preoccupied brain. "We were talking about... The food supply. Storage. And what we ought to do from here."

Trasnu huffed, disappointed that Aaron was actually paying half a mind and that he couldn't tease the dreaming young man anymore. "Well, yes. And your answer?"

"Which part should I answer first?"

Trasnu stared at him. Aaron swallowed, suddenly pressured. He wracked his brain for an adequate answer. What should they be doing now? "Before anything else, we have to be ready." He voiced his thoughts out loud, taking his time. "We need to gather supplies, like food and clothing, as soon as we can. The forest seems to be in a good condition right now, but I gather that can change very soon."

"Prudent." Trasnu agreed "But are we to stay in this forest forever? Have we no other places to go?"

"The invitation." Serche realized. "No, not invitation. The command - the Queen, as the Scarred Thing called her. She bade us come to her in exchange for our safety from the Forest."

"This is the first I'm hearing of this, Serche." The Hunter spoke seriously, levelling his gaze at the young woman.

"I must admit that I forgot. We have been otherwise... occupied. What with diving head-first into night stories and not dying."

"Very well." Trasnu nodded in understanding "What of this invitation?"

"'The debt is paid. The Queen awaits' It told me, right before it... vanished." Serche relayed to them the happenings of that day, how the Scarred Thing intervened and saved them from sure death, and how it spoke of pointing the way, of ensuring their travels, and ensuring their life.

Aaron took the round object from Trasnu. "This is supposed to point the way? Well, it could be some sort of compass, but the finger isn't really doing any pointing, as far as I can tell."

"What is a compass?" Trasnu asked politely.

"Oh, it's a device back in my world. It sort of appears like this, only with a needle suspended inside instead of a... finger. It's used for travelling, as a point of reference, because the needle always points to true north."

"Always points north, you say." Serche took the object, thoughtfully turning it over in her palm. Operating on a hunch, she slowly, gently infused it with magical energy. The finger swiveled unceremoniously, as if orienting itself, before it settled on pointing towards a sure direction. Serche grinned at the group as the rest looked on in wonder.