Chapter 6: New Friend

The morning after we killed the lizard, Marcus and Estelle took the horses back to get the caravan while the other humans and I maintained a cordial contest to see who should get first rights to the rest of the lizard corpse—I maintained that I should get to eat it right now by right of being hungry whereas they maintained that they should get to portion it up for later by right of having thumbs. The caravan arrived the following day, at which point we decided to call it a draw; the humans took as much of the meat as they could pack into the caravan, I ate myself almost sick on the leftovers, and we all continued on our way, secure in the knowledge that even with my appetite added to the group there would be plenty of food for the rest of the trip

For that entire day, Eugene was constantly complaining; he was furious that he hadn't gotten the Skill he wanted, and almost as furious that the lizard's skin had been destroyed. He had wanted to make armor out of it, but the surviving strips from the heavily-armored back and sides were too small or tattered to be of use (mostly because of all the bits I'd ripped out with my teeth and claws) and the larger sections available from the neck, underbelly, and tail were too thin to be desirable. Marcus's temper got shorter and shorter with Eugene; they never actually came to blows again but there were times that it was close.

I wanted to feel sorry for Eugene; it was clear that he had no friends and no one in the caravan liked him. That must have been a lonely situation. On the other paw, he was a jerk who refused to give ear scritches when invited, even though it would have helped make him happy again.

We traveled for a week, making reasonably good time and having no further adventures or misadventures. I healed quickly and my language and reading/writing skills advanced a lot, aided by the fact that it wasn't just Marcus working with me now. Everyone had finally clued in to the fact that yes, I was intelligent and able to hold a conversation and no, I was not dangerous. To humans. Or whatever Marza, Lissi, and Faffi were. I wasn't dangerous to people, just to wolves and giant lizards and stinky snakebears and stuff.

My traveling companions proved to be an interesting group. The majority of them had never met one another before going on the caravan; this seemed bizarre to me since why would you go out into the dangerous wilderness with strangers instead of with family? Anyway, of the twenty people in the caravan (seventeen humans plus Marza and her smols) only a few of them had known each other before setting out. Marcus and Estelle were long-time friends, Marza and her kids were family (obviously), and there were three couples—Jane and her husband Zan; Tomas and Maria; Lana and her girlfriend Sasha and wow, I didn't realize girls could smooch like that! I thought smooching like that was just for moms and dads. Still, they smelled happy when they were together and everyone agreed not to mention the "I'm here to rescue you!" incident during which I misinterpreted Sasha's happy noises and nearly knocked their wagon over trying to get in. (I had a feeling that the incident might have shed some light on why Mom and Dad sometimes locked me out of the bedroom for twenty minutes or so.)

Apparently humans were in heat all the time! Poor things. It was really impressive that they ever managed to get anything done ever.

As part of my 'ignore Eugene being a jerkface' efforts, on the second day after leaving the lizard I started playing around with the Skillweb. The first time I asked for it, Mr. FloatyBox showed me a blank white space with one large dot labeled 'Supreme Exemplar' that had eight lines coming out of it. Each of the lines connected to another dot, all of them much smaller than my supremely exemplary dot. (I felt very clever for thinking that pun up! Thinking in words was nifty!)

The smaller dots were all black until I bapped the first with a paw. It was one of the smallest and therefore presumably a Common-rank Skill, which seemed like a good place to start. At that point Mr. FloatyBox asked me:

Unlock for 216 Attunement? (Yes) / (No)

I had over eighteen thousand Attunement sitting around and I wasn't doing anything with it, so I said yes. The dot immediately turned white and was labeled Channeling: +1. I figured my Channeling was pretty low, so I went ahead and bought that skill for another 216 Attunement. Then I paid 1,944 Attunement to unlock one of the slightly larger circles. That was a pretty big chunk of my available supply but, again, I wasn't doing anything with it. It turned white and two outgoing lines appeared, each with a small black node at the end. I only had a moment to see that before my vision was blocked by a chatty Mr. FloatyBox:

