Not many predators around the area were motivated enough to face a Quillhusk’s spikes or bother cracking its shell. It probably didn’t taste good anyway. And so, it had learned to fear nothing. Except humans.

  The Quillhusk stopped eating as Elian neared. Given its size, it was old for its kind. It should know that the odd bipedal creatures occasionally wandering in the forest were dangerous.

  Elian crouched low as he shielded the front of his body with the steel of his armguards, peering over them as he moved. A helmet protected his head. Ninety-nine percent sure the Quillhusk couldn’t penetrate his skin, but it was prudent to be cautious—he shouldn’t forget that no matter how tanky he’d get. If the Quillhusk’s spikes did puncture his flesh and inject toxins into his bloodstream, he’d be paralyzed for hours. A giant bug wasn’t getting the better of him.

  Clouds swirled, hastening the darkness as he prepared to call for a Tribulation.

  He stopped. There was that eerie sensation again. Someone was looking at him. A predator?

  “Where—?”

  The Quillhusk sauntered forward and lowered its front legs to level its spikes at Elian. It fired with a forward wave of its back. Elian charged into the blanket of spikes, bowing his head to make his profile smaller. Most spikes dinged off his armguards and helmet; others hit his legs, poking holes in his pants but not piercing his skin. They fell off as he continued to run.

  “Chocolate ice cream Tribulation!” Elian grabbed the Quillhusk’s head from below, propped it on his shoulder, and pushed up the front half of the giant bug above him. Felt like he was lifting a sack of potatoes, potatoes made of iron, because he didn’t have anything boosting his strength.

  Blue flash. A tremendous slam. The impact was noticeably stronger than yesterday.

  He felt the roof of his helmet cave down on his head. His pose wasn’t stable, leaning too far forward. The Tribulation forced him to his hands and knees as the Quillhusk fell on him. His joints and muscles complained. The sharp edges of the Quillhusk’s exoskeleton dug into his back. Cracking shells popped like gunshots.

  And the second Tribulation descended.

  Elian was more stable on all fours. He clenched his teeth and tensed his body as he got hammered again. More cracks above him. Add in wet pops this time. He felt warm liquid cover his back—the soft inside of the Quillhusk burst out of its destroyed exoskeleton and oozed all over him.

  “A level up,” Elian said, spitting out the purple goo covering his head. The options for the reward floated in front of him, six white balls with symbols. It was almost second nature to choose Attack Power and Health. “I’m going to smell awful when I—”

  A scream. A woman’s voice.

  The hell? Elian scrambled out of the Quillhusk’s organic wreckage and scanned the trees. Who was that? There was no one.

  A slight movement to his left. Moving grass. He scooped some goop stuck on him and threw it that way.

  The handful of disgustingness stopped midair with a splat. It hit something invisible.

  “Ugh, gross!” The voice again. Branches and blades of grass bent aside as the invisible woman continued to flee. The goop was falling. No, she was wiping it off.

  Elian ran after her, catapulting more squished remains of the Quillhusk. She yelped as she got hit a couple more times. The floating globs of flesh went down; the invisible woman must’ve stumbled. Elian found an area of depressed grass, a mini-crop circle with a humanoid outline.

  “I’m sorry for spying on you, Elian,” said a voice that he recognized. “Don’t hurt me. I swear not to speak of anything I saw. In truth, I didn’t see anything because I had my eyes closed the entire—”

  “Jadewell? Is that you?”

  Jadewell shimmered into view, wearing a black cloak that matched her long black hair, accented by Quillhusk purple sludge. She held up a ring. “A ring of invisibility my family gave me for my protection. Very useless since I gave myself away.”

  “You’re certainly not using it for your protection,” Elian said, speculating various reasons why she was tailing him. She had seen his double-strike Tribulation. Did she understand its significance? “Why did you scream?”

  “Because I thought you died from the Tribulation.” Jade sat on the ground, scowling while she wiped goops off her clothes with clumps of grass. “It was also horrifying seeing the Quillhusk squished on top of you.”

  “And why did you run away?”

  “What was I supposed to do if you died? I don’t want to stay here and be mistaken as your murderer.”

  “No one’s going to think it’s your fault.” Elian gestured in the direction of the Quillhusk. “If I died back there, it’d be obvious a Tribulation was the cause. What if I was injured? You weren’t going to help me? Or if I really died, would you have reported it to—?”

