“I don’t want to burst your bubble,” Vex said. “But even if we can reach Guardian strength, how is that going to help us get out of this place?”

Kellen’s head still spun with the random bits of knowledge their last meditation had unlocked from the remnants of Kiypu’s memory stone. He wished they would have known that the mana from the stone hadn’t been completely destroyed before they’d entered the totem. There had to be a way to restore Kiypu’s memories from Kellen and Vex. Unfortunately, the exact how wasn’t something Kellen could say.

In addition to the memory visions, he’d received a rather a scattered collection of information, bits and pieces of Kiypu’s long years of practice and mastery as a Beastcaller when he’d been alive. Between that and what Kellen knew about advancing to Guardian, he thought they had a chance. Hopefully. It was like knowing all there was to know about driving yet only putting it into practice in a bumper car rink. The adage about knowing just enough to be dangerous came to Kellen’s mind.

Aside from what Kiypu had told them regarding advancement to Guardian strength, Kellen had gleaned a few additional nuances from the embedded memories. But as Kiypu cautioned, going from Companion to Guardian was not the same journey as Ward to Companion.

“Vex,” Kellen said as a thought came to him. “What do you want?”

The Mana Beast sat up and looked and Kellen. “Well, I wouldn’t say no to some pizza right now—I’m still waiting for you to teach someone here how to make it.”

Kellen laughed. “Not that. I mean what do you want from life, existence? I just realized I’ve never asked you that before. You just kind of… go with the flow.”

“Hmm.” Vex started up at the ceiling in contemplation. “I mean, a mane would be pretty freaking awesome. I want to get stronger, you know?”

“But we already both want that. Why do you want to get stronger? What you want? And don’t answer with what you guess my answer is.”

“Isn’t that the whole point of my existence?” Vex asked. “If I’m not getting stronger what am I supposed to be doing?”

“You could do anything you want,” Kellen said. “That’s not a reason to get stronger, just because that’s what other Beastcallers and Mana Beasts do. Or if we do continue down this road, we don’t have to get stronger just so we can fight. Nokom told us once there are lots of different paths for Beastcallers. We can help people without being warriors.”

“Is that what you want, Kellen? To help people?”

Kellen didn’t answer for a long time. Was that what he wanted? When his sole focus as a Beastcaller had been to become stronger to save Allison, that was one thing. Now, like he’d just told Vex, they could be or do anything they wanted to. He’d always felt a personal satisfaction helping others. It was the one thing that didn’t make him feel mediocre. As a boy, whenever he’d imagined being a superhero or other childhood fantasies, it was always for other people. His daydreams never involved becoming famous or rich just for the sake of it.

“I do,” he answered finally. “I think you know, back on Earth I never thought I’d be special or really do anything other than live a regular life. For better or worse, being transported to Oras and becoming a Beastcallers was… I don’t even know what the odds are. They’re pretty out there. I just don’t want to waste this chance. For the first time in my life, there’s a path forward to being the kind of person I always imagined.” He sighed. “That sounds really stupid when I say it out loud.”

“I don’t think it’s stupid at all.” Vex padded over to him and rubbed his head encouragingly against Kellen’s hand. “That’s what I want too. You remember those kids back at the Earth Badger camp that Ubira attacked? Making them happy after all those bad things happened to them was the best thing. It was one of the first times I really felt a strong emotion that I could tell wasn’t just coming from you.”

“Is that enough, though?” Kellen wondered, looking around the chamber. “It seems ridiculous that we can just tap our toes and say ‘we want to help people’ and turn into Guardians.”

Vex looked up at him, face stretched in a feline grin. “It’s a start.”

Together, they settled back down on the ground in a seated position next to each other. Half of Kellen was terrified of entering the meditation again. If another flood of memories hit them, he wasn’t sure his sanity would hold up. The feeling of a second person in his head hadn’t yet faded away from the last time. He took a deep breath and sighed. They could do this. They knew what to do, they just had to do it.

“Okay,” Kellen breathed. “Focus. Focus. Focus.” He repeated the word several more times until Vex cracked open an eye and gave him an annoyed glance.

“You repeating focus over and over is making me more unfocused every time.”

“Okay. Sorry.” Kellen took another deep breath and exhaled, feeling his shoulders, neck, and back relax this time. The swirling storm mana around them felt like a distant shower on the horizon. So far in the distance, they could only just sense the sheet of falling rain. Kellen released his conscious thought, feeling himself letting go of his senses. In the blink of an eye, the mana coursed all around them, not an erratic storm, but the steady, solid fall of a heavy winter snow.

Advancing to Guardian required a source of mana more powerful than the Beastcaller and Mana Beast attempting the advancement. Kiypu—and by extension Kellen to some degree, now—understood there were a variety of ways to accomplish the feat. One was to defeat a wild Mana Beast stronger than the duo. They’d experienced something similar to this when they’d defeated the bear on the plains. Being a brand new Beastcaller, Kellen’s beast heart merely absorbed as much of the excess mana as it could and the rest was wasted. His Ward strength abilities hadn’t been able to retain or process the overload. He realized now it was the reason he’d become so sick following the fight.

