Taming Destiny - a Tamer Class isekai/portal survival fantasy.

“Honoured Pathwalker Tamer, we have need of your presence to verify several tasks, if you have the time.” The samuran speaking to me looks more than a little nervous, his crest lowered submissively, his tail held low to the ground. I recognise him – he’s one of the oldest Unevolved, the scales around his eyes and nose starting to look a little fragile and discoloured. He’s also one of the ‘brood-mothers’ – the ones who look after the eggs and hatchlings of the Pathwalkers.

From what I gather, even the Pathwalkers don’t know which hatchlings are their own offspring as the eggs are distributed evenly among the brood-mothers. It’s very different from anything I’m used to, but I guess that it fosters more commitment to the community than to individual families within the village.

At the moment, of course, there are no hatchlings, so the brood-mothers have taken a major role in keeping track of the tasks to be done, the tasks completed or failed, and the Energy-Hearts to be given out. Apparently, the brood-mothers are trustworthy. Certainly, the chances of them Evolving are very slim or nil – they are all those who have failed to Evolve before and survived the attempt – so they have little reason to keep the Hearts for themselves. They also already have the highest status among the Unevolved and are given everything they need in exchange for their services so there’s less temptation for corruption.

And perhaps I’m just being a suspicious human about this, and one used to the cutthroat corporate world at that. I resolve to keep an eye on the expenditure from time to time nonetheless.

“Sure, just give me a few minutes to finish this,” I respond, focussing on the load of wood I’m currently turning into charcoal. “Would you like me to come to a particular hut when I’m ready?”

“The green hatchling hut, if you would, Honoured Pathwalker,” the samuran says with a hint of relief in his spikes.

“That’s the one next to the big hatchling hut, isn’t it?” I check, furrowing my brow. Their naming conventions are not the easiest for an outsider to understand, but I suppose that that’s kind of the point.

“No, Honoured Pathwalker. It is the one next to the new hatchling hut,” the samuran answers.

“OK, I’ll come when I’m done with this,” I say, giving up on pinpointing exactly which hut he’s talking about. “If I look like I’m walking towards the wrong one, wave at me, please.”

“As you wish, Honoured Pathwalker,” the brood-mother answers, tipping his chin towards the sky for a long moment. Then, realising that I need to focus, he says nothing more but turns and hurries away. I keep an eye on his direction – that might help me when I need to retrace his footsteps. As he moves out of sight, I return my attention fully to my task.

I made the first lot of charcoal practically without magic, covering the wood with earth and burning it slowly. I did use Earth-Shaping in making the structure, and Fire-Shaping to light the fire, but mostly my aim was to observe exactly what was happening with the fire and wood to transform it into charcoal.

Once I’d observed the process to my satisfaction, I tried to replicate it without needing to spend as much time over the task. My first attempts were failures – the greedy flame consumed too much oxygen despite my efforts to control it, and the pieces of wood were turned to ash instead of charcoal.

Undeterred, I tried different things, finally settling on a method which seems to be a good balance of mana-efficient and time-saving. Though I did manage in the end to control the flame sufficiently to transform a stick into a long piece of charcoal even in the open air, the amount of concentration necessary for the task made it infeasible to do for them all.

Instead, I found a good balance: using Earth-Shaping to form a small cavern around a load of wood, and then controlling the flame to speed up the process of transforming wood into charcoal. By using earth to limit the amount of oxygen available to the fire, I lessened the burden on my concentration, meaning that I could spread it more widely.

By this point, I’ve probably got more than three-quarters of the amount of charcoal I’ll probably need to smelt the iron oxide I’ve managed to extract from all the lumps of iron ore I found near Bastet’s cave – not bad for only two days of work.

Not only have I made some of the physical products I will need, but all my work with the two Skills has had another gratifying outcome: Earth-Shaping has increased by two levels and Fire-Shaping has even ranked up!

