Kellen awoke to something pecking at his fingers. He twitched, then jerked his hand away, yelling in surprise as he sat up.

Chirp flew back from him in a whoosh of glittering mana dust.

“Oh, thank the Storm Horse, you’re alive!”

Blinking, Kellen looked around, trying to get his bearings. They were in giant fields of clouds again. Where the Thunder Beast was, he couldn’t say. A pile of gray clouds covered his lower half like dry snow or perhaps a mound of fluffy wool. Beside him was another mound, where he sensed Vex sat, still out of it and completely buried. Something felt strange about Vex’s aura, though. It felt like Vex… and it didn’t. All at once, the mound of clouds covering Vex shuddered and Kellen’s Mana Beast burst free, sending bits of cloud in every direction.

“Gah!” Vex shouted. “What happened? Where am I? Who took the cinnamon rolls?”

Vex’s transformation to Guardian was more pronounced than his advancement from Ward to Companion strength had been. He was ash-gray, lighter than the skin tones of the Storm Horse people and covered in the same waving markings from before, except now they glowed a pale golden color instead of electric blue. His body was longer now and he stood as high as Kellen’s hip. Some of his feline features had given way to more foxlike ones, including narrower, longer ears and a more pronounced nose and muzzle. Perhaps the biggest change was his tail, which had change from a tufted one like a lion’s to seven waving fox tails, each tipped with a glowing golden color.

When he saw Kellen, everything they’d been going through before losing consciousness seemed to sink it? “Did it work? It worked! We did it!”

Vex spun around, chasing his tails as he tried to get a look at himself. “Oh man, I feel incredible. I look incredible!” He froze all at once as something appeared to cross his mind. Kellen read the thought.

“Sorry buddy, no mane.”

Vex slumped to the ground, dejected. “Aww, man! Are you sure? Maybe it’s still growing in?”

“Well I think you look fabulous,” Chirp said. “It appears to me that leaving you when that Thunder Beast attacked was the best possible thing for the two of you.”

Vex’s eyes, now a golden color, narrowed, realizing the mana spirit was there for the first time. “We were literally swallowed by that monster, thanks to you. And barfed up, like a hairball. At least I hope that’s the end we came out of.”

“The point is, you’re better than ever now,” Chirp said. Kellen didn’t miss her abrupt change of subject. “Which is more than those other humans in the tower can say. And I did come back to find you.”

“Wait—what other humans?” Kellen asked. “Where?”

“Oh, they’re all over the place,” Chirp said, gesturing into the distance with a wing. “They’re really upsetting the Mana Beasts and mana spirits inside the totem. All this ruckus, I shouldn’t wonder that the place will never be the same again after you’ve tramped all over it with your stench. No offense.”

Kellen decided to try a different tactic. “Are they close?”

“That sounds quite a bit like giving you help,” Chirp said. “And I like you two but that is something I absolutely cannot do.”

“I think you owe us one for not warning us about the Thunder Beast,” Vex said. “Can you at least tell us how to get out of this place? It’s not really helping if the place we go to next is more dangerous, right?”

Kellen caught on to what Vex was doing. “In fact, it’s almost like the opposite of helping us, if you place in more danger or get us more lost inside the totem than we already are.”

Chirp floated in the air without flapping her wings, apparently deep in thought over what they’d said. “You know… there’s actually some logic to that, in a very human kind of way. Okay, follow me!”

“Hold on,” Kellen said. “Before we go wandering off into who knows what, don’t you think we should take a minute to check out new Guardian strength abilities and things?”

Vex shrugged. Kellen realized it was going to take some getting used to seeing Vex in his new form. “Fine by me. We can see what happened to me. What about you?”

“I don’t look any different?” Kellen asked holding his hands extended out in front of him. He felt just the same as he had as a Companion strength Beastcaller but surely something must have changed, right? Without the mana dense environment of the Thunder Beast’s belly it was harder to draw on Kiypu’s memories and knowledge. Kellen worried it would fade completely and wished he would have known the Thunder Beast would barf them up during their advancement to Guardian.

