5: Wildsoul

The moons witnessed their return to the albino bear’s den.

Batu stepped forward, Ata tailing his step. Leiyn remained at the periphery of the clearing with the others. She had brought her longbow, but kept it slung over her shoulder. Threatening overtures would only hamper their efforts.

The former plainsrider stopped several steps from the cave entrance. He wore one of the few sets of ordinary clothes they possessed at Ata’s advice. Being deprived of his Eteman garments made him all the more vulnerable.

Her misgivings grew with every moment. Only the dryvan behind him kept Leiyn from pressing forward. She had seen how swiftly Ata could move when need required.

He’s safe. Trust them.

As they waited, she wondered what Isla would have thought of this. Would she have approved of Batu embracing his tainted blood or shared Leiyn’s fears? She felt within her for the sparks of her mother and Zuma, warm coals among her lifefire. If only she had been able to claim a piece of Isla before she slipped away, perhaps she would have known.

But she had not. Isla could not guide her or Batu any longer. They decided their own fates.

The bear was not long in coming. His bright presence had roused at their arrival, yet he emerged from the cave at a slow saunter. Unconcerned by the beings intruding on his territory. Unthreatened, she could only hope.

His amaranth eyes flickered over their party, his gaze lingering on Ata, then coming to a rest on Batu. With measured steps, the moonbear approached the plainsrider, every stride a reminder of his considerable bulk. The spirit beast’s lifefire was unlike any Leiyn had witnessed before. Colorless and translucent, it made the bear seem more phantom than animal.

Batu advanced on the bear as well. Slowly, he raised a hand. Leiyn clenched her hands into fists and pitted her will against her instincts. The others tensed beside her. Ketti and Ekosa twitched with nerves. Teya’s posture remained relaxed, but her esse stirred with readiness, cerulean flames flicking outside her body as she extended her lifesense.

Only Ata defied the atmosphere. Examining a talon, she picked at it with all the fastidiousness of a chickadee cleaning its nest.

Bear and man neared each other. Batu’s hand hovered next to the albino’s snout.

He pressed it down.

The moonbear flinched. Its lips parted to reveal yellowed teeth. A rumbling growl worked up from its belly to fill the glade.

It took all of Leiyn’s will to remain where she was.

Ata ceased to preen, but made no move forward. After several moments, the beast quieted and sealed its lips shut. Leiyn felt its spirit quest forward, translucent flames curling up and around Batu’s arm.

He stiffened as if the bear’s touch burned, but he did not retreat. Still as summer mountains, the plainsrider allowed the creature to explore him, within and without. The bear’s nose twitched as he sniffed him, his unnatural eyes boring into Batu. 

Leiyn barely saw the paw rise before it battered Batu to the ground.

She lunged forward, snarling, hands reaching for her weapons. But someone had thrown their arms around her to hold her back.

“Stop!” Teya hissed in Leiyn’s ear. “Remember what Ata said? This is a test!”

“It’s killing him!” Drawing on the amber beads at her hip for a spurt of a strength, Leiyn threw off the scout and slipped her longbow into hand.

But she paused at Ata’s gaze from across the clearing. The dryvan had not moved from her position, but she no longer stood in repose.

“Observe, Awakener,” the dryvan commanded her.

Leiyn looked back to the scene, stomach twisting. Man and beast circled one another, Batu having regained his feet. Her friend was bleeding from a trio of tears in his shoulder, but he scarcely seemed to notice. His axe he had left with Ekosa, so he faced his adversary empty-handed.

He’s going to die.

“Leiyn,” Ata cautioned again. “Do not interfere.”

Batu flickered his eyes toward her, emphasizing the Iritu’s words.

Only at that look did Leiyn subside. Lowering her bow, she watched, foreboding churning her stomach. A volcano simmering, waiting to erupt.

The spirit beast rumbled again, then lumbered forward before rising onto its hind legs. Batu dodged its swiping paws, then threw himself against it. Even catching it blindsided, his shove had no effect; it outweighed him by far too much.

The moonbear roared again as it collapsed upon him, driving him to the ground.

No! Every part of Leiyn yearned to leap forward. She only realized she raised her bow again when Teya’s hand arrested it. Once more, Leiyn relented, striving against her every instinct. Fighting down the fear.

Cage it.

