Blood Shaper

Kay held his hand in front of the ball on his neck, and Murunel immediately stopped talking. After she’d managed to stop crying in a combination of relief and joy the night before, the dragon had turned into quite the chatterbox. Forty years of not being able to talk were coming out all at once, not that Kay or Eleniah had a problem with it. Just being able to speak to someone had turned Murunel’s mood around considerably.

Thankfully, as Kay scanned the environment around him, looking for Eleniah’s ambush, she was perfectly fine with shutting up when it was needed.

Something had made Kay’s burgeoning instincts sit up and take notice, and he tried to pick up what his subconscious had noticed. After a couple of minutes had passed without him noticing anything, in particular, he cursed and started walking forward again. A few more seconds passed, and the attack he expected when he let his guard down didn’t occur.

“Alright,” He tapped Murunel’s sphere once, “Either that was a false alarm, or she was there; I missed her, and she’s waiting for another opportunity.”

“Mmmm.” Murunel made a noncommittal noise, and Kay chuckled.

After some discussion, it had been decided that Murunel would ride with Kay while they traveled since she wanted to talk, and Eleniah would need quiet to sneak up on Kay. She’d insisted, however, that Murunel couldn’t help Kay with the actual training part, so if Murunel had seen something, she wasn’t saying anything.

Eleniah also thought it would be good for him to have something else to focus on other than expecting ambushes. Having to watch out for attacks and talk to Murunel would hopefully up the difficulty a little in a way that would make it better training.

“Anyway, I think it’s a little weird that we found the exact item we’d need to free you in a bunch of stuff stolen from a Nelamian group when you were imprisoned by a Nelamian noble.” Kay continued their previous conversation as he scrambled up a dirt slope.

“I don’t care!” Murunel replied cheerfully.

Kay looked down at her in surprise, then started laughing. “No, I guess you really wouldn’t, would you?”

“Nope! I just want out!”

Kay laughed again as he pulled himself back to his feet at the top of the slope. Looking out into the practical sea of massive trees in front of him, he sighed. “What the hell should I even be doing out here?”

“What do you mean?” Murunel spun around to look up at his face.

The angle to look straight down at her hurt his neck, so he picked up the necklace and let it hang in front of his face. “I’m supposedly the leader of our little band now, right? So I thought I should have a goal. Something to look for or head towards, instead of just wandering at random looking for nonspecific adventure.” He gestured at the view in front of them. “But this is unexplored territory. I have no idea what’s out there besides a forest that goes as far as I can see. So what kind of goal should I set?”

“I have two ideas!”

Kay smiled at the cheerful tone she had. He’d thought it many times today, but he was impressed by Murunel’s resilience. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to deal as well with the situation she was in, and the way her spirits were lifted by the simple act of being able to communicate reliably showed how tough she was mentally. “What are they?”

“Something interesting and a place to set up a good base!”

“Okay, the first one is really broad, and I’m not sure if I know what the other one would look like.”

“Well, of course, it’s broad!” She rotated around to face the same direction as him and spread her arms out, “We have no idea what’s out here! So we look for anything interesting at all! A Dungeon, ruins, a tree bigger than the rest, a cool resource, a big monster to kill, a mysterious magical item that we don’t know how it ended up here, anything!”

Kay smacked at a bug that landed on his neck. “Okay, so we look for interesting things. That doesn’t really help with a direction, though.”

“Do you think explorers have detailed plans of what they’re going to do? No! They react to their circumstances! Walk onward, brave adventurer, into the unknown! Search the unexplored, see that which has yet to be seen! Go find cool stuff!”

Kay laughed again. Murunel was fun. “Is one of your classes Poet?”

“Nah, but my older sister is. I learned how to talk all awesome sounding from her.”

Kay started looking for a good way down. He’d made his way to the top of this hill to get a good view of the area, but he’d only seen trees, trees, and more trees. The face of the hill in the direction they were going seemed a little dangerous to go down, what with the sharp-looking rocks and multiple drops. “I think we need to backtrack and go around now.”

