Chapter 20

  Raime rose from the basin with a quiet exhale, his legs were fine even after the long stillness. His back cracked as he stretched, arms overhead, spine rolling. The dim glow of the chamber washed across his skin, now mostly clean.

  I still would like a real shower.

  He felt different — lighter, somehow. Not just in body, though that was true too, but in mind. The quiet hours spent in meditation had helped ground him, gave shape to vague impressions that had lingered since his arrival. A subtle understanding was growing within him.

  With a soft grunt, he rolled his shoulders and moved toward the temple’s exit chamber. His boots struck the stone in even rhythm — not the cautious tread of a half-starved wanderer anymore, but the stride of someone beginning to reclaim a sense of self.

  He stopped in front of the slab that now served as the new door. A massive chunk of stone dragged into place just hours prior… or however long it had really been.

  Wait, I can check.

  He opened the System quest and saw that four more hours passed since the last time he checked.

  More than I expected…

  Raime pressed his palms against it and pushed. It moved, more easily than before. His improved body welcomed the strain. The sound of grinding rock echoed faintly as the makeshift barrier slid aside.

  He smirked as the first threads of warm Rift-light brushed his face. “With how often I go in and out of this place, I should really learn teleportation first.”

  A quiet chuckle escaped him, half-genuine, half-wry. It felt good to say something out loud — even if only to himself. He stepped outside, squinting up at the strange sky. Clouds swirled in alien spirals above the towering treeline He still has yet to see the sky without clouds once.

  Raime didn’t bother to close the stone slab behind him this time. He left it slightly ajar, the silence of the temple reaching out like a sigh behind him.

  I need to come back soon with my new “partner”, and if something wants to come in, he thought, then let it try.

  His boots met the stone outside, then the dense soil that led toward the trees. The same forest, the same warped canopy — and yet now, it felt like less of a mystery and more of a challenge. Still dangerous, yes. But not unknowable.

  He stepped into it without hesitation, the ground crunching beneath his boots. The forest loomed, gnarled and alien, branches like skeletal fingers and trunks twisted like bone carved from dark ivory. The trees whispered even when there was no wind. The kind of place that gnawed at the edges of your mind.

  Perfect.

  He moved at a steady pace, not hurrying, not cautious. Just forward. The earth gave no resistance beneath his steps. His weapon floated behind him, silent and steady, guided by their bond. He didn’t even need to think about it anymore—not consciously. His mind held it in orbit like a forgotten thought that refused to vanish.

  No longer a tool.

  An extension.

  The forest greeted him with silence. Not absolute, but emptied. The signs were clear even to a casual observer—torn undergrowth, faint trails of dried ichor, snapped trunks and cracked branches hanging from above. The aftermath of his earlier hunt remained, and whatever hadn't been killed had likely fled deeper. Animals weren’t stupid. Not here...

  If they’ve gone where the air gets thick, then that’s where I need to go. I’m not here for sport this time.

  His thoughts drifted to his earlier realization, seated in the basin, tracing the shape of memory. That moment in combat when something had tried to invade his senses—not physically, but mentally. The disorienting pulse, the false impressions, the whispers that weren’t whispers.

  Some of them connect…

  Not with words, not even with coherent thoughts—but the attempt had been there. Primitive, wild, but unmistakable. It was something more than instinct or threat. It was awareness trying to reach him. That meant something fundamental.

  If they can try to connect… I should be able to do the same.

  The deeper he walked, the more deliberate his steps became. The forest's edge faded behind him. The trees here grew taller, their boughs overlapping to form a canopy that turned the dim sky into an oppressive ceiling. The air thickened. The silence grew layered.

  A breeze stirred—then didn’t. Leaves trembled from no visible wind. Raime paused, eyes narrowing. He reached out with his senses, more than just his eyes or ears. He strained.

  Something slithered between the trees.

  He didn’t react. No need.

  The thunk of metal rang out sharp and final.

  The long wyrm-thing, sleek and sinuous and full of hungry white eyes, dropped dead and broken. It had launched from the trees—silent and swift—but Raime’s mind had already felt its weight displacing the air before it moved.

  I don’t even need to try anymore.

  He moved forward without breaking stride, stepping past the corpse with practiced calm. The levitating slab of steel—his weapon, his will—whirled once behind him and resumed its position at his side.