Spirit Transference Rank: Uncommon In your role as companion and protector you may transfer one or more Spirit from yourself to another sophont you are touching. If they are below maximum Spirit then each point transferred will restore one point. After they are at max Spirit any remaining points transferred will unravel into mana. The first transferred point will refill their mana as usual, with remaining points overfilling their pool by 10 MP per Spirit point transferred. Mana over their maximum will leak away quickly but can be used normally in the meantime. Your Recovery will restore your missing Spirit as usual. Your maximum MP drops when your current Spirit drops. Using this Skill will not cost you MP but if it leaves you overfull then the excess will leak away quickly. This Skill may be used no more than (Level) times per day. Attunement is generated by use and is measured based on the cumulative amount of the appropriate stat (in this case Restoration) that would be necessary to equal the amount of Spirit and/or mana recovered by the recipient: 100:1 for a primary stat, 1:1 for a derived stat. EDIT: Athos, as one of the two living embodiments of Dyadic Unity, your Spirit and Physique are one. This complicates the normal Transference mechanisms; in order to resolve the issue the skill will be special-cased for your instance. When you use this Skill the recipient will receive the benefit to, in preference order: Spirit, Physique, MP (full refill), curing status effects, HP (1 spirit:10 HP ratio up to max HP), overfilling of mana pool. Using this Skill reduces your current (not maximum) Essence, which will reduce your maximum HP and MP. Points in either pool beyond the reduced maximum will leak away quickly.

Ooooh! Nifty. I was absolutely getting that. Bap! Another 1,944 Attunement vanished from my total and the skill turned silver.

I promptly trotted down the slow-moving caravan to the third wagon. Zan was driving, with Bjorn semi-slumped on the bench next to him. Ever since the lizard fight, the tall hammer-wielder had been dizzy and complaining of headaches, blurred vision, and nausea; Zoola had done what she could for him but, aside from reducing the swelling of his burned hands, her efforts had been to no avail.

{Hello! It's very nice to see you!} I bark-wagged.

"Hey there," Zan said, smiling. He had a bad smile; his teeth were yellow and crooked and one of the front ones was missing. The crooked nose (probably from being broken at some point) didn't help, but he was always smiling and friendly. More importantly, he always let me have his leftovers at mealtime. "Everything okay?"

I wagged my tail and nodded.

"Sunny. Hey, has Marcus said anything about a rest break? With the road the way it is, this wagon bounces like a hopperbeast and my tailbone is killing me."

I gave him the most Gallic shrug a four-legger could manage and turned my attention back to Bjorn. After a moment, I slurped him to get his attention.

The blond looked at me a little blearily and clumsily wiped his face on his forearm. "Huh? Oh. Hi, pup."

I leaned in and booped him with my nose. Spirit Transference, five points, I thought.

A film of silvery light rippled down my body and sank into Bjorn. He blinked, shook his head as though dislodging a fly, and sat up straight, his eyes becoming focused again.

Skill Up! Your Spirit Transference Skill has earned 50 Attunement! Spirit Transference is now level 3. Progress to next level: 0/40.

"Whoa! What did you do?!"

I lolled my tongue smugly at him. {Healed you,} I huffed. {I am the clever. You may pet me.} He didn't immediately comply so I shoved him not-so-gently with my nose and dropped my massive head in his lap. It was a little hard to keep walking alongside the wagon with my neck twisted over like that, but it was totally worth it for the happy laugh followed by epic-level two-handed ear scritches.

o-o-o-o

Over the next few days I explored the Skillweb a bit more, unlocking various chains of dots, most of them Common ones that just gave +1 to a stat, sometimes +2. I bought a couple of them but the prices of a given skill went up sharply depending on how many copies of it I already had and how many I had unlocked that day, so instead I focused on unlocking and exploring. There were a couple of special Common dots, like "Perk: Modify Flavor" and "Perk: Reduce Glare", but nothing super exciting. I attuned Modify Flavor just because it sounded interesting. I bullied a lizard steak out of Maria, the caravan's cook, and played around with re-flavoring it as chocolate, dog biscuits, and finally (best for last!) bacon. It tasted nice but it did nothing about texture or color, so it wasn't very satisfying. Also, I could only reflavor it into flavors that I could remember, and Maria was such a good cook that I decided I'd rather experience her food as she intended rather than mess with it.

