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Soleum was a little lost. Not dangerously lost! He hadn’t left the barrier, so wherever he was had to be safe. And if he could just climb a tall tree to see through the tree cover, he would be able to see which way it was back to the mountain.
He had even lost track of the butterfly he had been chasing. While he was basking in the sun, it had landed on his snout, a fiery orange, and captivated him. Most creatures were too scared to approach him, so he was instantly enthralled when its wings took up half of his vision.
If he didn’t figure out which way to head back soon, he might not make it before sundown, and then he’d get in trouble. The sun was rapidly sinking in the sky, so Soleum at least knew which way was west, but since he had no clue where he was, just picking a direction to go would be just as likely to take him the wrong way as the right one.
Already, sun barely trickled through the tall and densely packed trees. Just looking at the closest tree had Soleum dreading trying to climb it. The trees that reached the canopy were thick, further around than Soleum was long, and if he couldn’t wrap around the tree, he’d have to use his claws to climb, which was a million times harder.
Hoping to avoid that, Soleum closed his eyes and tried to sense any familiar sounds or mana patterns. He could hear the leaves rustle and feel the natural flow of mana in the ground. There was nothing notable around, which meant he could be anywhere. Just as he was about to open his eyes, he heard a strange sound.
Clang!
What was that? Metal? It really sounded like it, but why here? Soleum let his curiosity drive his feet in the direction of the sound.
As he grew closer, more sounds became apparent. More metallic clangs. Wet ripping sounds. Curses and screams. The sound of wood shattering.
People? Soleum had never seen people before. He slowed his footsteps and pressed low to the ground. He would just see what was happening. He could scare them off if something went wrong — everything was scared of him if he tried a little. Except that butterfly. Soleum missed it.
Soleum could tell he was close when the shadows of the forest started flickering in the light of a flame. Then he noticed the smell. It smelled like death.
He had once asked Noona if he could come with on a hunt, since she always caught all of the monsters they ate and he wanted to know what it was like. He thought he should help out more since everyone was always just taking care of him.
She had agreed, and he rode on her head as they flew out to find something to hunt. Soleum hadn’t expected the way her strong jaw would bite the head clean off of the deer, or the way its neck would gush blood as it staggered the last few steps before its death. He didn’t eat meat for a year.
The blood in the air now was heavier than it had been then. There was enough death that the mana in the area was in disarray from being released from all of its hosts. Soleum had gotten all the way here, but now, hiding behind a bush that hid all but the broadest motions of the battle, he wasn’t sure he wanted to look.
However, it was a rare opportunity for something new. He could tell from the voices that there were multiple humans. He understood vaguely that his family worked with humans to get various items when they left on their trips, but he had always been more curious about the things they brought back. Maybe this could be his first “trip” to see humans. He didn’t even have to leave the barrier, so it was basically safe regardless.
Resolute, Soleum poked his head just far enough through the bush to see what was happening. As he feared, the ground was covered with dead bodies, and he quickly wrenched his gaze upward. A torch flickered weakly where it had been dropped on the ground, and its light illuminated a damaged-looking structure made of wood and cloth, as well as two sides locked fiercely in battle.
Stepping over the bodies of humans and monsters on the ground, two humans stood, wielding large knives that they swung toward the Castle Ant workers surrounding them. He could tell these were just basic worker ants out looking for supplies, not the much more dangerous guard ants, and none of these ants caught Soleum’s interest. The humans were a bit more interesting, with some shine to them that wasn’t mana that interested Soleum, but also an air to them that made him instinctively dislike them.
Still, he winced as the foreleg of an ant stabbed through one of the humans’ feet and the man was instantly covered with ants as he went down. At this rate all of the humans would be dead before he got to talk to them and get any cool stuff!
Soleum remembered the way he was told to scare monsters off if he ran into them. He couldn’t use real magic yet, but he knew how to use the mana around and within him.
He seized hold of the mana in the air and the ground and the monsters and squeezed. The ants all let out a high keening sound, and the one remaining human dropped to his knees. Soleum hadn’t known this worked on humans too. When he deemed the ants scared enough, he released his grasp on everything magical nearby and the remaining ants immediately fled.
The one human still alive panted in relief as the monsters retreated, letting his arms and big knife fall limply to his sides.
There had been an unexpected cluster of mana inside the magic Soleum had taken control of, besides the human and the ants. Before Soleum had much chance to consider that, something shot out of the crushed wooden structure toward the human in a blur.
He watched in horror as the one remaining human was stabbed in the heart from behind by another human who must have survived the fight. Soleum quickly averted his eyes from the gush of blood, but that didn’t stop him from hearing the gurgling grunts of the man’s last moments.