  He didn’t stop for the others. More of the same kind attacked—perhaps drawn by blood, or fury, or simply the need to protect territory—but each met the same end. Death from a thought. No effort.

  This is scary, what if everybody at home gets this kind of powers… it will be a mess.

  Still he wasn’t here to debate the consequences of a society with superpowers, he was here to find a suitable creature, and these alien centipedes weren’t what he needed.

  I’m looking for connection. C’mon you bastards, you grow up in this fucked up place, you should have developed some abilities by now.

  The trees spaced wider here, the undergrowth thinner. That too was a sign—fewer creatures meant the presence of stronger ones, or more dangerous minds. And as he moved deeper still, the terrain shifted subtly. Stone gave way to a slicker sort of soil. Pale moss began to creep across tree trunks. The air wasn’t just heavy anymore—it was charged. Brimming with something he couldn’t name.

  Then—he paused.

  A sound.

  Not loud. Barely audible. But unmistakable.

  A breath. slow and rhythmic.

  Raime turned his head, ears straining. He closed his eyes to sense. He didn’t use the Thread, he didn’t need to.

  His mind reached like a hand, stretching into the pressure-heavy air. The forest opened up in feeling, not sight. Shapes without form. Impressions of intent. A ripple in the silence.

  There.

  A faint presence. Ready and waiting to strike. That was the impression he was getting.

  Is it the same kind that poisoned me before? It was similar, but he couldn’t be sure.

  As soon as it was detected the beast darted from underbrush—low, sleek, armoured in glistening shell that bended the light, barbed tail dragging behind it like a scythe. Its limbs scuttled with incredible speed.

  Raime didn’t move.

  He heard the movement in the air, it was using the same tactic that his fellow used before attacking his exposed back.

  The difference was that this time the creature’s ambush failed spectacularly, mainly because even if his back was exposed, it wasn’t unprotected.

  Thunk moved fast, and swatted the creature from the air, with a crunch of bones and chitin the beast found itself on the forest ground, broken and bleeding to death after a failed hunt.

  How easy it is to lose your life in the wilds… it was always like this even on earth, but if you never experience it you can’t understand. Superpowers make it even more tragic. Well, guns do the same if you are willing to use it, maybe I’m worrying too much about the people problem, not that I have the energy to spare for these thoughts, or the means to do something about it even…

  Raime moved closer to the dying creature, it came to him just now how strange it was to see bones and chitin on the same animal, usually evolution goes one or the other way, but here apparently for surviving there was a need for both.

  With a fluid thought he commanded Thunk to pierce down and end the creature’s suffering, then before going his merry way he decided to collect the tail with the venom the creature possessed. It could prove useful. He tied the tail to his belt, being careful not to squeeze the gland while securing it safely.

  He walked undisturbed for nearly fifteen minutes and then another of the same creature attacked him in ambush, and then another, and then another. Apparently he found their territory in the forest, devoid of any other beasts it was still fraying his nerves. Now he could pinpoint the little venomous aliens with good accuracy, and the ambushes were fantastic training for his senses. But keeping his attention up constantly was starting to wear on him. Still he wasn’t going to drop his guard, he already suffered the consequences of not detecting them, and even with his upgraded attributes he wasn’t risking it.

  So he trudged on with his senses wide open, both physical and psychical, he even realized that he could amplify his five senses if he focused deeply, his hearing was especially helpful in detecting the little monsters.

  After a bit more walking and a couple more dead aliens, the canopy thinned as Raime pressed deeper into the forest, branches slick with moisture brushing his shoulders as he passed. The trees were different here—bigger, sparser, marked by coiling vines that throbbed faintly with the ambient pulse of the Rift. He moved quietly, senses half-extended, weapon floating just above his right shoulder, drifting like a silent sentinel.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Something’s different ahead.

  The forest opened without warning.

  Raime stepped from the dense undergrowth into a vast, sun-soaked clearing, the light blinded him momentarily, the air heavy with the scent of earth and the faint metallic tang of blood. The ground here was pressed flat in wide tracks, churned by the weight of massive bodies. In the center, they moved—creatures that dwarfed anything else he had seen in the Rift.