I didn't bother getting "Reduce Glare", as I had already unlocked four nodes that day, each costing more than the previous one at that rank, and a Skill that used MP to provide magical sunglasses was not worth 1,094 Attunement, even if I'd had that much. It wasn't even worth the 216 that it wanted after the prices reset the next day.

In addition to the Common nodes, there were two Uncommon circles: Enhanced Endurance and Minor Illusion. I clicked on the last one so fast that my paw's shadow had to catch up.

Minor Illusion (Olfactory) Rank: Advanced Cost: 5 MP to manifest the illusion or modify it, 1 MP/minute to maintain it (Level) times per day, you may create an olfactory illusion of anything you can clearly imagine. The illusion must fit within a 5'x5'x5' cube. It produces only olfactory effects and is a purely mental phenomenon existing only in the minds of those affected. The effect lasts for a maximum of 10 minutes per level, and during this time you may freely modify the illusion. Modifying the illusion or moving the area of effect requires concentration, although if you move while the skill is active the cube will maintain its relative position to you without effort on your part.

I had no idea what it was talking about, or how an old factory related to illusions. I mentally shrugged and continued exploring the Skillweb. I had enough Attunement left to unlock a couple more nodes before it got so expensive that I'd have to knock off for the day. Still, I'd get another nineteen hundred tomorrow so there wasn't any need to conserve.

o-o-o-o

"Good morning, Athos," Maria said, the morning we were scheduled to arrive in Hellsport. It had taken me a while to figure out how to write my name in the local scribblings, but it was awfully comforting to hear humans saying it again.

{Good morning!} I wagged, leaning forward to snuffle at breakfast.

Maria laughed and pushed my snoot away from the cooking pot (really more of a cooking cauldron) that I had been sniffing at. Okay, perhaps it was not polite to be snuffling possessively at everyone's breakfast but, in my defense, she had left a pot of lizard stew simmering overnight and it smelled fantastic. I gave her an affectionate woof and headbump; she smiled and ruffled my ears.

"Fire went out at some point after I went to bed and the stew isn't warm yet," she said. "Don't worry, I'll save you some when it is."

{Thanks!} I whuffed. I gave her a slobbery face-lick of appreciative emphasis.

She gacked and wiped her face off on her forearm, laughing. "You're welcome, now stop slobbering on me. It'll be a few minutes yet. Do you want extra peppers in yours?"

I nodded, panting happily.

"Silly dog," she said affectionately. "Do you even have tastebuds?"

{What? I like it spicy! You're the silly one, you big silly!}

She glanced over at Lewis. Lewis looked at his raven, Ravi. Ravi cawed a few times. Lewis laughed and continued re-braiding his hair. The grey-haired woodsman had unbraided it to comb out the tangles, a process which had taken a while since his hair was thick and three feet long. "He likes spicy food and thinks we're all farzil for not liking it too."

"I like spicy," Maria said defensively. "I just don't like edible pulba the way he does. Farzil dog." The forty-something supposedly-adult woman stuck her tongue out at me. I snorted and poked her with my paw in the symbol that the humans had come to mean 'I did not understand that word'.

"Hm? Missed something?"

I nodded.

She looked up in thought, then started repeating her earlier statement. "I just don't like edible pul—" She stopped when I nudged her. "Pulba? It's rocks that get so hot they become like water."

Ah. 'Lava'. This nonsense words thing was annoying, but we were getting there. I nodded my understanding, then poked Lewis.

He thought back over what he'd said. "Farzil, I'm guessing? Yeah, okay. It means someone who is wrong in the head. They can't track what's happening around them, they believe wrong things—not just mistakes but completely weird things. That kind of stuff."

