Benjamin Vryce

He landed in their midst, bringing his fists down together on the back of the closest fighter ant. He felt for a moment like he was big, green and angry, when he felt the ant’s carapace crack beneath his blow. He had to be careful, he wanted to collect patterns and if he mutilated their heads, he might lose the opportunity.

The rest of the ants reacted instantly. Swarming towards him in a mass. The other fighter ant had been on the far side of the group, keeping the workers between them. It was a sound strategy, if they could see their enemy coming. Now, it just meant that it had farther to go before it reached him.

The first worker ant arrived and he crushed it beneath his foot. The cracking sound it made followed by a squelching noise didn’t do anything good for his appetite. As he moved to hit the next ant in line, he felt fire radiating from his calf.

Looking down he saw one of the workers had bitten into his leg. The amount of damage that it did surprised him. It had gone through is pant leg and deep into the shin. He didn’t think the bone had broken but he was bleeding freely.

“Gahh,” he yelled as another ant got in and bit his other leg. He reached down and grabbed them up, one in each hand and squeezed. They popped and sprayed orange goop all over his hands. Dropping the now lifeless bodies he turned and grabbed another one.

While he was squeezing this one to death, two more of the tenacious little buggers latched onto his arm. He had halved their number in a matter of seconds but if he had come in here before his latest transformation, he would have most likely had his limbs bitten off by now.

Accepting the damage, he reached over and crushed them one at a time. By this point the fighter had nearly reached him. He was pretty sure he didn’t want to be bitten by that thing. He was about to back up when the last two workers sank their mandibles into his wounded legs.

They bit into the same spot the last ones had. Even though the wounds had already started to clot, the bones had been fractured. With this new force applied they gave out, dropping him to the forest floor.

How the hell was this happening? He was super human, how were a cluster of ants more than he could handle. He didn’t have time to waste on those questions. The fighter ant was on him, it crawled closer to his head, perhaps aiming to end it in one go.

It shuddered as Grace attacked it. She slammed down with a moss-covered rock; Benjamin doubted he would have been able to lift on earth. The fighter stumbled, legs bending as it absorbed the impact.

There were a few spiderweb cracks in its armor but otherwise it seemed unhurt. The move had provided Benjamin with the distraction and the time he needed. He crushed the final two workers and brought his fist down on the weakened section of the fighter’s back, just as it was recovering.

His fist punched into the creature’s body, splattering him with the bright orange insides of the creature. The fluid was thicker than blood but not as solid as muscle. It was an… interesting… consistency. He had to admit though, the orange color looked good against the black carapace.

He looked up from where he had collapsed on the ground to see Grace standing over him. A disapproving look on her face. She dropped the rock but continued to look at him with narrowed eyes.

“Thanks for the save Grace, they almost had me there for a second. Didn’t realize they were quite that strong. Did you know your eyes sparkle when you scowl like that?” he said, adding that last line to try to lighten her mood.

It was also true. She had round pupiled eyes, but they were the yellow of a hunting cats and the color was complemented nicely by her pale green skin.

He had noticed before but hadn’t thought much on it then. Now though, sitting on the ground with broken legs. Covered in orange ant guts while she glared at him from a foot away, why not distract them both. Her pale green skin darkened just a bit at his words and she turned away from him.

“Rest now and recover, Grace will gather the patterns and creation cores from the ants and squirrels. At least you managed not to crush all the workers completely. Ant flesh makes a wonderful stew.” She said, moving away to start collecting bodies.

He watched her go, a slight frown creeping onto his face. He couldn’t tell if she was joking about the ant stew or not. With a sigh, he looked down at himself. He was healing quickly enough, but there was no saving his coveralls. He was going to have to replace them soon or they were going to fall apart on him.

* * *

It took them an hour or more to gather up all the patterns and creation cores from the dead beasts. Benjamin wanted to examine and absorb them right away but knew that the next stage was even more time critical.

While they packaged the harvest; creation cores, patterns, and chunks of carapace Grace thought might be useful, Benjamin thought of a flaw with the system.

“Grace, these patterns from what I understand, are extremely valuable. It seems like you have eaten these creatures before, how does that work exactly?” he asked, it didn’t make sense to him how her clan could survive if they destroyed the patterns.

“Grace doesn’t really know. When she tries to remember how her clan lived, her other memories don’t line up. She is confused. What she remembers being, can’t be.” She shook her head, as if to clear away a fog.

“Don’t worry about it, Grace. We will figure it out together,” he reassured her. It worried him though, he thought he was beginning to understand more about these trials. He really didn’t like what he was coming to believe.

Benjamin pushed the thoughts aside; he didn’t know anything yet. The rules seemed to fluctuate depending on where he was anyway. When he was still mostly human, he had needed to eat. Once he got a little more soul essence, he no longer needed food. He just didn’t know, everything he understood about how life worked on earth didn’t seem to apply here.