  They were built like colossal lizards but bulked in the proportions of siege engines, their hides plated in thick slabs of dull, ridged chitin that caught the light like worn armour. Four heavy muscled legs dug clawed feet into the soil, each step deliberate, confident—unhurried in the way only a creature with no predators could afford to be. Their heads tapered into powerful jaws lined with many rows of teeth, three eyes gleaming in a symmetrical spread across their brow two on the sides like a chameleon and one in the middle, pointing ahead, scanning the clearing with slow, steady awareness.

  From just behind their shoulders sprouted a second pair of limbs—long, jointed arms plated in sharp chitin ridges and ending in vicious, hook-like claws. Raime saw one extend with startling speed, the claw snapping shut on the carcass of a pale, antler-horned beast before dragging it into the shade. Their tails were flat, wide, and corded with muscle, each ending in a forked bident of blade-sharp chitin that glinted faintly in the light.

  Some of the beasts were returning from the treeline, dragging prey nearly as large as themselves. They brought the kills not to feed alone but to deposit near the center, where smaller, younger versions of themselves tumbled over one another in mock battles. The young bit at each other’s armoured throats, swung their tails in clumsy arcs, and snapped at nothing—play that was also practice.

  To one side of the clearing rose a massive earthen mound, studded with dark chitin fragments that gleamed like embedded stone. Several of the larger beasts entered its shadowed openings, vanishing down sloped tunnels. Others emerged, coated in dust, as if from deep chambers beneath.

  Raime watched in stunned silence, feeling the weight of the scene settle in his mind. Hunting packs, yes—he had seen that before in Ithural. But this… this was something else entirely. The clearing, the mound, the way the young were fed and guarded—it was a structure, a living machine of survival and strength. A community, not bound by fleeting convenience, but by something deeper.

  It was the first time he had seen such unity in the Rift, and it unnerved him almost as much as it fascinated him.

  A problem arose though, they spotted him as soon as he entered the clearing.

  A pair of smaller forms peeled away from the crowd at the mound’s lip and hurtled straight for him, a sudden, awkward rush that announced itself with a wet, bone-deep thump as they hit the ground to run. They were fast, very very fast for being younglings.

  Raime’s first thought was simple and stupid: Run.

  The second was faster and clearer: Running will get me killed.

  He had been lucky once. Luck was not a strategy. The adults were surely faster, and already trained on him. A sprint away would only make him a target for the pack—rioters of muscle and chitin who would pursue to the limit when they smelled blood or a fleeing threat. He could perceive it with his new senses. No, if he survived this it would be because he made himself the odd thing in the clearing: not prey, not a threat, but something else.

  Something else that doesn’t get eaten possibly.

  In his mind Raime formulated a plan, a crazy plan, but given the threat he felt from the big alien beasts it was probably the best shot he had. And he didn’t have much time, he felt the young one before the beast was upon him. A tiny surge of intent—sharp, bright, all-horned curiosity and a hint of playful hunger—bounced like an insect against the edge of his perception. It was not a full mind; there were no complex plans, no layered emotions. It was a child's rush: I want that. I will take it. I will see what it does.

  Raime set his feet and steadied his breathing. He let the new skill he’d coaxed awake wash across his senses not as a whip but as a listening tool: not the Thread he used to tug things, but the raw, nearly primitive mental contact he'd discovered in the basin—a reach that needed no constructed channel, only a focused mind and a thin thread of psionic energy.

  Hello, he thought, in the only language he had with him. Not a threat. Friend.

  The young beast didn’t ask questions. It lunged.

  It was as tall as a pony and much larger; its clawed feet carved the forest floor, its extra back-arms flailing with graceless intent. Teeth flashed in layered rows. The tail carved wide arcs. If Raime had expected a hunting strike he would have been right—but the strike was inexperienced, clumsy, more about thrilling the chitin off its young belly than about killing.

  He moved by stepping to the side, imitating a toreador as much as he could. Thunk flew, a silent shadow at his side, and slammed into the charging flank. Not a killing blow— the strike aimed to hurl more than to hurt. The alien made a sound—a high, metallic voice like metal scraped across glass—and rolled, deflected, but not defeated.

  Play, Raime thought, forcing the concept into the small mind. Play. Not kill.

