The trip was slated to take around three to five days, depending on our pace. With Alena around things stayed approximately the same. Though she was clearly just as inexperienced with travelling as any of us, at least on horseback.

I really didn’t care all that much about her presence, I was fairly confident that I could take this whole shebang on by myself, and the addition of Rethi was really just so that I had a companion that had skill and experience. Something I was beginning to realise was just as invaluable as having experience and skills yourself.

It made me reflect on the stories I had read in my fairly recent youth. Stories of ultimate soldiers and academics, capable of doing every task themselves, an island of their own. In fact, they may as well be walking countries, all the expertise and skill that you’d need was available until it was convenient for the plot to strip it away to make the character rely on someone.

I had realised that I wasn’t going to be one of these characters. It just wasn’t a realistic possibility. Sure, maybe I had literally double the time than a regular person, on account of not needing to sleep. But that would still mean that It’d take twenty years of fixated devotion to do what a ‘regular’ person was capable of in forty.

So why not trust in those that had been walking that path for far longer than I? Would I not trust in Mayer because I have surpassed him in my insights, if not execution, of the Sharah? No, of course not. His opinion is still valid and extremely valuable to me, especially where my common knowledge of shifting and the general limits of extra human strength. He had been moving his body with the kind of strength I have only just begun wielding for decades.

So Rethi was immensely valuable to me, in an odd way. A ‘manservant’, loyal and willing to do dirty work to execute on the goal of his lord. Though I wasn’t happy with the title and was thinking that ‘right hand’ was going to be a better descriptor in the near future.

The road was increasingly becoming less maintained as we ventured forwards, fields to our right and forest to our left. The maintenance of the roads barely ever reached out this far, probably because there wasn’t much reason for loggers to come out this far, unless they want to deal with more wild forests and more dangerous beasties, which I guess is exactly what we are doing.

My light jog beside the horses faltered as their speed slowly declined into an amble rather than a trot. It marked the first break for the day, the sun well and truly in the sky by now.

Both Rethi and Alena hopped off their horses, Alena grumbling and rubbing her ass, giving my horse the stink eye. I just chuckled as I whipped out a fresh apple, offering it to the beast who gratefully took it from my hand.

These horses had been impressively determined through the yesterday and today, making great pace. Mayer had procured them from a horse nut in the town over the other way from which we were travelling. Interestingly enough I could have easily ended up in that town instead of this one if I had walked upstream instead of downstream on that first day. Might’ve ended up as a stable hand to survive if I had.

Alena walked over to Rethi who was currently letting his horse drink generously from the stream that followed the road we were following. It’d veer off at some point, according to Mayer, but never far enough to worry about getting water.

I let my horse free into the field after taking off a training short sword from a clasp on the saddle. It wasn’t quite as sharp as the one that Mayer had loaned Rethi for actual fights, that one could easily cut through bone if wielded right, Mayer had demonstrated as much on me.

“Rethi!” I yelled out to the boy, who turned before the sword hit him in the back of the head and deftly caught it. Mayer had done that during training to the both of us, so we did it to each other to keep each other up to snuff. He looked down at the training sword and grimaced as he turned to look at Alena, who instantly wrote her own story as to what was going on.

“Give it your best today, we don’t have much time before we are fighting for real, and we want to make sure we both don’t die a stupid, horrible death.” Though it was incredibly unlikely that either would happen to either of us, I really wanted to make sure that the boy wouldn’t end up with an injury that would hamper his future for whatever reason. Small nicks were fine but, call me overconfident, we should be able to take out this whole group of forest wolves without being touched once. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Rethi could do it singlehandedly—his training with Mayer really showing just how much work Mayer had been putting into raising Rethi as his ‘heir’. If we couldn’t take out these wolves together, then I’d be more than a little disappointed in myself.

Rethi steeled his expression and moved forwards, throwing the scabbard off of his training sword, which was standard issue army if I remember correctly, and threw off his travel cloak, waiting for me to do the same. I just shook my head.

“If I get hit then ruining my clothes is my punishment.” Alena’s eyes widened; she’d seen what that sort of sword could do to someone. She was baffled why I would care more about by clothes than my bodily integrity. Strange how priorities change when you pain and injury are fleeting to you.

Rethi nodded and raced forwards, starting with a mix of the approaching steps in the Sharah and a flurry of sword strikes that Mayer had been belting into his head for months. I deftly dodged each flurry, knocking the last strike away with my forearm on the flat of the blade, then moving closer to push the boy back.

Really, this was a game of tug of war in opposite, just with more swords and grievous injuries.

The blade whizzed through the air as he used the force of my push to spin around and slice at my other arm, which I ducked and swept at his feet. He jumped, stabbing towards my lowered form. I moved in closer, reaching under his armpit and taking his sword wielding arm and throwing him further back.