'Crazy'. Got it. I nodded my thanks.

Marcus came out of his wagon, sleepy-eyed and rumpled. He stretched and itched his jaw where his beard was getting shaggier than Floofy, the sheepdog that used to come to the dog park on alternate Sundays. He walked over to join us and squatted down, laying his spear on the ground and leaning forward so he could see into the stew pot.

"Nose back, mister!" Maria warned him, wooden spoon upraised in threat. "I already told Athos he had to wait, and I'm telling you the same. I'll serve it when it's ready."

"Smells ready to me," he said, grinning.

I huffed my wholehearted agreement, taking care to use my inside voice since some people were still asleep.

"You stay out of this, dog. You know the rules, Marcus: No one eats until everyone eats. Some folks aren't up yet, so we wait." She glanced at the delectable brown ambrosia that simmered in the stewpot, stuck her finger in and tasted it, then shook her head and stirred it a bit. "Besides, it's still barely warm."

"I tend to agree with the others," Lewis said, finishing his braid and absentmindedly flipping it over his shoulder. "I'm about ready and it smells fantastic." Ravi cawed his agreement despite the fact that he was a bird and therefore wasn't going to eat the yummy meat stew because birds were farzil.

The caravan leader sighed in exaggerated hardship, then sat back on one of the logs that had been placed around the firepit as seats. He rubbed his hands and reached out to get them closer to the flames. "If we get a move on we should make Hellsport by the afternoon."

"And won't that be fun," Maria said, grimacing.

"You chose to come," Lewis noted.

"Doesn't mean I'm looking forward to it. I was throbbputz in Ozurdati and it wasn't getting better. I—" She cut off at my nudge and repeated her words until I nudged her again. "Throbbputz? It's when you are just barely getting the job done, or barely making a living."

Hm. I decided to go with 'scraping by'.

She waited for my nod, then continued. "Anyway, I was just scraping by in Ozurdati and I was zartf—Athos, zartfazl is when you get a quirtblop...when you borrow money from someone in order to buy something expensive like a house and you have to pay back part of the loan plus a little extra each month or they get to take the expensive thing. Anyway, my house was mortgaged to the hilt with Citizen Rondalai."

Marcus, Lewis, and even Ravi winced.

"Yeah," Lewis said sympathetically. "That guy's a nightmare; I can understand why you'd decide to get out of there. Did you clear the debt with him before you left?"

She hesitated, chewing her lip, looking from one face to the other. "No. I burned the house down, and I just wish he'd been inside it when I did. And before I did I bought six pregnant cats and waited for them to give birth, just to make sure. That house had been in my family for four generations and my grandfather had three Advanced Skills—Minor Wizilpop, Minor Atrobthel, and Gleggleblatz Water. The mortgage included a clause that said the holder owned any birthright Skills that manifested there, so we'd never made the effort to extract them." She saw the nudge coming and hurried to clarify. "Wizilpop is when something gets made from thin air, atrobthel is when you can move things without touching them, and gleggleblatz is the verb for wizilpop."

Lewis whistled. "Damn. Your grandfather must have made a fortune with those skills."

"He did; it's where he got the money to buy the land and build the house in the first place. He used Minor Conjuration and Minor Telekinesis for weaving silk and worked part time with the fire brigade using Conjure Water. Unfortunately, Mom was a golddigger and blew all the money on fancy clothes which weren't worth a penny once they went out of style."

"Did you harvest the Skills from the cats afterwards?"

She shook her head. "I sold the kittens to get the money for a new start in Hellsport."

{What?} Ravi cawed, cocking his head in surprise.

"Who was willing to buy them?" Lewis asked, echoing his bird. "If the Skills hadn't manifested then who would believe that the kittens had them and if they had manifested...well, those sound like pretty dangerous Skills to have in the paws of an animal."

I cleared my throat noisily.

"Present company excepted."