The humans weren’t all on the same team then? This new human didn’t invoke the same natural wariness in Soleum that the other one had, so maybe this was an improvement. They had all just been killing monsters, it wasn’t like it was too different to kill a person he supposed.
Trying to lose himself in thought to avoid thinking about the carnage any of his senses were relaying to him, Soleum lost balance from tipping his head a bit too far and stumbled a step to catch himself. The step he took landed directly on a dry branch that broke in a loud sound in the tense air.
“Who’s there? I’ll kill you too if you don’t keep quiet.” The human swung his blood-covered big knife around defensively. His big knife wasn’t quite as big as the ones the other humans were using. This one was a little shorter than his forearm, while the ones the other people used were closer to the full length of their arms. They were all much bigger than the knives Soleum had seen at home to eat dinner.
Despite this human instinctively feeling safer to Soleum, he sure was acting threatening. But as Soleum looked closer, the threat was undermined by the tremble in the hand holding the big knife and the blood streaking down his face from one side, where an injury must have been covered by the mop of curly hair. The human didn’t look strong like the other ones had, between having no armor and all of his limbs being thinner than Soleum’s body.
Soleum couldn’t help but dismiss the clear threat, but he tugged at the man’s mana again to make it hard for him to move as he stepped out of the bush.
“Yeah? Nothing else to say?” Soleum had just saved the man’s life after all. He was awfully ungrateful. The human staggered under the pressure Soleum was emitting and put a hand on one knee to steady himself, big knife still held out, eyes scanning to find where the voice had come from.
“Did you have fun watching us all die, you piece of shit?” the man said like he hadn’t just been responsible for killing his other surviving comrade.
It didn’t seem like the human had a shred of gratitude for people who kept him alive. This was hard, how was he supposed to get the human to give him cool things if he still didn’t like Soleum after having his life saved. Maybe Soleum had gotten in the way of his plan to deal with the ants and that’s why he was mad.
“I just thought it was a waste. I can bring them back if you want.” Finally Soleum stepped far enough into the flickering light of the torch to be seen and locked eyes with the human. He saw some conflict play across the human’s face.
“...No need. Good job driving them away, sir.” Oh, now the human respected him? That was a sudden change in the way he was talking. That was one step closer to getting the human to give him cool human things. But the real question was…
“Why are you here?” Humans didn’t enter the barrier. Even monsters rarely crossed it. Soleum’s family had told him that it was in place to ward off any humans or truly dangerous monsters, so it didn’t make sense for a bunch of humans to suddenly show up.
“My boss wanted to avoid the law. We all were forced to come with.” The human finally lowered his knife and used it to gesture toward the body of the man he had stabbed on the ground.
Come to think of it, Soleum should release the mana. It wasn’t stopping this man from responding anyway. He loosened his hold on the man’s mana, and the human started to stand up, only to hunch back over and cough hard into the hand that had been holding him up. When the coughing subsided, he wiped his hand sideways across his mouth and Soleum saw it come away covered in blood. He had really seen enough blood for the decade.
“I’ll get out of here as soon as I grab something this bastard owes me. Is that alright? You can help yourself to anything in the carriage, sir.” From the man’s look at the broken wooden structure, Soleum guessed that must be the carriage.
Soleum was torn between checking out the new things he had totally earned and talking more with the man who seemed to be trying to leave. It was his once in a lifetime chance to talk to a human – it couldn’t end this fast.
“Not so fast. Tell me more about yourself.” The human had a Boss that seemed to have ordered him around. If Soleum somehow became his new Boss would he get to keep the human? He had to probe for more details.
The human looked confused where he was digging through the pockets of the man he had just killed.
“You can call me Goat. I run errands for whoever pays well.” Soleum felt a sense of kinship over the man also having an animal name. His family often called him Roe Deer after the time he had spent three months following a herd of deer around, only to lose them when he fell asleep for the entire winter. He had been assured that his empathy was probably why he had such an issue with the hunting incident, and Noona had apologized repeatedly for not being more thoughtful.
“Anything else?” Soleum wished the man would tell him a grand story like Noona or Hyung did whenever they returned from a trip. Or explain what “pays well” entailed so Soleum could take him home and get stories out of him there.
“I’m trained in animal handling, can read, write and count, and have basic skill with a dagger.” Soleum continued to look at him expectantly. “I’m 22? No serious physical defects that would impede work?”
The human didn’t look that small though. He was almost as big as Hyung’s human form and probably bigger than Noona. Soleum’s family always called him their baby, and if this human was younger than him, that meant he was a baby human. Humans must not look too different as babies then.