The monstrous creature had Batu pinned. One great paw pressed down on the plainsrider’s chest, crushing him. Yet Batu struggled on. His hands on its leg, he pushed against it. His face, littered with scrapes and cuts, was a mask of resolve as he kicked and bucked. 

Futile, all of it.

She was losing him. Watching him die. Letting him. Her bow tried coming up on its own.

Teya pushed it back down.

The moonbear lowered its broad face to loom over Batu, its snout inches away. Its lips parted so it slavered over him. Another moment, and it would sink its teeth into his face, kill him and devour him in front of them.

But it did not. Instead, their boundaries bled away.

In contrast to the moments before, this sharing was as gentle as the first exchange she had observed. Batu’s sage lifefire and the moonbear’s pale flames twisted together, melding into a ghostly green. More and more of himself, he yielded to the spirit beast.

They were becoming one.

Instead of her fears waxing, relief washed through her. The moonbear would not kill him. Batu had passed its test. Not to overcome it, but to display just as fierce a spirit.

At last, fear gave way to curiosity.

She wondered how this merging felt. Was it as natural as her bonding with Clouded Fang, powerful and true? Or more like Chispa’s soft comfort? When she embraced her mahia, she had exposed herself to all it could offer. But this went beyond anything she would experience.

Teya pressed tighter on her arm. A warning.

Leiyn blinked, reasserting her vision. Lost in lifesense, she only then realized what the former scout already had.

Batu was changing shape.

The bonding did not stop at their spirits. Like Chispa with Ata, the two joined in body as well. Where the bear’s paw pressed on Batu’s chest, its fur and flesh flowed over him, like sap melting down a tree trunk on a blistering summer day.

She recoiled even as it captured her fascination.

Batu’s skin bulged, then pale fur burst from it. His muscles rippled and swelled, tearing through his ragged clothes. Her friend threw back his head, face twisted with agony. The transition was not devoid of pain.

Yet this was what he wanted. To follow this through. She had no choice but to accept it.

More and more of the moonbear went into him. Following the paw and leg, it sank in at the shoulder; then the rest followed, deflating the massive form like a doll deprived of its filling. Batu grew as he absorbed it, writhing and moaning all the while. He lengthened and broadened until he rivaled the bear’s size.

How long they watched, she could not say. But it seemed a long time later that it was finally done. For a moment, the clearing lay quiet. Leiyn stared at what had become of her friend. He lay, mutated and exhausted, on the moist ground. The pale fur covering him had gone dark in places; from blood or dirt, she could not tell.

Then he roused and flipped onto his hands and feet that had transformed into elongated paws. Rising on his hind legs, he loomed over them, twice as tall as Leiyn. Batu’s brown eyes were tinged pink as they peered over their group, small amid his expanded face. Some of the human she knew remained in his features, the shape and suggestion of them. 

But it was a beast that looked down upon them.

Batu threw back his head and bellowed. Leiyn retreated a step with the others, then held her ground. She had to believe Batu was still in there. That he would never hurt them.

Her friend fell to all fours and observed them again. Then, moving at a swift lumbering lope, he fled into the jungle.

They listened until his crashing faded from hearing before any spoke. Ketti muttered something under her breath in the same manner as devout Omnists warded off evil spirits. Teya was more explicit with her curses.

“Gresht! I do not know what I expected, but it was not that.”

Leiyn shook her head in silent agreement. Part of her followed Batu’s flight through the dense forest, her lifesense easily tracking his progress.

Ata smiled imperiously as she sauntered back to them. “He’ll be at it until the moons set. A bit like the ‘teething’ you mortals go through. Has to sort out the snags and twists.” She rolled her head around at an exaggerated angle as if to work out kinks in her neck. “No need to wait here. He will find us when he is ready.”

“He’ll be safe?” Formidable as he now appeared, Leiyn doubted Batu could take on a lyshan alone. Especially not when he was still unpracticed in this new form.

“Safe as any of us.” The feathers fluttered on the dryvan’s shoulders with her shrug.

Teya pressed a hand to Leiyn’s back, guiding her down the path by which they had arrived. “You cannot protect him from this,” she murmured. “Come. Let us wait where it is warmer.”

With a last look after Batu, her friend growing more distant by the minute, Leiyn sighed and turned away.