Maria was keeping her eyes fixed on the stew, poking at it angrily with her long-handled wooden spoon. "I made it work, okay? I don't want to talk about it."

Glances were exchanged.

"You know what we need?" Lewis asked. "Bread and butter. As good as this stew smells, we should definitely put out some bread and butter to go with it."

"Definitely," Marcus agreed. "I'll go get some." He raised his voice before saying, "And hopefully everyone will drag themselves out of bed soon! Because breakfast smells delicious!"

o-o-o-o

It was midmorning on our final day of travel when Eugene approached me. I was scouting ahead of the caravan by a half mile or so, taking some time alone to think. Well, maunder. And I was less 'scouting' and more 'going off on my own so I didn't have to be happy and friendly for the humans'. I was missing my family and feeling sorry for myself and didn't want to deal with projecting the proper canine image.

Had I not been portaled through that graveyard I would probably have been in the park again, playing frisbee with Mom and Dad and Cassie. Sure, I wouldn't be able to think like I could now but...honestly, was that so bad? I'd been happy as a regular dog. The world had made sense. I'd understood my place in it. I'd slept on a comfy memory-foam mattress every night, curled up around Mom's feet. I'd cadged bacon and eggs from Cassie, and whenever Dad made waffles he'd usually make one for me along with everyone else. Maria's cooking was good and spicy food was a new treat, but I missed fluffy, crispy sourdough waffles fresh from the waffle maker. I missed standing up with my front paws on the windowsill so that I could watch out for any squirrels sneaking into the yard. I missed getting pets and scritches from Cassie when I would hop up on the couch and flumph on her lap while she was reading.

Instead I was stuck here, in this weirdly oversized body with these strange people. I was fighting for my life and theirs. I was eating weird food and sleeping on cold ground and I just wanted to go home.

I glanced back at the sound of footsteps and sighed when I saw that it was Eugene.

"Hey," he said, sounding a little embarrassed. "Mind if I join you for a bit?"

I huffed a grumpy {Whatever} and faced forward.

"Thanks."

He strode along next to me for a bit in silence. He was wearing his chainmail, with his sword at his hip and using a walking stick on the rough ground. The road had improved enough that the wagons had only gotten stuck once and it hadn't been so bad that we couldn't get them out quickly. It had helped when Lewis and Bjorn went ahead to clear the road up. Lewis had an Advanced skill named Wood Shaping that allowed him to treat wood like clay. Bjorn kept watch while Lewis sculpted deadfall to fill in the larger ruts and potholes. It was mana intensive; he'd used it at the beginning of the trip before I arrived, but then had to wait a few days for his mana to refill before he could do it again.

"I wanted to apologize," Eugene said.

I huffed in surprise and looked over at him. His eyes were cast down, using 'watching his footing' as an excuse to not meet my gaze.

"I was a jerk, okay?" He looked up at me and grimaced. "I shouldn't have cursed you out like I did back at the lizard's den. It was just...that fight was the entire reason I came on this trip, and I got ripped up, and then I got nothing for it. Still, I shouldn't have gotten so mad."

{Apology accepted,} I face-slurped. As was usual for humans, he gacked and wiped his face off.

We walked in silence for a bit and then he started talking again. "I found an old traveler's journal from about a decade ago that talked about a group that had gone this way. They got into a fight with that thing; it killed a bunch of them and got their Skills, including a Rare one. I funded this entire caravan—well, three-quarters of it—so that I could get to that fight. To have all the Skills go to someone else...that was really hard. Marcus got what I think was the Rare Skill and he refused to unlock it for me, saying that he didn't have enough Attunement because he'd spent it on healing you. At the time I was too pissed off to really think about that...I was angry at what it had cost me and I didn't think about the fact that you would have died if he hadn't done that." He grimaced. "Although, in my defense, I only found out this morning that you were bleeding out. I thought you were just banged up but you'd get better in time. I figured that, as big and powerful as you are, you must have insane Recovery. Yeah?"

I nodded and paused long enough to scratch '120' in the dirt with my toenail.