  “An instantaneous impulse of mine. Are you going to judge me for it?” Jade got on her feet and regarded him with large defiant eyes with dark irises. Too dark. It was hard to take her very serious face seriously because she was more than a foot shorter than him and had a slight frame. “Many people would react the same way if they saw—or they think they saw a squelched blend of man and bug.”

  She gave up on her tough expression soon enough, wrinkling her nose and stepping back as she gagged. The Quillhusk did smell awful.

  Elian nonchalantly brushed bits of the giant bug off his crumpled helmet and flicked them away. He had endured much worse smells. Passing through a several-day-old battlefield, the stench of death and decay was incomparable.

  “Fair enough,” Elian said. “But why were you following me? Must’ve been you I sensed in town. I thought I was going to get robbed.”

  “You should answer that question.” Jadewell poked his chest. “Why are you following me?”

  “Flipping the story on me now?”

  “I know you’re hiding your Aether magic abilities, Elian Ward of Gilders, if that’s truly your name and origin. I see through your schemes.”

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “What are you talking about?” If Elian was given a thousand guesses on how his day would go, he wouldn’t have picked this. Could be hallucinations from too many Tribulations.

  “Spare me your innocence ploy. I saw you achieve Aethersense before me.” Elian was about to speak but Jadewell held up a finger. “Ah, no excuses! On our first day, I rested from meditating inside the Eyoneir Maghindr and checked how far along you and Thorren were. Imagine my surprise when I saw you controlling the Aether. You must be a prodigy or, likelier, you already have Aethersense in the first place.”

  “I didn’t have—”

  “Why would someone hide their Aethersense? Why would such a person travel to the Temples of Tribulation? The ideal course is to enroll in an actual Aether Magic school, say, Stoneholde Academy. Or maybe… he is a student of such a school and was ordered to spy on a certain someone.”

  This was the reason she was tailing him? “You can’t be seriously thinking that.”

  Jadewell placed her hands on her hips. “You showed up on the same day I did. Claiming a coincidence, are you? Save your words. Tell my family I’m not returning even though I’ve gained Aethersense. This is the path I chose.”

  “What are you saying?” Elian blinked, recalling the backstory Jadewell shared during class introductions. “All that talk about making your family’s school famous and following your grandfather’s footsteps was a lie?”

  “Of course! You know that… right?” Jadewell pursed her lips as she examined his eyes. Several seconds of silence. Her shoulders dropped. “Clouds of the Storm God… you’re not a spy sent by my family?”

  Elian shook his head.

  “I was wasting my time all along?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.” Elian stopped himself from laughing because Jadewell looked so pitiful.

  She slapped both her cheeks. “Supremely dumb. I always left class early because I thought you’d nab me and drag me back to Stoneholde. I could’ve made friends. I was supposed to make friends to start my new life.”

  “Sorry for—wait, I’m not apologizing. This is all your fault.”

  “I know, I know.” She sighed long, almost deflating. “I sincerely apologize, Elian. Burdens on my mind clouded my judgment. I’ve been so afraid that my family might—no, those issues are my own to deal with. I’m not making excuses for my behavior.”

  “I can’t say I understand your situation,” Elian said. “Because I don’t. And it’s probably best it stays that way. But there’s no lasting harm and—” He clenched his fists and swept the trees with his gaze. Eyes on him again. Hungry. Inhuman. This was different from Jadewell tailing him.

  “Is something wrong?” Jadewell asked. She turned around just as a thickly-furred beast of mottled purple slinked out of the thicket, silently stalking on its thickly padded paws. “It’s this jarlion again,” she hissed. “I thought I escaped it with my invisibility ring.”

  The jarlion was bigger than the big cats of Earth. More muscular, its fur adding to its bulk. Its strong claws and fangs were valuable, made of a material that could puncture plate armor. Not that big of a problem for Elian. The jarlion had a carpet of crystal shards where the mane of a lion would be. This was the problem. It could absorb Aether and cast basic forms of energy beams.

  Basic but powerful. And magical.

  “Jarlions have a strong sense of smell,” said Elian. “It can also detect life residues with the crystals on its back. No wonder it tracked you.”

