4: Beyond Sight

Ata did not return the next day, nor the day after that. Leiyn tried filling the time as best she could. She kept up her martial training with Batu and Teya, practiced her mahia against Ketti and Ekosa. She reached out to Clouded Fang and formed grottos a dozen times over before she was satisfied their bond remained strong and accessible. She hunted for their meals and pretended to make merry around the nightly fire. She indulged in sketching, focusing on replicating the perfect lines of the flora and fauna around Haven. Driving out all other intrusive thoughts.

But her chest never loosened.

Her only relief was that Batu did not return to the bear's cave. He only bided his time, no doubt, but any delay was welcome. As she lay awake at night, she pictured all the ways bonding with the pale beast could go wrong.

But the more she sat with it, the less she could justify her resistance. Only the plainsrider neglecting to mention it kept her from having to confront it again.

The third day finally saw Ata’s appearance.

The dryvan came in the middle of the afternoon while Leiyn and Ekosa were out fetching water. Even amid a city, the dryvan would have been difficult to miss, and neither she nor the eesu could fail to notice her blazing into being in the quiet glade. Loading up Feral with the filled waterskins, they hurried back to Haven.

The others were still gathering around when Leiyn and Ekosa arrived. Depositing their loads in a corner of the central chamber, they joined the others. Ata looked no worse for wear from her journey. Scars marred her face and body, marks from their recent encounters with lyshans—most notably the eye taken by Khamo, the armored devil who had nearly done them all in. Leiyn had never extracted a straight answer from the Iritu on whether she kept the scars intentionally or if she truly could not heal them. If any crossed Ata’s chest, they were hidden by Chispa’s silver fur. Each time she ventured out, the spirit fox went with her, allowing her to reenter Haven without Ketti or Leiyn’s intercession.

“Much the same as before,” Ata was saying. “Suncoats burrowing in along the coast, stranded and desperate. Your consul trying to secure his borders. Conflict between the colonies.” She waved one elongated hand, her eyes—one white and blind, the other chartreuse green—traveling to Leiyn. “Rebellion things, as you’d expect.”

She tightened her jaw at that. Once, she had dedicated her life to Baltesia. Protecting its borders, its people. That was a ranger’s duty, and she’d embraced it wholeheartedly.

No more.

Their “secessionary conflict,” as Lord Consul Mauricio had once termed it, meant little to her now. That war was the lesser one next to the greater struggle against Sharo and his allies. A distraction from broader stakes. The continued existence of humanity trumped any other concerns.

And Baltesia was no longer her home. Its leader had betrayed her.

As you betrayed him.

Leiyn pulled her thoughts back from the brink. Follow that thread down and the despair she’d fought against for the past season would swallow her down again. She needed to rise above it, now more than ever.

“What of Sharo?” Leiyn interjected. “Any leads on the bastard?”

Ata cocked her head, a tilt too far to be natural. “No. Not yet.”

Her chest ached with fire; frustration coated her tongue like ash. She swallowed it back down. Better she burn than hurt those undeserving.

“And a way across?” Teya asked from the opposite side of the circle. By the way her eyes caught on Leiyn, her frustration hadn’t gone unnoticed.

The dryvan started to answer when she shuddered and pressed a hand to her chest. Leiyn tensed with instinctual fear as her esse grew fever-bright, but relaxed as a creature took shape from her. To her eyes, it was a baffling sight. Silver fur peeled from Ata’s skin to ravel into a snout, then a head, then the fox’s lithe body.

The transformation might have been grotesque but for her mahia. Through Leiyn’s lifesense, it was a dazzling transition. One lifefire separated into two, the characteristics of each diverging, the individual flames dimming.

In moments, Chispa hopped lightly to the ground, then pranced over to nestle against Leiyn’s leg.

Even at her lowest, the fox could bring out a smile. Leiyn kneeled and ran a hand along him from head to tail. As ever in grottos, his coat resembled meadowgrass, yet remained soft to the touch. She reveled in the nudge of his esse against hers, as warm as a friend’s embrace.

“Hello there, little one,” she murmured as she looked down into his apricot eyes. “Glad you’re safe.”

He watched her a moment longer before giving her a final nudge, then racing down the ramp.

Rising, she looked up to see the others smiling. She wondered how long it had been since she had truly smiled. Not since Chispa last left, most likely. But as she remembered the topic at hand, it slipped away.

“You were saying?” Leiyn prompted Ata.