Now at Initiate one, its newest effect is rather curious. In my rank up from Beginner, I gained more control over large fires – the larger, the better. That was a direct effect from my work with the Inferno that catapulted me up several levels and into the next rank. This time, I seem to have gained greater control over all flames, regardless of the size of the fire. It also seems that I’ve managed to balance the Skill a little more as it referred to creation as well as destruction – I guess because charcoal is transformed rather than destroyed wood, and is itself used for further creative aims.

Congratulations!

You have advanced a Skill past Novice: Fire-Shaping is now Initiate 1. You have improved your control over small flames, using them in forms of creation in contrast to your previous destructive aims. Your ability to wield any size of fire is limited now only by your Will.

Close message

The final sentence of the rank up message is one I’ve since been musing over whenever I’ve been able to spare the concentration: Your ability to wield any size of fire is limited now only by your Will. Does that mean that it’s one more Skill which relies on my Willpower to reach the heights?

Either way, the increased control should help with my attempts to smelt the iron oxide into usable iron – maybe even rudimentary steel if I can get the carbon content right. I’m hoping to actually start smelting this afternoon, but maybe I should set it as tomorrow’s task.

If I try to do it today, I may end up eating a bit into my evening work, which I don’t want to do. My Bound deserve to be as healed as I can make them now that I’ve figured out how to do it. All courtesy of Fenrir jumping the gun out of youthful impatience and almost dooming himself to Tier one forever in the process.

Bastet was, of course, my first ‘test subject’ that evening two days ago. It was a different experience than with Fenrir, that’s for sure. Her internal matrix is far more established than his at the time of my intervention. Fenrir’s has probably changed since then, either in his Evolution or afterwards. Like him, Bastet’s internal matrix had a sort of structure similar to veins and arteries, but there had also been the sort of shape of her body outlined in golden lines. The arteries had gone into each of her legs, her wings, her head, and her tail, thinner channels branching out and forming the outline of her body.

Within the golden lines, I could see the faintest hints of something else I’ve also seen in my own body: the influence of fire. It’s more instinctive knowledge than something that I could find in a textbook – if there are such things for this. But with my own fire affinity, I can tell that there is a similarity, even if Bastet herself doesn’t have a fire affinity per se.

Fixing the damage I saw to her internal matrix was not dissimilar from fixing Fenrir’s. If anything, it was a little easier – Bastet was clearly more aware of her Energy channels than Fenrir was, and she actually worked with me to remedy the damage sustained, controlling her own mana once I showed her what to do.

Even though the damage she had sustained was more extensive than that of Fenrir, we were done sooner, and with far less effect on me. Not no effect, though, which proves that it wasn’t only giving Fenrir all the Energy I had stored which wiped me out, but I was able to do two more Bound that evening.

With two more Bound fixed yesterday evening too, there are only four left with damage: Lee, Thorn, Honey, and Lathani. But they are not going to be easy fixes. I wanted to help Lathani straight after Bastet, but when I managed to get into her internal matrix – not Core space, since she doesn’t have a Core – I found that it was such a mess that I couldn’t honestly tell what was damaged and what was supposed to be like that.

I’m hesitant to do anything before speaking with Kalanthia about it – I’m very aware that Lathani is a completely different creature from any of my other Bound; from a different world entirely. Using Bastet, for example, as a template could do more harm than good. Working on the rest of my Bound just reinforced that decision: all of them had similarities to each other that just weren’t present in Lathani. Or that were present, but artificially so.

I’m hoping to return to Kalanthia within the next few days, so I figure that I’d best leave well alone for now. Lathani was disappointed, but understood. I’ve forbidden her from consuming any Cores or Energy Hearts which she sulked over, but there’s no way she should be considering Evolving right now, and possibly even adding much more Energy into her system than comes from a kill is a bad idea.