  Was the world toying with him? He was resolved to work hard on his Magical Resilience to protect others, but this was too soon. His conversation with Master Varmisal was just several hours ago.

  But he couldn’t just run away and leave Jadewell. She had better chances of survival than him when it came down to it. He was going to fight.

  “Jadewell, use your ring and run,” Elian said. “I’ll stay to—

  “No. I won’t run this time. It’s here because of me.” She took out multiple rings from the inside of her robes—spell shard rings that stored spells with limited usage. Expensive and helpful. “I-I can fight,” she stuttered, fumbling to put on the rings.

  She shifted behind Elian, expecting him to face the jarlion while firing her spells. His fight with the Quillhusk gave her the wrong expectation of his tankiness. She might not have much in the way of defenses, but he was weaker than her in the magic department. He wasn’t going to tell her, of course. She was already panicking and might find it hard to use her rings.

  “Better to fight anyway,” he said, observing the jarlion circling them. “It’ll hunt us down if we run. Prepare your rings. We’ll wait for its move. Hope it doesn’t attack because we’re not its usual food.”

  Healthy predators rarely bothered with unknown prey. They wouldn’t risk getting injured in a hunt that wasn’t familiar. This jarlion must’ve tracked Jadewell far earlier but didn’t attack because she was a curiosity to it, not actual food. But why did it reveal itself now?

  “The Quillhusk gore,” Elian said, clicking his tongue in annoyance. “The jarlion thinks we’re injured and easy pickings. Gather Aether in between us and the jarlion.” He started doing so about three feet away from them. That was the limit of his range.

  “Its crystals are glowing,” Jadewell said. “Does that mean it’s going to attack?”

  “It’ll shoot instead of pounce because there are two of us. I have to get closer. Help me block its shots with Aether constructs.”

  “What? I can’t—”

  “I’m going,” Elian said as the jarlion opened its mouth. A crackling ball of purple energy formed inside the dark maw. Elian fanned out his three Aether constructs in the air, ordering them erratic trajectories to confuse the jarlion. Taking a page out of Thorren’s book, Elian flattened the constructs into plates. They were thin and didn’t offer much protection as a shield, but they sure were distracting.

  Jadewell followed his lead. Her Aether blob divided itself into four—either she was lying she couldn’t do this in class or this was the first time she pulled it off—and copied his disc constructs.

  The jarlion fired. Jadewell yelled. A couple of plates shattered. Elian continued to advance, rushing low and weaving. More beams. No more plates. He was two feet away from the jarlion. It roared and lunged at him, incensed at the audacity of a smaller creature charging at it. Both of them tumbled around on the ground.

  Claws ripped his leather vest. No repairing it this time. The slashes were so strong it drew red lines on his chest. Not too deep but painful. The jarlion got on top of him and roared with its mouth wide open. It gathered another ball of energy. Must’ve found Elian too hard to bite.

  I have no choice. Elian thrust his left arm into the jarlion’s mouth to stop its energy charge. “Argh! Damn it!” Aether flares scalded his skin and flesh. His arm uncontrollably shivered, experiencing extreme heat and coldness simultaneously. Not the first time he experienced something like this. Painful every time, more so now.

  The jarlion clamped down its jaws. Fangs punctured the armguard and stabbed into Elian’s arm. The bite of this beast was far weaker than a Tribulation, but its force concentrated into small points. Blood spurted. Elian’s own blood splattered his face.

  “Jadewell!” he called.

  “I’m here!”

  Several thuds. The jarlion spasmed but still stood. Then its eye exploded, splashing more blood on Elian. Out of the jarlion’s eyehole poked out an Aether spear wrapped with strings of glowing runes. The beast collapsed on Elian.

  “Are you okay?” Jadewell ran to his side. She grabbed the straps of his leather vest and pulled.

  “What kind of question is that?” Elian huffed as he wriggled out from beneath the beast. He saw that its flank was riddled with crystalline arrows that dissipated in the air. Jadewell was a good shot with that spear.

  “So-sorry, just an impulse question.” She muttered something he couldn’t hear before saying, “Let me see your arm. Storm God! That looks—Where’s my healing ring?”

  “Don’t bother. Won’t work on me. I need to clear the Aether burns first.”

  “I know of a lake nearby,” Jadewell said, grabbing his uninjured right arm and leading him.