Eugene's eyes went wide. "One twenty? Are you kidding me?!"

I shook my head and tongue-lolled a happy smile.

He rolled his eyes and laughed, thumping my shoulder in an affectionate way. "Mighty Heros, I had no idea you were that strong. Damn, boy. Is that a birthright Skill? Were you some noble's dog or something?"

I struggled to think how I might convey my true origins. My pawwriting was terrible, the ground was too hard for it to be easy, and literacy was still new to me. It came slower than spoken language and I had to think about the individual letters before I formed them. Finally I just shook my head and chuffed.

"Complicated, huh?"

I nodded.

"Well, wherever you got it, it's impressive. Have you had it a long time?"

I shook my head and wrote '7 days'.

"Aw, come on! Seriously? A week?! If it wasn't birthright...were you born smart or are you a normal dog who got flarble by your Skill?"

I nudged him to show I didn't know the word. He looked annoyed for a moment but it smoothed away almost immediately. We played a quick bit of 'guess which one' until he knew that 'flarble' was the issue.

"Flarble? Made better. Those wolves that we fought were flarble—bigger and stronger than normal wolves, probably smarter, that kind of thing."

I nodded and gestured 'that one'.

"You were a normal dog enhanced by a Skill that you acquired the day you met us. So you weren't smart at the time? You weren't deliberately hunting for the Skill?"

{Nope.}

He grunted. "Fuck me. I spent three years prepping to hunt for that Rare, and you just lucked into one! That's what yours is, right? A Rare?"

I shook my head and drew two upward-pointing arrows.

Eugene stopped walking.

"Epic?" he whispered. "You have an Epic Skill?"

I nodded.

He stood there, blinking, for a good ten seconds. Eventually he started walking again, but he still looked gobsmacked.

We walked in silence a bit more and I started to be a little concerned for him, because it looked like I had somehow broken his brain. I gave him a concerned nose-bump.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Sorry, guess I voided out there for a second. Wow. People with Epic skills only appear in legends, right? Good Queen Helena, Thongor the Red, Bob the Beermaster, Aerith of Assaria, those kinds of people. I never thought I'd actually meet one." He hesitated. "Look, I know this is kind of personal, but I'm just eaten up with curiosity here. Do you mind telling me the name of the Skill?"

I paused, thinking. I didn't actually know the words; no one had taught me either 'supreme' or 'exemplar', so I couldn't sound the words out in order to write them. I could have maybe worked through the letters of Babblespeak in order to figure out how to write the English name, but that wouldn't help Eugene, and given my limited communication ability I wasn't sure how to convey the idea such that he could guess the words.

I gave him my best canine shrug and scratched the local equivalent of '???' into the dirt.

He nodded. "That's okay," he said. "Some of the higher-ranked skills have weird names. Is it just 'get big and smart and have insane Recovery'?"

I shook my head. A moment's thought and I sketched a stick-figure dog. I gestured from it to myself, then drew a second stick figure above it, this one with wavy lines to indicate 'spirit', and a double-headed arrow between them. Beside the arrow I scratched a 1.

Eugene frowned in confusion.

{Hmph,} I huffed. I hadn't learned the words for 'Spirit' or 'Physique' yet which made this difficult. I certainly hadn't learned 'Dyadic' (whatever that meant) or 'Unity'. I saw the Skillweb in English so that was no help.

I scratched a horizontal line in the dirt and wrote '?' on it. Below that I put another line labeled 'Recovery' with a '120' beside it. Below that three more lines with the '?' equivalent. I drew a bracket around the Physique and Spirit slots with a 1 next to it.

"Those are stats?" Eugene asked, after puzzling through it. "Physique, Recovery, Spirit, Channeling, Restoration?"

