Hui Long:


    Snow crunches underfoot. I follow a trail of blood up the mountainside. The white cougar and war monkey hide from me, licking their wounds. It’s been a game of cat and mouse with this duo for a while now. They keep running. The monkey knows the terrain better than us, so they are able to hide within the folds of this forest. I struck the cougar once last night, when it issued an attack on our camp. Now, the trail goes cold near a small stream, bending around a cave entrance.


    Gareth sniffs the air. Snarls. “They are close.”


    His hands grip those bearded axes of his; he always goes to them when he’s antsy.


    My hand goes to the scaled grip of the Dragon Blade, feeling the familiar grooves imprinted by my fingers. It has been my most constant friend — unwavering, unstoppable. Raiten used to be your friend too, a voice whispers inside my head. Ever since my homecoming, that voice has been pestering me. Tormenting me.


    ‘What did you do?’ Raiten had asked me. And, for that, I could not give him a valid response. How could I explain to him how I never had a true moment of respite? How as soon as I was out of the clan, my life became a hellish grind through the machines of war?


    Even still, I am to blame.


    “Stay vigilant Hui, it is upon us!” Gareth says. But I am distracted


    From the treeline, something shuffles in the brush. We turn to it, Gareth readying his axes, me thumbing the nodachi out of its scabbard.


    A white rabbit hops from the brush.


    Gareth sighs.


    I feel my hair rise. Something breathes ever so slightly above me — my wind spirit intuition confirms so.


    With a singular, fluid motion, I draw my blade and curve it upwards, invoking the dragon of ice to emerge from the steel and swim towards the sky, jaws snapping.


    Gareth looks at me. “What—“


    The war monkey and cougar fall in pieces around us, blood spraying like rain, velvet death on white snow. Gareth grimaces as my ice dragon comes back to me, gnashing its bloodied teeth. I run my hand along its slippery jaw before allowing it to re-merge with the blade.


    “Tricky bastard was above us,” Gareth mutters, looking at the half eaten body of the War Monkey, this one tall and fur a mix of orange and white, eyes red. It still clutches the hammer it wielded against the villagers it terrorized.


    With a mild chuckle, I say, “Now it’s all around us.”


    Gareth only nods. Then, like a finale to the blood shower, snowflakes pelt down slowly from the sky.


    My breath frosts. It will be an early winter then. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.


    “Let’s go then,” I say nudging my head. Gareth nods, bending down to the half-bitten upper body of the monkey and starts sawing off one of its hands. I stare at him incredulously.


    “What? We need proof right. Besides, look!” He smiles in a way that tells me he’s about to say something stupid. With a grunt of effort, he rips the arm off with a crunching noise, halfway through the cut. Flailing it around, he says “it’s a monkey’s paw.”


    I sigh and grant him a small smile. I know what he''s trying to do— what he’s been trying to do ever since he saw me after my fight with Raiten. That was the first time he ever saw me as truly… vulnerable. Weak. I don’t know how I feel about that still. But Gareth is good, has always been good. He is the other constant in my life, my second eternal blade.


    And I love him for it.


    …


    In the far distance looms the Boar Ranges. Tall and snow-capped, like shards of ice sprouting from the world itself, they are my next destination. I look to them even now, past the smiling faces of the villagers.


    “You have done us a great service, Spirit Child. We will not forget this,” their elderly mayor tells us. I accept her hand with a gracious smile, as I’ve done many times before with countless other village heads, town chiefs, kings and emperors. I have constructed a routine mask of heroism over the last decade, and I understand what people want. They want to believe in something. Something beyond them — some force of ultimate light against the overbearing dark. I am not that. Yet, the least I can do, is fake it for them. So I accept their thanks, politely refuse their gifts, and, along with Gareth, head on to my next destination.


    We make our way through the open valley, where winter hillocks make way for the last dregs of summer bliss. The air may be cold, but the sun shines bright and high on this cloudless day. We pass by another village, this one by the rock-toothed coast.


    Gareth insists we stop for food. I oblige and we end up sitting at a street vendor, who stirs something rich with the scent of seafood in his cozy little kitchen, open for customers to watch while waiting in the stand. The booth itself gives a clear view of the pier, where fishermen navigate their boats past the rock-sharded coast and into deeper waters. Apparently, Netsreach was hit with a tsunami recently, so half of the village is actively being rebuilt and the pier is in tatters. But the fishermen find a way, as they always seem to do.


    It is a good village, with good people.


    “What’s on your mind?” Gareth asks. He speaks in his native language for once; the harsh syllables of Bulberish startle me. It has been a while since I’ve heard it.


    “I am wondering how we can find Basilbane,” I respond in shoddy Bulberish.


    He nods solemnly. “I have been tracking his scent, but he’s a hard one to follow. It diverges, branches off near the ranges. So…”


    “Regardless, we must head South then,” I surmise. He nods. Looking beyond the coast, the ocean stretches endlessly against the sky, the two planes converging in a thin line in the distant horizon. I wonder what lands lie beyond our quarrels. Do they deal with bastards and beasts like we do?


    Sometimes, I wish I was beyond this. I wish I could be in those lands, where the only quarrel is of barley and grain, not of magicks and giants. Snakes and dragons.


    Old friends wielding red lightning.


    I shake my head. This line of thinking gets me nowhere. Move on. Focus.


    After all, you have to avenge your allies. Find this giant.


    So, when the food comes, I eat well and good. I challenge Gareth to an eating race. I win, but I think he lets me. Still, when I slam the bowl down and wipe the stew from my mouth, I feel renewed. A giddiness takes me like never before — and when I look to the Boar Ranges once more, it is not with dread, but with determination.


    “I’m coming Basilbane,” I whisper. “And I’ll take your head.”