He remembered something Kiypu had said, though he couldn’t be sure if the current Kiypu had told him this or if it was from Kiypu’s memories in his head. He had a hard time differentiating between the two.

The advancement to Guardian strength is the foundation for all that is to come. It is at the point that a Beastcaller and Mana Beast first select a path to walk that will determine the course of their power for the rest of their lives. The human body is remade into the most complete version it could be, and is no longer threatened by natural sickness or disease, though aging still occurs.

Well, that sounded like a pretty sweet deal to Kellen. If he was lucky, he’d had his last case of hay fever or saddle rash ever! Curious he pulled off his poncho and lifted up the shirt he’d been wearing underneath it that was tucked into his leather trousers.

“Daaaanng!” Vex said, followed by an admiring whistle.

Kellen looked down at disbelief at the defined eight-pack he now sported. If reaching Companion strength had given him a tone up, Guardian was like an overhaul. He didn’t feel or sense that he’d added any muscle mass or physical strength, that he’d just achieved a version of himself closer to perfection.

“You still don’t have that marble statue look Raiqo has going on but you are jacked my man!” Vex continued.

“Thanks, I guess,” Kellen said, tucking his shirt in and pulling his poncho back over his head. It partly felt like cheating. Sure, he’d been working his butt off for weeks but he knew without Kiypu’s memories and the fortunate accident of being swallowed by a giant mana spirit, it would have taken them much longer to reach Guardian strength.

“I cannot comment on what the ideal human looks like,” Chirp said. “But it sounds as if congratulations are in order.”

“Okay, enough about me,” Kellen said, uncomfortable by the attention on his physique. “Vex, show me what you can do.”

“Well, aside from my good ole sun mana prism blast, check this out.”

Vex lowered himself into a predator’s crouch and then sprang into the air. As he hit the peak of his jump, the golden tips on his tail began to glow, as well as the waving markings on his body. All at once, a shower of golden, dagger-like projectiles shot from the tips of his tail and buried themselves in the cloudy ground just head of him. Vex floated to the ground and turned back to Kellen, tongue hanging out in a satisfied grin.

“Huh? Huh? Did you see that? I was almost flying again!”

Kellen wrapped Vex around the neck in a bear hug. “That was amazing! Who’s a good Mana Beast?”

“Okay, okay,” Vex said, fighting free like a kitten held in the grip of an over-loving toddler. “I get it, I’m the man. Now let me go, you’re ruffling my fur all up the wrong direction.”

Still laughing, Kellen relented.

“So you look like you got a total body makeover but did you learn anything new?” Vex asked.

Based on what Kellen knew from his personal experience going from Ward to Companion and from Kiypu’s vague memories, he didn’t think it worked quite the same way. While Kellen’s beast heart felt somehow larger or deeper in the spot it sat across from his physical heart in his chest, he didn’t immediately have access to any new mana workings. Instinctively, he knew his shields and orbs would be stronger, just like he knew intuitively he was stronger, faster and would react faster.

Over the past few months, he’d filed away a few ideas to test for when they reached Guardian strength, however. Little experiments that he could have done as a Companion strength Beastcaller, but had lacked the mana reserves to attempt.

Focusing his attention on the new depths of his beast heart, Kellen shaped an oval shield of sun mana above Vex. Once the working was wide and long enough to cover Vex from head to the top of his long tails, Kellen lowered it down over his Mana Beast. Vex glowed like he’d been dipped in molten gold.

“I call it gilded armor,” Kellen said, sheepish of the name. “It acts like a shield but should also make your physical attacks hit harder as well. I don’t think I can keep it up effectively for more than thirty seconds or so without draining too much of my mana, though.”

“This is awesome!” Vex said running in circles and watching the golden light trail behind him. “I don’t think you need to maintain it. As soon as you settled the working over me, I could take control of feeding it mana to keep it going.”