“You’re the person doing all the moving; I’m just a passenger.”

“Not forever, though.” Kay started slowly lowering himself down the same slop he’d just climbed up a little while ago.

“Yeah, but I have wings! Who walks when they can fly?”

He brushed the dirt off his pants. “I meant that I would be the passenger then.”

“You think I’ll let you ride me? Keep dreaming. You’ve got to earn a Dragon Rider class.”

“There are Dragon Rider classes? That’s so cool! Do you just have to-”

A burst of movement from the edge of Kay’s vision had him drawing his halberd and jumping back. He’d been practicing getting his weapons ready as quickly as possible when he had the time, and there weren’t enough trees to hinder the longer weapon.

Eleniah swept towards him, her body held low to the ground as she dashed towards him.

Kay had a moment of relief that he wasn’t getting taken to the ground with total surprise like she’d gotten him a few hours ago, then she was on him. He slashed at her from the side, and she jerked back. The ‘combat’ became Kay trying to hit her with various attacks and her dodging easily. He managed to hold her off for a few seconds, though, and that was what he’d been hoping for.

Murunel wasn’t allowed to help him spot any ambushes, but she was still a good source of advice for dealing with them. The few drops of blood he’d spread under the cap of his enchanted canteen pushed it open, and blood flowed to hover next to Kay. Eleniah saw the tides turning; as little as this would affect actual combat, it would make their training session a lot easier for Kay, and she charged.

Forgoing the time needed to make a real attack, Kay just sprayed blood at her face, trying to blind her. She quickly got her hand up to block the stream of liquid, but it made an opening for Kay to take several steps back. He started throwing blades and needles made of blood at his opponent as he backed up, using the number and variety of attacks to hold his would-be abductor at bay as he ‘escaped’.

“Alright!” Eleniah called out, and he stopped his attacks.

She lowered her arms and looked at him appraisingly. “That was good.” She went to shake the blood of her arms, then stopped and gestured at him.

Kay gathered up all the blood he could and sent it back into his canteen.

When she was clean again, Eleniah walked over. “So you were actually paying attention to some of my lessons.” Her appraising expression turned into a glare, “Which makes your absolute failure to use them earlier even more of a problem.”

“Maybe I just learned really quickly today?”

She snorted and shook her head at him. “I’m mostly kidding. We still need to work on spotting ambushes, though. You managed to defend yourself when I attacked this time, but I gave you three opportunities where you could have spotted me if you had been looking in the right place, and you definitely should have seen me approaching before I cleared that brush.” She pointed at where she’d just sprung from.

They went over all the places she’d purposefully made herself visible, as well as the places Kay had stopped because he thought he’d noticed something. She asked about his thought process for the decisions he’d made and went over the different ways he could improve the decisions he’d made and the actual execution of his choices.

Eleniah grabbed his shoulder and squeezed it when they’d finished. “In total, though, that was good. You’re one for two for your first day. Keep it up.”

“Good job, Kay!” Murunel cheered.

He grinned and patted her sphere. “Thanks.”

“Now then, which way are we going, leader?” Eleniah asked.

“Well, I went up there to try and get a better view, but it’s more forest for as far as I can see from here. There might be some mountains off that way and that way,” He pointed in two directions about forty-five degrees apart, “But I’m not one hundred percent on that.”

“We can just go sort of between them and see if there’s anything cool we can see from a distance?” Murunel suggested.

Kay shrugged. “I don’t have any better ideas. Any direction is as good as any other at this point.” He glanced at his teacher. “Any suggestions, second in command?”

She chuckled and shook her head. “No, I haven’t seen anything worth checking out either.”

“Then we go that way!” Kay pointed straight through the hill. “Of course, we have to go around first and left looked easier from the top of it. So we go that way, then that way!”