Once they had gathered up everything they thought might be useable, they packed up. he would need to spend some time in the void space soon to organize his thoughts but there just wasn’t time now.

“Are you ready?” He asked, looking to his companion. She nodded back at him, hiking her improvised pack up higher on her shoulder. “Alright then, you know where we are going better than I do. Lead the way,” he said gesturing for her to go first.

With a nod, she started running. It looked like a full-on sprint, but Benjamin knew she could go faster. This part of their journey was going to be much longer and they didn’t want to stop. So, they planned to run at a sustainable pace.

The hours bled by, there was nothing around but trees. This forest was huge, but empty. As they ran, Benjamin began to slowly tune out his surroundings. Lulled into his own thoughts at the rhythmic thumping of his feet on the ground.

His mind wondered over his plans. What he thought the Erlking had in store for him next. If the Arbiter was being honest with him. Even wondering what that kid, Frank, was up too. So much so, that when the ambush finally came, he was caught completely off guard.

* * *

Grace

They had been running for hours and her legs burned. Benjamin had told her to set a pace she could maintain and she had tried. For the first few hours she had varied her speed, trying to find a rhythm she could hold.

She glanced over to him. He was loping along beside her, with his longer legs he barely seemed to be straining. Grace could tell he was lost in thought; he was still running but his eyes had glossed over. She couldn’t blame him, he had to slow his pace for her. Gripping her bow tightly in one hand she debated speeding up, but she knew she couldn’t maintain the pace if she did.

Her own thoughts were a jumbled mess. She just couldn’t shake the feeling that her memories weren’t real. She didn’t understand how that was possible. She remembered being little, growing up, and loving to play in the woods.

She also remembered other things. Things that might mean she wasn’t who she always thought. That maybe she, Grace, hadn’t really been born until her bond with Benjamin. She looked over to him again, wondering if he suspected her thoughts. That’s when she saw it.

“Look out,” she said, already pulling an arrow from her quiver. She fit it into the bow she was holding and loosed the shaft before she could really consider what she was doing. It flew true, imbedding itself into the neck of the wolf that was lunging at Benjamin.

Her warning shout snapped him out of his daze and he looked around. Following the line the arrow had taken he let out a growl and launched himself after it, toward the wolf. The wolf had meant to take him from the side while he was unaware. Now they came together face to face, and the wolf was already wounded.

She pulled her last arrow out of her quiver and put it on the string, looking around for more enemies. While Benjamin was busy ripping the throat out of their attacker. When he finished he stood over it panting, as blood dripped from his claws.

She looked to the downed wolf, a blended grey and white beast. Her people had legends about wolf riders from long ago, before the alpha came and ended the practice. Or did she? She remembered the shaman telling her the story before bed time as a child. She also saw the information as a line of floating script. She shook the thoughts aside, not the time.

“Wolves always hunt in packs.” She called out to Benjamin. She wasn’t sure if he knew or not. Sure enough, at her words his head came up and started scanning the surroundings, just like she was. A rustle in the underbrush behind her had her turning around.

Benjamin must have seen it first, with a flash of movement he darted passed her and flung himself onto the new target. This wolf was a mottled brown and tan color. She turned her back on the combat, not wanting to be sneaked up on again.

She could hear both combatants’ growls coming from behind her, she didn’t think Benjamin even knew he was doing it though. When Benjamin got into a fight, he let his easy-going manner evaporate. He would tear into an enemy with no regard for his own safety, becoming vicious and primal. It wasn’t something she was used to seeing, that personality change during combat.

She spotted movement in the brush. Turning her body, she trained her bow on it. Just as she loosed the shaft, she felt a massive weight drop onto her shoulders. It shoved her face down to the ground. She felt her bow snap beneath her on impact.

The pain came next, as massive jaws bit deep into her shoulder. She screamed out a wordless cry of agony, thinking that this was how she would die. When the weight was suddenly torn from her back. She lifted her head enough to see the white wolf impact a nearby tree, long claw marks scarring its side.

A massive wolf, the one she had attempted to shoot, appeared then. She watched it growl and jut its head to the side. The injured white wolf, just now rising from where it had impacted the tree, whined then darted off into the woods. It must have told it to escape, to protect it or to call reinforcements? Grace didn’t know.

Its companion gone; the new wolf looked to Benjamin, who was standing over her. The beast growled low and long; lips pulled all the way back to reveal a mouth full of teeth. Benjamin flexed his bloody claws and growled right back, smaller fangs on prominent display.

She winced as the pain throbbed through her shoulder again. She wanted to help but knew she would only be in the way, so she fumbled her pack off. It was a cluster job, as Benjamin called it, made of vines wrapped around hollowed out body sections of ant carapace. It was clunky, but effective.

She didn’t have much in the way of medical supplies, but she used what she had to try and stem the bleeding. Above her the combatants stared each other down.