—Orion—

  I moved into the forest with what I hoped wasn't a suspicious amount of haste. I wove around bushes and jumped over rocks with barely any wariness directed at my surroundings, all of my concentration caught by internal distractions.

  After what I thought was a couple of minutes of sweaty marching, I allowed myself to look back towards where she—no, it's he now—was. I let out a long and whispery sigh as I leant against a tree, the emotions born of the conversation I just had were overwhelming.

  The bark of the tree prickled my back through my shirt, the sensation joining the other uncomfortable thoughts that were pooling in my mind. Sally was not a drakeling—at least not originally—and seemed completely content with the change. It was something that felt… strange. It would be unimaginable for me to not want to regain my current form if I was changed to such a degree, especially to another species.

  To lose my hands, my size, and muscle, would be devastating, I depended on all of them heavily to survive, especially the ability to pick up tools and use them. I could not imagine life without my bow. Even my appearance—which I' had never thought about much—was still something I enjoyed and liked to maintain.

  It was something completely foreign to me, a concept that I had no basis or experience to apply to this situation. No clues or explanations from my life, things I've read, or watched could help explain what was happening with her.

  It made me wonder if she—he was human in the first place. Not that he did not have a human body before, but if his soul was ever human. Though it wasn't a concept I understood in the slightest, and it didn't make much sense for Sally to have a drake's—maybe a dragon's—soul while on Earth. How could Sally have such a soul if none have ever existed on earth?

  Though as I said earlier, as long as she—he!—was fine with it, it was not an issue for me. The other things were much scarier.

  I had ruined Sally's life.

  If I had never found Sally in that cave, Sally would still be happily living with her parents. Sally wouldn't have been subjected to Elio's brutality, and neither of us would've been through that stone hell.

  Sally would've been better off if we never met.

  Sally's new parents were capable of caring for him, they were strong, and intelligent. Oh. If a human—human-like maybe—could reincarnate as a drake, does that make all drakes as intelligent as Sally? They had probably been as human as Sally…

  I had killed them. And pillaged their child before their bodies could go cold.

  I-I destroyed Sally's life.

  Every moment after that first one, I had put Sally through… So much… I feel… I…

  I barely noticed that I'd started muttering under my breath, a few repeating words escaping me on a loop.

  But then I remembered more. More mistakes.

  Sally's always been intelligent, so she didn't need me to 'save' him when we first met, he probably could've survived by himself. Trying to help only resulted in him being beaten half to death, and then almost force-fed the meat of his new species.

  The drakeling had been too weak to fight back, or even escape from Becky and her friend as they tried to feed him his parents' flesh. OH—that noise, the cry of pain and suffering. The screech, the unending scream that last so, painfully, long. I had felt the trauma through it. I did that to Sally. It makes me feel…

  It was my fault.

  Also, Sally's an adult, he hadn't needed me to spoon-feed him, he was plenty capable of doing it himself. If I hadn't decided it was necessary, he would not had been on the cliff with me. Or get pushed off it with me, and almost killed, again.

  That was when he had saved me. That does explain the infant removing the dagger from me.

  I wouldn't have blamed her if she left me to die. I earned it.

  And that was just the first mistakes I'd made, not including the dozen of smaller incidents I had put the both of us through.

  Every moment around him—and probably for the foreseeable future—I terrified that she would mention any of the number of things that I was responsible for.

  I rubbed the flesh around my neck. The pain felt grounding.

  I had used [Animal Companion] on probably the only animal that had a human soul inside it. It was such a disastrous situation that I could hardly believe that it's possible for it to have happened in the first place.

  I bonded my soul with another person, without their permission or a reason that could even muster being satisfactory—and that's before I knew Sally was human. I did it because my leader had pressured me, but I could've stopped at any time and refused to go through with it. Even though I knew that I understood the situation better than he did, I still let him decide what to do with the situation.

  And now—because I couldn't say no—I'd irreversibly ruined Sally's life.

  I ruined Sally's life.

  MY fault.

  I might've not known what I was doing back then, but that wasn't good enough for an excuse. It didn't change the current situation, or whose fault it was that he ended up in this mess to begin with.

  There was no way to fix it either, the Path had been clear on how permanent the process was. What would Sally do if she—he—figured that out? He couldn't have learnt that yet—he said it was one of his goals.

  He would hate me, he would leave and I'd be alone again.

  The [Soul Bond] was slowly changing the both of us. I had made a mistake that was irrevocably twisting our souls. If he ever knew about it—he would hate me.

  Why wouldn't he hate me? It obvious he would. But if he hated me, he would leave me behind.

  But what made it all so much worse… Was that… Even after knowing, understanding everything I'd done… I didn't want to leave. I didn't want Sally to know, so I could savour having a friend. Jus-st. A. Little. Bit. Longer.

  I don't want to be alone.