Soleum was surprised that this baby human was allowed to be out in the woods this late. He knew there were no human lairs anywhere nearby, so he must be pretty far from home.
“Are you from nearby?” Soleum didn’t even know how close the nearest human settlement was. The human could tell him all about where he lived and the other people who lived there.
“Are you trying to hire me or not, sir?” How had the human reached that conclusion?
“Why would I hire you?” Soleum didn’t understand how to pay the human, so he didn’t think that he would be very happy if Soleum tried to be his Boss. He had killed the other one after all.
The man gave him an incredulous look. “Why are you interviewing me if you’re not going to hire me?”
“I thought you might be entertaining, but you’re awfully short on words. It doesn’t seem worth keeping you around if it’s this hard to get you to talk.”
But you know, if the human was a baby and all alone, Soleum would be doing him a favor if he kept him as a pet. Chief could tell him how you pay humans to take care of the whole hiring thing, and then the human would have no reason not to stay. Pay must just be one of those things humans needed like food and sleep. Soleum hasn’t had a pet since his last pet bird that had been with him for five years apparently escaped one day after he forgot about it for two weeks.
Soleum appraised the man he was thinking about keeping with a critical eye. The human wasn’t very well groomed, wearing dirty and ripped clothes that were now stained with blood in a few places. And he did seem awfully skinny. And as the human stood up, tucking what he had taken from the dead man into a pocket, Soleum noticed that he was trembling.
Soleum took a step closer and it got worse.
“You’re shaking.” Was the man cold? It was turning to fall, and his family usually wore a lot more layers than this if they were in human form. And those other things, what were they, shoes? Noona had assured him they were important for humans to wear and tried putting something shoe-like on Soleum’s paws when Soleum said he was curious. Soleum hated them but couldn’t shake them off until Noona stopped laughing and helped him.
“Sit down.” Soleum was no expert on medical care, and he didn’t really know how to fix a broken human, but he could deal with cold.
“Yes sir.” The human sat dropped to the ground at a speed that almost had Soleum even more concerned for his health. He sat cross legged facing Soleum.
Soleum plodded over and stepped a foot into the human’s lap. The foot unexpectedly slipped, and his claw tore a hole through the fabric of the man’s pants. Soleum frowned. Was fabric supposed to be that flimsy? Was the whole human that flimsy? That would explain why he and the rest of them had gotten so beat up by a couple of ants.
Oh no, what if his claw cut the human? He almost gagged at the thought of more blood welling up from the human. His face was already covered in it, between what was dripping down from his eye and what had been half wiped off when he coughed. Soleum just wouldn’t look. There was no potential wound where he ruined the human’s shabby pants, nope.
The human was shaking even more as Soleum nudged his head under his arm and wrapped around his back, circling back around to his front side and climbing up to lay his head over his shoulder, front claws dug more carefully into the fabric of the human’s shirt. He could feel the human’s pulse racing where his head lay next to the other’s neck.
Soleum squeezed his whole body where it was wrapped around the human in the way Hyung always said warmed him right up. The human let out a strangled gasp for some reason. Soleum hadn’t seen any injuries on this part of him, but maybe he had bumped one on accident. Oops.
“Better?” he asked confidently. Soleum was the best at warming people up; his whole family said so. It seemed like the man was shaking even harder in Soleum’s grasp though. It was getting dark out after all.
Soleum would show the man how good he was at taking care of his pets and then the man would beg to come home with him. He would have to be trained to tell better stories though. What had he said he was good at? Animals and something called a dagger?
The human hadn’t responded to his question. He didn’t have very good conversation skills.
Something warm landed on Soleum’s back and he twisted his head back to see what it was. A drop of blood rolled down his scales, catching on the edges. Ugh, the human was still leaking. Why wasn’t he better yet? Could he stop that already? The rest of the humans around here at least had the decency to stop bleeding before they died.
“You’re making a mess.” This stream of blood seemed fresh, and it looked like it was dripping from the human’s nose.
“Sorry, sir.” The human shifted to wipe the blood dripping off of his face so it would stop splashing on Soleum.
Suddenly, a pulse of mana trembled through the air and all of the plants around them stood up a little straighter as it passed. Hyung was looking for Soleum. The plants had probably already told him where he was. Soleum had forgotten that he was supposed to be going home soon, caught up in meeting the only person he had ever talked to outside of his family.
Well Soleum needed permission to keep his new pet human anyway. He didn’t know what he was supposed to eat, so he’d need help taking care of him.