  The sound of his own words in his head was ridiculous. He had no guarantee this would work. The young thing’s reaction was immediate and animal: it recoiled, blinked its three eyes, and then charged again with the single-minded reluctance of youth. Raime met it with motion and mind: a parry of the lever now in his hand, a controlled throw that slammed the creature into a rock but did not shatter its ribs, a rolling lock that caught a rear limb and yanked, hard but not to break.

  He poured his focus into the connection between them—thin at first, a single bright filament that he stretched and widened like a cautious hand. He projected simple things: warmth, curiosity, an invitation. Not domination. Not control. A suggestion, then an image, then the raw vibe of fun—clumsy, but joyous. The situation was dire, the young beast was already a threat on his own, another was watching a few meters on the side, and the old ones were closer now, ready to intervene while watching intently as their cub played with this strange entity that entered their territory.

  Raime was putting his all into staying alive while multitasking between avoiding to hurt the “little” beast, paying attention to the others and doing his best to form a stable connection.

  Play. Fun. Friend.

  It wasn’t telepathy like in the stories—no neat sentences, no whispered thoughts. What he felt back from the cub was smell-as-memory transposed into feeling: the jolt of tail muscle, the thrill of chase, the bright grease of adrenaline. He mirrored it, fed it back gently, and—most desperately—tried not to let panic bleed into the exchange. His Insight, his gift and his danger, let him feel its racing heart, hear its simple, circular urges. He tuned to them, matched the cadence of its excitement with a calmer beat.

  The lever took most of the physical work. He used it to trip and pin, to set the young’s weight off-balance rather than to break. He could have smashed the creature’s skull cleanly; he had done deadlier things in darker moments. But he needed this alive. He needed this mind to stay intact, malleable enough to touch. The juveniles of the mound needed to live; otherwise the adults would chase him and end him eventually, of this he had no doubts.

  As he fought, he measured the adults’ movements through his other senses. The clearing was a staccato of readiness: a dozen heavy heads turned on him, tails ticked, the mound’s dark maw spat shadows as two giant beasts rose to the surface. They moved with imperial slowness—the kind bred by long reign—but the weight behind them was a promise. If the fight grew to a true kill, all those scales would travel like a tide and the result would be nothing but carnage.

  He could feel that tide’s beginning through the ground and in the threads of psionic press that bled across the clearing. The leader lifted its head, a slow, deliberate statement, and the others followed with the synchronous tilt of the pack.

  If before I had a slim chance to escape now even that is gone.

  He thought it with calculation, the cold arithmetic of survival. The only hope was to make the juvenile an ambassador. Not by force—by making the juvenile want him, want to keep him.

  So he upped the sincerity. He didn’t let the fear surface, instead he wrapped his thoughts in laughter and a playful shove. Every parry was an invitation. Every duck was a cue. When he’d taken a hard jolt to the ribs from a swinging tail, he winced and then deliberately rolled away, presenting his shoulder for the next assault like a willing opponent in a rough game. He let the creature get a mouthful of his sleeve; he did not flinch from the bite. He matched its rhythm and then slowed a fraction, then sped up, pulled back, then lunged. A dance.

  Psychically he fed it images—food, chasing, other young animals tumbling. He threaded a ghost of his own pulse through the contact—steady, warm—and the young thing registered it. It paused for a fraction of a heartbeat and turned his head sideways toward him as if to test the novelty. Curiosity outweighed kill instinct. The connection widened to a small pane of understanding.

  One of the adults gave a low rumble and moved forward. Communication among the beasts was not speech. It was motion, scent, and a quick bark of pressure that rolled through the clearing like a tide. The young one heard it and, for a flash, the air filled with the dark certainty of adult enforcement.

  Raime felt his chest tighten. The odds were collapsing into numbers—one man and his weapon against a community that could smash him into dust if it chose.

  Do not collapse. Do not show fear. Hold the line.

  He did the only thing he could imagine: he reached for the child’s simplified mind and offered not dominance but kinship—I will play. I will not hurt you. I will be your game partner. He sent sensation instead of words: a warmth like sun on chitin, the soft pressure of palm to flank, the idea of laughter. He projected food—raw, stupid, enticing—then pulled the taste back to leave it wanting.

  The youngster stilled in mid-lunge. Its jaws opened and closed. Then it emitted a sound—an alien chirr, sharp and full, much too simple to interpret as a command but heavy with meaning. It was the signal the adults were keyed to: I have found something. I have chosen. The lead adult stilled, head cocked, and the motion that had been inexorable tightened into a hesitant pause.