  I felt… worse. Knowing that I had done horrible things to Sally, but I still desperately wanted to be around her. Even if it might make her life awful. All because I couldn't imagine giving up this… Friendship? Was the tenuous connection that we had even good enough for us to be friends? Is it strong enough to survive me sharing what I'd done?

  But then he would hate me.

  I can't be-e alone again.

  I c-can't s-survive it.

  I-I w-won't

  I

  *Snap*

  The sound of a branch breaking in the distance drew my attention back to the outside world, and I realised that my breathing had become unstable. Each inhalation of air was shallow and stuttered, my chest violently twitching with each jerky breath.

  I'd started rubbing my hand against the tree bark at some point, to the point where there were small cuts and grazes from how hard my palm was pressed and grinded against the trunk. My hand wasn't the only thing bleeding. The other one had rubbed my throat violently, pulling and pinching the skin with a violent intensity, and my nails had scratched the skin above my sternum enough to bleed.

  It was enough for me to realise that I’d had another 'situation'. I had been able to hold it back for so long. Even with the Party, I'd managed to keep it mostly contained. Father would be disappointed if he'd seen what I'd just done to myself. I wiped away the cascading tears as I remembered what he always said.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  He would ask 'what makes a warrior?'. I would respond with five words, as it always went.

  Warriors don't bend, don't break.

  Warriors don't bend, don't break.

  Warriors don't bend, don't break.

  So I won't break or bend.

  With the mantra completed, I calmed down, enough to rationally investigate what made that noise. Before I could forget, I mentally returned [Self-Healing] to automatic mode. I no longer needed to conserve MP, now that we were out of constant and immediate danger.

  [[Self-Healing] has been set to: automatic mode.]

  [[Self-Healing] will now activate whenever it is able to.]

  With my hunting knife instinctually slipping into my bloody-but-healed hand, I silently stalked towards whatever had just made the mistake of drawing my attention to it.

  After circling around the tree I'd been leaning against, I saw a short rodent or raccoon archetype of mammal. I didn't bother to try to investigate its species beyond that, as it was of little importance to me.

  The only reason why I was giving it my attention in the first place was the few edible kilos of good meat on its bones.

  The black, bushy, and furred forager's tail was waggling in the air as it dug through the undergrowth—undoubtedly searching for worms or beetles that'd be hidden underneath the layer of leaves coating the forest floor.

  With the noise of my movement masked by the rustling it was making, it was pathetically easy to creep up on it. As I considered what I was going to do to it, I felt a bit of empathy for it, but my hunger was only growing as I began to move across the short gap between us.

  It'd taken years of training to achieve this skill, but I was almost completely silent as I stepped across the forest floor. I stayed almost completely quiet the few seconds it took to get within striking distance.

  I leapt at it with my arms outstretched, one empty and ready to hold it down, while the other held my knife—ready to be buried in the most lethal area I could plant it.

  In an instant I had caught it, holding it tightly by pinning it to my chest with my forearm. It didn't even have a chance to scream as I gave it a quick look to orientate its anatomy, and then plunged my dagger into its sternum.

  It tried to struggle, bite my hand or injure me, but it barely could get its mouth around my forearm before it began to go limp. I had most likely pierced its heart, judging by how quickly it was weakening, and I was glad that I could cause it less suffering by giving it a quick death.

  After holding it for a few seconds, it completely stopped moving altogether, and I dropped its carcass onto the ground before I got any more blood on my clothes. Though a stain wouldn't make my shirt any less revealing, dirty, or expose me to the environment even more than it already did.

  I took a minute to catch my breath, and then started processing the corpse, skinning and de-gutting the body as quickly as I could. Sally had already been waiting so long for a meal that he had been taking damage from starvation.

  I didn't want to lose Sally. My hand stopped its automatic butchering of the animal as I processed the realisation.

  I then resumed, accepting the idea easily. The hard part was making her—HIM—want to stay.

  I'd already ruined so much, spoiled the future Sally could've had—and by consequence, anyone I could've shared with her. So, what was a little more sin going to do at this point? Sally would hate me if he learnt the truth either way.

  And… I could just not tell him. I could just never say that I knew what [Animal Companion] was capable of. I wouldn't be hurting him any more than I already have.

  I had heard how he was talking before, it was just like the old group—how he spoke about monsters and XP reminded me of Elio. If he was as normal as them, then it was easy to guess how he would react if I told him what I'd done.

  I'm not the best when it comes to figuring out what is the best thing to do with a moral dilemma, especially when it comes to other people. I just don't have the best understanding of what people value when it comes to what's okay, or what they think is unforgivable.

  But wouldn't not telling him be the path that leads to the least pain? For both me and Sally?

  I knew that it was a weak, rationalised, argument. I still took it and held it close, because I wanted it to be true.

  I could be a companion to him as he searched for a solution. Maybe one does exist out there, and he is given the opportunity to break the [Soul Bond]—he would take it, I have trouble imagining otherwise.

  I also wouldn't stop him. Hopefully by then we were good enough friends that he doesn't want to immediately leave, and seek a better life elsewhere.