Except… hadn’t his human killed that other human? His family didn’t like it when he tried to keep dangerous pets. The last pet he wanted was a massive elderly Great Boar, but it wasn’t very cuddly. When it tried to lunge at him, Noona had strangled it. Soleum was sad for a month until she got him a necklace made out of its tusks as an apology.
Soleum unwound from the human and jumped off of him. “Get out.”
He pushed at the human’s back gently at first, then harder when the human didn’t move. His head slipped to an angle where his horns pressed up against the human’s back and he could feel the mana circulating in him.
“Huh?” The man’s mana was circled with a hard shell of caution, but it had a very warm core. It was all tied up near his heart, barely circulating through his body like it was trapped on something. Soleum pushed at that stopped flow of mana too while he forced the human to his feet. By the time Soleum had gotten him to stand, the tiniest stream of mana had also started circulating through the man’s body.
“Didn’t you want to live?” That jumpstarted the human, who took a few slow steps away and then picked up his big knife and started running.
Soleum almost wished the man had hesitated a bit more. He hadn’t even said goodbye.
No sooner than the human was out of sight did Soleum hear the low sound of Hyung’s wingbeats. The trees leaned away to reveal a glint of Hyung’s scales in the almost-extinguished torchlight, and then a humanoid form dropped out of the sky from a low height as Hyung shifted into human form to fit better in the dense forest.
“Roe, are you okay?” Hyung anxiously scanned the corpse-strewn ground and looked Soleum up and down for injuries.
“I’m fine.”
“Was everything dead when you got here? Are you okay with all of the blood?” Soleum looked down again now that his attention wasn’t drawn by the human and realized exactly how close he was standing to quite a few dead bodies. He backed up a few steps toward the carriage, where there were relatively fewer corpses.
“It was over when I got here. I was going to look for items like you always bring back from humans.”
“Oh…” Hyung looked troubled, like he couldn’t decide whether or not to tell Soleum something. “We can check if they had anything. Why don’t you let me carry you so you don’t have to worry about all of this mess?”
Soleum readily agreed and let Hyung scoop him up, then he clambered onto his shoulders, making sure he was positioned so he could hide his face in Hyung’s neck if there was too much blood. He was surprised with his new vantage point that he hadn’t noticed how gross everything looked earlier. The human had been so interesting that he hadn’t taken in much else.
Hyung’s feet carried them over to the carriage that the human said Soleum could have. He pushed aside some broken beams and torn fabric to reveal relatively intact boxes underneath. The first couple of boxes contained various foods, but they all seemed hard and unappetizing.
“Is this what humans eat?” None of it looked very tasty to Soleum.
“This food is all packed for a long trip, so they preserve it like this. It reduces the amount of hunting they have to do while traveling.”
They continued digging through the rubble. Soleum saw a couple more of the big knives tucked away and thought he’d ask about them.
“Why do they have so many big knives?”
“These are swords. Humans don’t have sharp teeth or strong claws like we do, and a lot of them can’t use magic, so they use tools like these to help fight monsters.”
“Why do they fight monsters if they’re so weak?”
“Sometimes monsters attack human settlements, so they have to be able to defend themselves.” Hyung cleared aside some more boxes of nothing interesting, and then Soleum spotted something leather and rectangular near the edge of the debris.
“What’s that?” He pointed a paw at the object that had caught his eye. Hyung carefully leaned down and picked it up. It looked like a book, but for some reason it stole Soleum’s full attention and he found himself leaning down toward where Hyung was flipping it open.
“It looks like a logbook.” Hyung pointed to some lines of the text. “See here they logged what job they took, what the payment was, and who was all involved.” He flipped through a couple more pages and pointed out similar things, the money spent on resupplying, the dates contracts were signed, the team members lost in action.
“I want it.” Something about the book made Soleum want to keep it. Most of the contents were dull, just a log of the daily life of people Soleum would never meet. But he could feel many lives lived in its pages, and he wanted to read the rest.
“Hmm, our little Soleum-ah was out later than he was supposed to be and now he wants a reward for it.” Hyung gave Soleum a stern look, but his voice was light.
“I was trying to come back.” Was he really not going to let Soleum have the book just because it had gotten a little dark out?
Hyung relented. “You can keep it.” Soleum relaxed in relief. He knew Hyung wouldn’t be that cruel.
“But you don’t get it until the morning or you’ll be up all night!”
Soleum squirmed and complained on Hyung’s shoulders the whole way home, but nothing he said made him change his mind.
As he curled up to sleep that night, Soleum wondered if his human had made it home too.
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bonus comic sketch