Other ways involved mana enriched artifacts, again, only if they held more mana naturally than the Beastcaller did. A Chieftain or Elder, for example, couldn’t flood a mana stone with mana to artificially create a method of advancement. The third way that Kellen, or rather Kiypu, knew was to enter an area rich in mana. Knowing that, it made sense why the Storm Horse Tribes had only allowed their strongest and most promising Beastcallers into the totem. They’d likely wanted to see how many could advance using the powerful mana of the Great Horse Totem.

Kiypu’s memories didn’t think the environment inside the totem would be enough on its own. In his time, there had been certain areas with strong mana, like extra powerful versions of the Tall Spears, only much rarer. Fortunately, the belly of the Thunder Beast offered a wealth of condensed mana, far surpassing the amount needed to stand in place of an imbued artifact. And they also carried the residual mana of the memory stone, which Kellen now surmised had been at least an Elder strength artifact itself. That solved one problem, then brought up another.

Kellen felt his mind working in overdrive, as if his brain were hooked up to a supercomputer capable of solving every problem he could think of. When it came to advancing through the lower Beastcaller strengths, Kiypu had once been a master, one who’d not only done it but instructed countless others through these strengths as well.

The problem was, the mana surrounding them was storm mana. And while it would serve the purpose, it wasn’t the optimal way for them to advance. They needed sun mana to squeeze the most juice out of the increase in strength, or at least Kellen did. That was something Nokom had told them as well, and also the reason Shani’s ability to reach Guardian was so hampered and unlikely.

Much knowledge had been lost in the ages since Kiypu had drawn breath as a living man and their current time at the end of the Third Noctun. In the past Kellen now knew that Beastcallers and their Mana Beasts—maybe only a chosen few, it wasn’t clear—somehow had the ability to use different kinds of mana. These masters had taught others with potential how to bend the various forms of mana to their will.

To take that route would require years of practice and study, time that Kellen and Vex didn’t have. Yet there was one anomaly Kiypu’s subconscious presence recognized in Vex.

I can channel it! Vex’s said through their shared connection. Kellen knew instinctively his Mana Beast was right, even if he didn’t know how or why this was possible. Allowing the ghost of Kiypu’s presence to guide him, Kellen turned his mana sense toward Vex, looking with greater detail and care than he’d ever contemplated was possible.

Inside the blazing sun of Vex’s sun mana, he found traces of storm mana, hardly more than the faintest wisps. This, Kiypu’s presence surmised, was how Vex had changed form as a Ward into a storm mana-influenced form, that occasionally used storm mana as well. It seemed somehow as a Ward, Vex had the ability to draw on the mana around him, regardless of its type. While it was a skill that would take Kellen years to learn, Vex did it as naturally as breathing, even if he didn’t realize it.

Peering with an even keener attention for detail, Kiypu’s presence led Kellen to another discovery. There were even fainter traces of other mana as well. Earth, and a speck of something Kiypu recognized as plague mana, though Kellen struggled to understand what this was through their shared knowledge.

There had once been far more storm mana, but Vex had inadvertently burned through that in his advancement to Companion form. Had Kiypu retained his knowledge and mastery, he could have guided Kellen and Vex during the transition from Ward and made more use of it. As it was, the opportunity was wasted. But this next one would not be.

As Vex had discovered through shared observations of this third string of thought in their minds, he could channel the storm mana into him, drawing on it to sustain and aid the advancement while he fed Kellen every last drop of his sun mana, like an arcane IV drip. The method was not one Kiypu had ever explored before, but his presence indicated confidence it would work… probably.

Kellen’s concern threatened to break their connection with the surrounding storm mana as well as Kiypu’s subconscious. If it didn’t work, they risked not only disseminating Vex back to his weaker Ward form, but potentially causing permanent damage to Kellen’s beast heart as well. The connection to both the storm mana and Kiypu’s presence, which could only be tapped into with an extreme amount of mana, wavered with Kellen’s hesitation.

We can do this. Vex assured him. Trust me.

Redoubling his focus, Kellen felt the connection strengthen once more. It was now or never. He worried if they didn’t throw all of their willpower into the advancement now, they might never get out of the Thunder Beast.

Our purpose is united, Vex said.

Kellen focused on their shared intent as storm mana gathered around Vex and Kellen saw more than felt a beam of sun mana through his sense. It passed from Vex and pierced Kellen’s beast heart. He felt a rush of warmth and life as the sun mana flooded his beast heart, expanding through his mana channels to every part of his body. Blinding yellow light swirled with the gray storm clouds into a whirlwind of sunshine, lightning, rain, and thunder. Kellen shook from head to toe as the mana surged within him.

Determined to press forward, he opened his beast heart to the mana. It consumed them.