{Yup.}

"And Physique and Spirit are the s—holy everloving fuck! You've got Dyadic Unity?! What the everloving fuck?! There have been..what, three people in history with Dyadic Unity! Ten thousand years, however many Patched cultures, and three fucking people! How did some random dog luck into an Epic package skill that included Dyadic Unity?! The only person with Dyadic Unity is...." He stopped talking, nodding is realization. "Is Telios Armenchal. Who is, or was, a hundred and sixteen with five kids. And lived in Androhaton, which is a full day's travel from where we met you, if you're going by skyship. Which is about the distance you would go to get some privacy for a Rite of Departure. Huh."

He walked in stunned silence for another few yards.

"Well, I'm just glad you're on our side." He shook his head in amazement. "Damn. And whatever the Epic package was, it had size and smarts and probably a lot of stat bonuses, right?"

{Yup.} We had walked past my prior writings (Eugene politely erasing them each time), so I started to scratch the stat names in the dirt again, writing '25' next to each one. I had gotten to 'Channeling' when I heard footsteps behind us and looked back to see Marcus approaching at a slightly-more-thank-brisk walk.

"Everything okay here?"

"We're fine," Eugene said, at the same time that I nodded. He turned to face Marcus, obliterating my writing with his foot in the process, and gestured casually with one hand. "I was just apologizing to Athos about being so rude back at the lizard fight."

Marcus raised an eyebrow. "I'd say you were a little more than rude."

"Yeah, well, you and I had a deal. I would fund the caravan and you would help me get that Skill. Not only did you kill-steal, you refused to unlock it for me afterwards. Besides, the way I remember it, you were the one that hit me. All I did was yell at you for breaking our agreement. You turned it violent. And you still haven't unlocked it a week later."

Marcus's lips tightened. "I didn't, and don't, have enough Attunement to unlock a Rare skill. You know the drill; it takes weeks or months for a Rare to pay for itself. I've been using it as much as I can to level it up, but it will take time."

"Uh-huh. So what have you been doing with all your Attunement these last few months? Clearly not saving it up so that you could meet our deal if necessary."

"Eugene, are you seriously asking me for details on my Skills?"

"No, I'm saying that we had an agreement and you're breaking it. Tell me I'm wrong."

"I said that I'd get you to the lizard's den. I didn't promise to pay tens of thousands of Attunement to unlock something that I wasn't looking for."

"You promised to help me get the Skill. And then you stayed back and let me take all the risk, but came charging in just in time to grab the reward."

"You fucking told us to stay back!"

"And you didn't."

"Holy fucking balls, Eugene! That thing was about a second from killing you, you jackass! We saved your godsdamned life!"

"No, you kill-stole and took the Skill that you promised to help me get. I was charging up Fist of the Gods; another few seconds and I would have crushed the stupid lizard, but then you mixed in so I had to abort it and waste all that mana so that I didn't kill your fool ass when I killed the lizard. Shoot, I had to run in and save your damn life."

"You saved my life?"

"Yours and Bjorn's and maybe Athos's. I cut its foot half off so it couldn't claw you and was about to slash its throat when you yanked me away...preventing me, notice, from getting the kill."

"Athos was about to knock it over so that the thing didn't kill Bjorn! You and I could have been crushed."

"Yeah, and? All I had to do was step back a pace and it would have been in perfect position for a [Something] Slash."

"Step back a pace on a leg that looked like hacked meat? And if you hadn't been able to move fast enough?"

Eugene shrugged. "I say that I'd have been fine, and it was my choice. I was willing to die to get that skill. You prevented me from getting my shot."

"Well, I'm sorry if saving your life seemed like the priority at that moment!"

"Apology accepted. It was the wrong choice, but I know you were doing your best."

Marcus's fists were clenched and his face was turning red. "I think you should ride drag for a bit," he said through gritted teeth. "Estelle needs a break."

"Sure. Whatever. Athos, good talking to you. Fistbump, my brother." He held out a fist and I tapped it with my paw, grinning. Yay! Human rituals with a new friend! No one else had asked me to fistbump, and this was a human thing! Also, being a human's brother was nifty! I was glad that Eugene was over his snit. Turns out, he was a nice guy after all.