  For a breath Raime nearly fell into the abyss of relief. The adult had not lunged. The young one had turned toward its brood and chittered again, a quick burst of noise and a flurry of tail flicks. The big ones answered with a ripple of movement that might as well have been human nods or grunts.

  It’s… telling them I am okay? The thought was so stupidly human that he felt ridiculous even as he felt the truth of it. The juveniles—and their elders—were not mindless. They had rules. They had recognition. The chittering, the eye contact, the signaling: it was a form of rudimentary communication.

  The youngster sprinted back two strides, then lunged at him again—not with teeth aimed to kill now, but with open-mouthed play. It jammed its shoulder against his hip with a force that could have crushed bone, but Raime braced and answered, giving as much as he took. They tumbled in a blind, heavy roll that stirred the leaf mulch. He felt a clawed hand rake his jacket—he felt the sting of a gash across his forearm—but he did not let the motion go beyond rough play. He laughed aloud, a sound that felt like a weapon and a salve and a lie.

  The lever moved like a companion now, not an instrument of death. He used its blunt face to redirect, to pin for a second, to let the young strike safe, to make the whole thing into a sport. He let the youngster win sometimes, let it push him back, let it pin his shoulder briefly before he would make a show of wriggling free and then chasing again. The civilizing trick of pretend, adults used with their young, worked on a species too alien to be human: the play reshaped the prey into a friend.

  The adults watched. They sniffed with their snouts at the air. The director—older, scarred, with a crescent notch in one tail-blade—finally relaxed in a slow, incomprehensible exhale. The pack’s posture softened by a hair. The leader made a long, low sound that could be gratitude, could be acceptance, could be a ritual note meaning this one may live.

  When the young exhausted itself, the change was abrupt and sweet. The juvenile pulled its claws in, flopped onto its side, and whuffed like a dog sated. It turned toward the mound and the adults, nosed at one of them solicitously, and then trotted back with the bounty of their earlier hunt tucked between its upper arms. Raime, panting, bruised, and bleeding along his arm, sat up on the damp earth and watched it go.

  The leader gave him one final look: not quite appraisal, not quite human curiosity, but acknowledgment. It was a complex thing, and for a suspended second Raime felt something like respect slip through his chest—quick and cold, not the warmth of friendship but the acknowledgment that he had passed a test.

  He pushed himself to his feet. Every movement stung, and his arm throbbed where the claw had nicked muscle. The Thread hummed at the edge of his consciousness, psionic energy frayed a little from the effort of holding the bond conscious while arguing with claws. He closed his eyes and tasted the creature’s last impression—not language, but a soft map of sensation: the joy of play, the anchor of the family, the desire to chase.

  This was close… fuck me. I’m spent.

  He’d gambled and won, barely. He had learned something that could save his life again and again: empathy, even shallow, could be used even in the Rift.

  When the clearing returned to its natural rhythm—the little ones chewing and tussling, the big ones shuffling prey toward the mound and into the dark mouths of their burrows—Raime backed through the trees with the cautious respect of someone who had survived by wit and by the kindness of another species’ juvenile.

  He kept his head down until the mound’s mouth blinked shut behind the last of the returning beasts. Only then did he allow himself a long, ragged exhale. His chest wheezed. He tasted copper and smoke and the sharp, odd sweetness of the forest’s sap. Pain threaded through him—real, honest, burning—and the knowledge that he’d been a hair from dying sat like a stone in his gut.

  Don’t do that again, he thought aloud, and then, because humour had a way of steadying him, he added: But if you’re going to play with a… I should start to name these aliens, well I better pick a less bitey opponent next time.

  He retraced his steps toward the temple, each stride measured. The forest closed behind him like a curtain. The slab—half a door, half an offering—scraped into place with an old, satisfied groan. Inside, the basin’s cool stone welcomed him back like a wound cooled with water.

  He sat, hands deep in his lap, and let his mind roll over the day as if it were a thing to be inspected for damage and for lesson. He had not only survived; he had learned. He had discovered how a mind could touch another and what that touch could purchase: trust, this time, enough to live another day.

  That’s something, he thought, eyes on the dim stone of the temple. In this place, that’s everything.