Rethi, not one to be caught on his ass, flipped mid-air and caught himself on his knees. I approached, unrelenting, punching out with heavy blows, enough to make the shorter boy’s body creak with the effort of parrying them with the flat of his blade. The reason he wouldn’t try to sneakily slice my hand with the edge of the blade is because I have caught his blade in the bones of my hands one too many times for him to try that with.

I laughed as I approached, making the boy grin with exertion and a battle drunk glee. The exchange only lasted a few more seconds before Rethi took a last, desperate lunge at the precipice of the water stream. The world slowed as the blade approached my face, but I thought of something far more interesting.

I used the split second to bring my hand up, and jam it onto the sword’s tip, impaling it to midway through the blade. As painful as it was, it really didn’t feel like all that much anymore. Pain was a hollow feeling, more a signal to my brain that my body had been violated than an actual sensation anymore.

The blade slowed to a stop, and I grinned at Rethi, who could only look on in exasperation and frustration as I pushed my hand all the way down to the hilt and commandeered the pommel straight into the boy’s chest, winding him and pushing him the last step before the inevitable plunge into the water.

It took Rethi a moment to resurface, before he took a gasp of air and proclaimed:

“That’s cheating!” I only laughed, quickly followed by Rethi’s laughter from within the stream.

This was when I turned to Alena, who simply watched on in a mixture of horror and fascination.

“How does it feel to know your boyfriend is a badass?” Alena gaped as I laughed. I started to idly yank out the sword through between my middle and ring finger, quicker and surprising less painful than pulling it out the long way. I threw the blade aside and started to walk back towards my horse.

“Wait! That wound needs to be treated!” Alena called as she ran over to me. Amused I turned to her as she roughly gabbed my wrist and lifter it to her face so she could examine it, only to see the wound quickly begin stitching itself back up, the ligaments and muscles reattaching to the relatively unaffected bone within the hand, before the skin slowly begun to repair itself. The skin was always the slowest to regenerate for whatever reason, but the skin didn’t really add all that much functionality if you didn’t mind a little pain, so it was fine by me.

“How…” Alena trailed off as she watched the miraculous healing that comes with being a champion.

“A gift of sorts, you could say.” Her eyes turned to mine, questioningly. Her dark hair complimenting the striking blue of her eyes.

“Life shifter? Are you one as well?” She asked, a pure intensity dawning on her face. Rethi, who was taking off his damp clothing and wringing it out, stood very, very still. The reaction was immediate. Alena’s face lost all of its glee and her jaw clamped shut.

“A life shifter?” I said thoughtfully. Alena paled with a stricken look, her emotions darkening severely. Rethi discarded the clothes he was drying in a pile in the grass.

“A life shifter?” Rethi said, his voice a bit more shocked, and… worried?

Alena didn’t deign to answer us, as she quickly walked away to where my horse was standing, her mind whirling with a frankly astounding number of emotions—a prominent one being fear.

“I assume being a life shifter isn’t exactly a prestigious title?” Rethi nodded and I sighed.

“Is it because of something stupid? Or is it well founded?” Rethi looked pained for moment before he answered.

“They are also called Abomination Makers, Master Max.” Well founded, then. There was a moment of pause before the boy walked over towards his girlfriend and placed a hand on her shoulder. It seems that Gram was hiding more than he was letting on. A life shifter, huh? So, a healer, figuring from how Alena reacted to my regeneration. Could I have seen this coming? Maybe.

I knew that Alena was weird, which was a good enough reason around these parts to suspect that they had something going on. Gram and Mayer were good examples, me included, I guess. And looking back on it now, I remember Gram’s face being very similar to his daughter’s when I had asked about medical horrors of the past. Abomination Makers. Interesting.

To me, there was hardly a taboo. As long as you were able to shift it, then there was something to it, in my opinion. It could be as simple as shifting dust into existence, and I wouldn’t knock it until I knew whether or not something astounding could be done with it. Life shifting sounded like a good candidate for being able to do some crazy shit.

I did some menial chores, brushing the horses, heeding them, drying off Rethi’s clothes before I decided that the two lovebirds had been given easily enough time to talk.

“Alrighty then, are we done exposing deep, dark secrets to each other?” I got two glares out of that. I offered a chuckle.

“Good! Time to get a move on. On the way we can talk about how this life shifter stuff works.” Alena paled, and Rethi looked about ready to go in and defend her.

“No, Rethi. I am not going to have someone travel with us whose powers we aren’t sure of. If she is unwilling to talk about it, we will ride all the way back to town just to drop her off. Mayer will be made aware of the reason.” Rethi paled and Alena paled even further. Rethi looked at Alena questioningly before she nodded hesitantly.

I threw Rethi’s now only slightly damp clothes at him, who redressed quickly and jumped on the back of his horse and gently begun to warm the horse up again.

“Get ready for another awkward conversation.” I laughed as Alena struggled up onto the horse. And rode after Rethi, ignoring me.

“Ah, sometimes Rethi makes me think that I’m the supporting character.” I chuckle as I began to jog after the two teenagers.