Kellen’s mind spun with the possibilities, enhanced by the trickle of Kiypu’s learning that he still held on to. He knew from Nokom and Kiypu’s teaching that truly advanced workings only came after a Beastcaller began to study a specific path of mana.

There was still quite a bit he could do with the basic shaping knowledge he had, however. Next, Kellen formed another golden shield then stretched his hands out, pulling on the sun mana until the shield was an oblong, striped ball.

“What does that do?” Vex asked.

“It should act like a temporary cage or trap for whatever we place inside it,” Kellen said. “Obviously it would be much larger to hold a person or a Mana Beast and I don’t think it would work for anything too large—the amount of mana it would take to hold it together even with our increased reserves wouldn’t be worth it.”

Vex gave another admiring whistle. “That’s pretty slick. I wish we’d been able to practice them before now.”

Kellen smiled. It felt good to pair his creativity and imagination with is Beastcaller abilities. Now that he had the expanded mana reserves to try them out, he had a whole list of ideas to attempt.

“After we fought the cultists with the mana wrappings, I wanted to craft some kind of working that would allow us to still fight them with our mana,” Kellen explained. “The armor and the cage were at the top of my list, though without testing it, I don’t know how the cage will hold up when it makes contact with a part of their body covered in the wrappings.”

A long, deep growling thunder sounded in the distance, drawing Kellen and Vex from the demo of their newfound powers. Chirp swooped between them, watching the horizon nervously. “I hate to burst your bubbles but unless you want to get eaten again, we should really be going.”

They followed Chirp across the vast cloud field, gray mists swirling and obscuring their feet. As they walked, Kellen’s steps bounced like they were crossing an enormous trampoline, constantly quivering and reacting to any motion. The constant minor balancing act and adjustments to stay upright required most of his attention. He had the notion that if he were still a Ward strength Beastcaller, he’d be crawling across the clouds, and probablt throwing up from motion sickness to boot.

Now and then, a particularly brilliant flash of neon purple lightning illuminated the sky, followed by several smaller lightning bolts of white or light blue. The thunder they heard came from different directions, seemingly miles away. Now that he had a vague idea of what their presence felt like, Kellen got the uneasy sense that there were dozens of the Thunder Beasts spread across the cloudy plain. Fortunately, they all seemed far away.

They’d probably walked for about an hour when Chirp halted. They stopped on a little hill poking above the clouds. Covered in white sand, the surface crackled and sparked with static electricity. Just drawing near to it made Vex’s ashen fur stand on end and his tails quiver.

“There you go,” Chirp said, giving a nervous laugh as she made a loop over the mound of static sand. “Just step right up there and you’ll be off to your next destination. Just as easy as that. No need to be worried at all. Nope. No way.”

Kellen and Vex shared a look. Chirp’s rambling was anything but convincing.

“It won’t shock us?” Kellen asked.

“Nope!” Chirp said. “Well, the sand won’t, anyway.”

In the back of his mind, Kellen felt a tingling, buzzing sensation. He waved it away, wondering if there was charged storm mana in the sand. That would account for the tickling feeling in both his beast heart and the base of his skull.

“I’ll try anything once!” Vex said. He jumped onto the crackling, electrified sand mound and shrugged. “Doesn’t feel any different to me.”

Kellen took a cautions step forward. When he planted it and didn’t immediately feel like he’d grabbed an electric fence back home, he took a couple of steps to stand beside Vex.

Nothing happened.

“Now what?” he asked Chirp. The tingling returned, bad enough that he itched at the back of his head. Besides him, Vex scratched at his long ear with a hind foot as if he’d been suddenly plagued by fleas.

“Just sit tight for one moment,” Chirp said, looking overhead. “It should be here any moment now.”

“Something is driving me crazy!” Vex growled, scratching even harder.

Kellen looked overhead. Something clicked into place. “Chirp…” he began, afraid to ask. “What are we waiting for?”

“You won’t feel a thing, I promise! It’s just a little lightning bolt.”

“What?”

Before Kellen or Vex could jump from the mound an ear-splitting electric buzz filled their air. Everything shone with a blinding, neon purple light.