As for Honey and Thorn, it’s a different problem. Trying to heal Honey proved something: I can only enter the Core space of one of my Dominate or Companion Bound. I thought I was doing something wrong – I tried to help her last night after dealing with Shrieks, and just couldn’t get anywhere within her. When I moved onto Iandee, the same actions had the same result as with my previously healed Bound, proving that it wasn’t the process that was the issue. That left the type of Bond as the suspected reason; attempting to see Thorn’s, Sirocco’s and then Pride’s internal matrices and failing proved that it was indeed the case.

I suppose it makes sense. To heal my companions, I have to control their own mana, affect their own internal matrixes. If I had bad intentions, I could do them a lot of damage, and I doubt they’d be able to do much to stop me. Dominate gives me the power to do what I want with my Bound; Companion Bond trusts that I will only do what is necessary and beneficial. Tame is a whole different beast – it’s logical that I would not be able to affect them in the same way.

It’s unfortunate in this case, though, especially since Honey and Thorn were two of those most hurt by the alcaoris’ acidic mana. I’m still trying to work out whether there’s a way around the limitations I’ve discovered. Unless I do, I doubt that several of my Bound will be making it to Tier two. Thorn in particular was so badly affected that I think the chance of him Evolving is slim to none.

Lee is the only one I’m actually hoping to be able to help tonight. I didn’t want to leave him until last due to the sheer amount of damage he sustained, like Thorn, but in the end that has been the reason I’ve left him to tonight. Multiple sections of his internal matrix are just gone. I didn’t want to start reconstructing those until I had a better idea of what I’m doing. I also need to be able to dedicate a good chunk of time to him – the internal injuries are not going to be as easy or quick to heal as his physical ones.

Realising that my flame has finished transforming the current batch of wood into charcoal, I open up the earthen shell and extinguish the fire. I let the black chunks of pure carbon cool in the earth, the bit of ash created at the edges of the fire blowing away in the breeze.

Heading towards the centre of the village, I go to see what the samuran brood-mother wanted.

The hut next to the new hatchling hut…. I repeat to myself, narrowing my eyes as I look from one large hut to the next. The hatchling huts are some of the largest, and are fairly distinct due to the slopes that extend from the entrance down to the floor below – the hatchlings can’t climb out of the normal hut entrances in the way that the adults can. But it’s a bit hard to see which huts have slopes and which don’t without going and checking each one, and that’s a bit awkward. For me, if not anyone else.

Fortunately, the brood-mother who came over to speak to me approaches me again before I spend too long looking for it.

“This way, Honoured Pathwalker Tamer, if you please,” he invites, dipping his tail down.

“You don’t have to call me all that, you know,” I sigh as I follow him to a hut. I know it’s probably useless – I haven’t succeeded in getting anyone to call me ‘Markus’ or even ‘Tamer’. Apparently such informality is reserved only for those of the same rank or lower. I still give it a try. “Tamer is sufficient.”

“As you wish, Honoured Tamer,” the brood-mother agrees. I hold back another sigh as we crawl backwards through the entrance. It’s such an awkward way of getting inside, but the samurans are used to it.

I suppose that the half-underground construction is the most logical for temperature control, even if I wonder what happens if it ever floods. We’ve been lucky not to have rain during daylight in the last few days, but there has been plenty of it at night. I’ve been rather glad for the hut I’ve been given – it’s remarkably dry. And with my new Earth-Shaping Skill, I’ve been able to ensure that my charcoal and iron oxide dust hasn’t got wet either, and that all my Bound have been able to join me in the hut. From the slope that leads into it, I suspect that it’s normally a hatchling hut. Given the range of Bound that I have, I’m grateful for the alternative entrance.

“So, what do you need me for?” I ask once we’re inside, Aingeal’s bobbing form lighting up the area around us and gleaming in the eyes of six different Unevolved samurans inside. I might worry that it’s a trap if not for the complete lack of aggression in their body language.

“We have retrieved the plants you asked for, Honoured Tamer,” answers one of the six.

Realisation dawns on me. Of course. Those plants.