“Ah, yes—a path to your so-called Ancestral Lands.” The dryvan tapped a claw to her chin, which made an odd thudding sound against her wooden flesh. “For you mortals, a ship from Altan Gaz remains your most promising avenue. Braving the northern wastes would not be comfortable, I think.” She flashed them a mouthful of teeth, sharp even without Chispa’s influence.

“That is no more than we knew before,” Ketti pointed out.

“No. But as I explored the desolation of that city, Breakbay, a thought occurred to me. You might take a marine Vast One instead.”

Leiyn frowned at the thought. Ride atop a titan? Breakbay was dangerous enough without that dubious goal. Overrun by titans during the Titan War against the Gasts, the Ilberian port had been abandoned to the colossal creatures ever since.

Teya seemed to share her thoughts. Crossing her arms, she shook her head. “I know Ketti accomplished this before, but she nearly drowned on that whale. Those without semah would fare poorly, I think.”

No one looked at Batu, but Leiyn knew as well as any of them who the former situal referenced.

“Not as I am,” Batu said stoically. “But as a wildsoul, I might endure it.”

She should have seen it coming. Too late, she saw the inevitability of the topic’s resurgence.

“No.” Leiyn stepped forward. “We’re not doing this again.”

“Leiyn,” Teya interceded, warning in her voice.

She kept her eyes on Batu. Once, he would have crumpled under her withering look. Now, the plainsrider met it with an unflinching stare.

“Oh-ho,” Ata breathed, her mismatched eyes sliding from one person to the next. “So we have finally come at this.” The dryvan turned to Batu and sniffed, then grinned. “You have been to the moonbear! Let me guess—our little fox here followed you to its den?”

Moonbear. A fitting name for the beast. Leiyn grimaced, but she did not look away. “Someone had to.”

Batu’s glower made his thoughts clear on the matter.

“Everyone,” Ekosa said, his hands raised, “please, let us discuss this calmly. We are allies, no? It would be better not to leap at each others’ throats.”

“I agree,” Teya said lightly. “Besides, we have more important matters to discuss. Such as how Batu came to choose a bear for his spirit beast when it is also his lifemark. A bit obvious, no?”

Their companions chuckled half-heartedly. Batu’s expression lightened to a margin less thunderous.

“I don’t know that I chose him,” the plainsrider murmured, “so much as he chose me.”

Leiyn did not smile with the others. Sucking down a breath, she let it out in a ragged stream. Fear and anger continued to spawn ice and fire throughout her body.

Cage it, lion cub.

“It’s dangerous,” she said with forced calm. “None of us know what will come of it. Bonding with a titan can be fatal. The same might prove true of…wildsouls and spirit beasts.”

Using that term, “wildsoul,” felt as if it legitimized something best forgotten. But Batu deserved better than her deriding his heritage. She had to make concessions. Only then could she convince him not to return to the moonbear’s den.

But what could she concede without losing him?

“Undoubtedly. But, my friend, you forget to whom you speak.” Ata tossed her head, and the blossoms tipping her vineyard hair released a shimmer of pollen. “I’m rather an authority on our shared Inheritance and transformations. The joining will not be bloodless. The little wildling may be required to prove himself to the beast. But he shall come to no true harm under my guidance. So long as you still wish to try it?” 

This last question Ata posed to Batu. Leiyn turned back to Batu to find his gaze still trained on her.

“I do,” he answered. No hesitation.

Cage it.

Only then did Leiyn realize the true source of her fear. Of course, she wanted no harm to come to Batu, but it was more than that. Change—she feared him changing. Becoming a person she no longer recognized.

She feared him seeking revenge.

Hypocrisy, in another’s eyes, yet she had more authority than most on the matter. Who better to understand its perilous pursuit, its scant fulfillment? Even as she longed to make Sharo pay for all he had done, vengeance was no longer her master. Hope for a better life, a better world—that was why she still fought.

Rage cut both ways. It had forged her into a weapon her enemies feared. But you could only bleed for so long before it hollowed you.

Before her companions’ gazes, however, Leiyn could find no way to express what she’d learned. They were lessons only experience could teach him. The best she could do was pull Batu back lest he tip over the edge of the abyss.

“We cannot delay anymore,” she spoke into the silence that had fallen. “We have to press on and find Sharo. If Batu needs to do this, I won’t stand in his way. But we must do it tonight.”

Batu stared at her, his brow furrowed. Almost, she thought she detected a flicker of fear in his eyes. The others seemed similarly off-kilter, though they recovered quickly.

“Tonight.” Ata nodded with rare solemnity. “Tonight, Batu Kinblood shall become a true wildsoul.”