  I just have to follow him and be around him long enough that he grows used to me—enough to be my friend. Though I didn't think he'd ever be friends with me if I acted like myself—Elio, Becky and the rest of the Party never did, even after months of continuous interactions.

  Would I have to act differently to make sure he likes me? Or at the very least doesn't find me as aggravating as the Party did. With everyone I met in that group of people, I don't think a single one of them found me pleasant to be around.

  The only common factor in every single one of those failed conversations, those lonely moments I had even when surrounded by them for days on end, was me.

  And if the issue was something to do with my personality—what part of me was broken?

  Maybe changing how I respond to things would fix the issue. I should talk like they do, copy what they say and learn the correct way to respond to questions.

  Learn how to smile without someone replying with a grimace. Figure out how to make small talk that lasts more than a couple of minutes, and doesn't end with an awkward silence.

  Make myself into someone who isn't bad at being a person.

  Someone who people want to be around. Sally, wants to be around.

  I think I could figure out how to do that. If being honest hasn't made anyone like being in my presence, then I wouldn't be—I couldn't afford to lose the chance I've gotten. Someone close to me in the way you see in movies, unconditional friendship that wasn't broken even when you made a horrible mistake.

  With my decision made, I wiped my bloody hands and gear off with the surrounding vegetation, cleaning my knife off as best I could before sheathing it. I hoisted the cleaned carcass onto a nearby stick, impaling it with a piece of wood that'd keep the meat out of contact of my skin while I brought it back to camp.

  With the next couple of meals secured, I stood and began to make my way back to where I left Sally. I then realised something important I'd forgotten when I'd fled in panic, Sally was currently unprotected when it came to predators.

  I began to quickly run along the trail I’d taken to reach my current spot, retracing my steps as fast as I could without losing the already faint trail. For once I was frustrated at how good I was at moving without leaving discernable traces of my passage.

  However, the extremely aggravating sensation of the remaining blood on my hands beginning to dry was almost enough to tempt me into taking a detour. Any body of water would do, just to stop the bodily fluids from drying and making that disgusting, crusty layer all over my hands—I could not stand the sensation of mud or any other non-water, viscous liquid coagulating on my skin.

  But I didn't have the time to waste for my own comfort. My anxiety over Sally's wellbeing was enough to hurry me back to him.

  ***

  After running for what felt like a few kilometres, I burst back into the clearing where I remembered leaving Sally. I anxiously looked around the clearing for the precariously small creature, and spotted him curled up and sleeping in the middle of the small field.

  I let out a sigh of relief as I moved closer to inspect his wellbeing, and spied no new injuries. However there was little reason to leave it to chance when I had a tool that could give me an infallible diagnosis.

  [Unique connection Detected!]

  [Request Intercept [^@#%-51] Accepted!]

  [The Moon's Path has generated a unique file!]

  [Sally is a strange creature, a drakeling that has been processed through one of the oldest mechanisms of the soul known to either inhabitants of the twinned worlds, and yet it failed.

  Not even slipping through the coils and gullet of Ouroboros was enough to rid the reborn soul of aspects retained from the drakeling's past life. A feat previously reserved for the most unique and wilful of individuals, now shared with a stark opposite to that caste of heroes.

  However, that lack of talent has not stopped the new-born drakeling from striving to greater heights, of becoming a dragon and infiltrating another prideful and exclusive club of characters. Not even the latest hurdles of being Soul-Bound to a stranger, and the faulty Sun god's Path has hindered Sally's ambitions.

  The Moon's Path has shown Sally a new way through the muck, a new path to greatness.]

  The screen that had appeared in front of me was starkly different from any that I had seen before. Its pale blue appearance was the opposite of the usual colour I had always seen before, shocking me greatly.

  However I quickly dismissed the strangeness of it, I could just ask Sally about it later—and I already knew the source of it. If the phrase 'the Moon's path' appearing in the [Appraisal] description just after meeting a god with the same name wasn't enough, I don't know what would be.

  I almost woke him up instinctively, the [Starvation] condition was a constant source of anxiety for me. But the possible conversation about the [Soul-Bond] was enough to stop me.

  With a heavy feeling in my heart—one I'm beginning to realise is guilt—I grabbed all of the sticks we'd been using to communicate and dumped them into a pile. I grabbed a few other larger branches from the surrounding foliage as quietly as I could, snapping thicker, fallen branches in half.

  After a particularly loud break in a dry piece of wood, Sally stirred enough for me to freeze with fear, but fortunately he went back to sleep quickly.

  I finished arranging the wood as quickly as I could without making any more loud noises, and ignited it with my lighter before I could get any more distracted.

  As I watched our currently only way of communicating go up in flames, I felt… certain.

  It was an ache that soothed the leaden feeling in my gut.

  I didn't like how it was going, and I didn't know for how long I would need to keep it doing this.

  But I’m resolute—this path is the best choice I have.