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

“No,” River answers slowly. “Did you think…?” Herbalist glares back at him.

“You said you had another master, and suddenly Weaver comes in. What am I supposed to think?” Then she glances as Joy and her spikes ripple with thoughtfulness, the light blue colour replacing the pink. “But if anything, I would have said that the relationship seems to be the other way around. Though how that could be true, I don’t know.” Her gaze narrows as she stares at Joy who looks vaguely offended. “Especially since you were supposed to be chasing Runs-with-the-river down to catch him to bring him back to face our judgement, the last I’d heard.”

Joy eyes River instead of answering. He sighs through his teeth – it was true, he’d insisted on leading the discussion. Joy was supposed to back him up; that was it. They’d discussed different options and Joy had mentioned that Herbalist didn’t like her much – apparently that was true enough if what he’d seen so far was any judge.

“Let’s start again,” River suggests, feeling surprisingly calm. Joy huffs and shifts, but doesn’t protest. Herbalist eyes him, but lowers her tail and leans back against a wooden cupboard. River pretends not to notice how close her claws are to a pot he recognises – if she throws that one, he will have to close his eyes so as not to be blinded by the irritating contents.

“Go on,” Herbalist says, the colours in her spikes carefully muted. River opens his jaws, but pauses. How should he start? The same question has been going around and around in his mind ever since they decided that he should lead the discussion. He’d hoped that once he got in front of his erstwhile master, the ancestors would bring him the words to say, but apparently not.

Momentarily speechless, he looks around the room. This hut is not as familiar to him as the one next door, her workshop. However, he has been here a number of times. There is Herbalist’s bed, made of a type of bush from the forest which is comfortably springy. Its top layer is made of soft leaves to cushion the spikes of the bush. That had been his task too – renewing it when the plants started to lose their natural bounciness.

Around the edges of the round hut are a number of cupboards, tailor-made by Wood-shaper to fit the space. He wonders if he still knows what is in most of those – he has been sent often enough to collect one of the pre-made concoctions which Herbalist stores in them. Or stored, perhaps – he doesn’t know whether anything has changed in his absence.

Where they stand is a woven mat, perhaps made by Joy even. Here, he had helped care for a number of wounded villagers who had been injured enough to be given a bed here: if their conditions deteriorated in the night, Herbalist could help them immediately.

Lathani hadn’t been one of them – she had been kept in the workshop. For obvious reasons: if she’d broken free of the cage, the risk of Herbalist being injured or killed was too high. That, of all his thoughts, gave him inspiration to speak.

“We made a mistake,” he says calmly, looking up at Herbalist. She stays silent. “Shaman made a mistake – more than one, but I’ll get on to that. You made a mistake.” His previous master shifts a little, faint red spiking through her crest – he doesn’t care. He doesn’t need to impress her any more. “I made a mistake by going along with it, not that I realised at the time.

“Capturing the Great Predator’s cub was a big mistake. But in a way, it has led to our salvation.”

“Salvation,” Herbalist repeats, her tone flat, her spikes colourless. River gestures at the fire.

“The ‘prey beast’ who I brought into the camp was nothing of the sort. A while before that, he had captured me, brought me low. Showed himself to be far more powerful than me, strong enough to force my surrender. Yet instead of doing so, he explained the situation. Gave me an ultimatum: to help him save the cub, and in doing so avert disaster, or to be tied up and out of the way while he did it by himself. I convinced him to go a step further – to destroy the threat offered by the Forest of Death in exchange for my service.” Herbalist shifts again, her claws digging into the wood of the cupboards.

“He has now done just that. The Forest of Death is no more.”

At that, Herbalist pushes herself fully upright.

“That can’t be true-”

“It is,” River answers, the click of his teeth almost seeming to echo off the walls of the hut. Herbalist looks at Joy.

“Sister…has he eaten something? Is he deluded? Is that why he turned from us?” she pleads, almost sounding like she wants to believe that that is the reason for the incredible things she’s hearing from River’s mouth.

Joy shakes her head.

“Sister, I…I understand your disbelief. But…I have to support Runs-with-the-river. The…I do not know what to call him. He is not one of us, that is sure, but he is no prey. He wields the powers of a Pathwalker, and powers no Pathwalker has ever wielded before, to our knowledge.”

She gestures to the fire as River had done before her. “He knows the secrets of the life-devourer. I watched as he produced it from his claws. I have seen Runs-with-the-river creating this ‘fire’ which warms our scales at night, a secret learned from his new master.” She swallows, her eyes gaining a gleam of fear. “And I have seen the life-devourer consume the trees of the Forest of Death, leaving only ash, yet touch not a single tree beyond its limits.”

Herbalist gazes at the fire, then at Joy, then River, then back to the fire again. She steps forwards, holding her claws out to the flame, pulling them back with a wince of pain.

“Did you think it was not real?” River asks softly. “An illusion?”

“That would be more credible than your story,” grumbles Herbalist. She sighs, drops her claws back to her side, then looks back at the two of them. “What do you want?”

“We want to stop Shaman from sacrificing our people,” River tells her frankly. “It is pointless for one thing – the Forest of Death is gone. For another, it is the wrong thing to do.”

“The weak serve the strong,” argues Herbalist, but her spikes ripple with colours which indicate her doubt in her own argument. “I told you that long ago, Runs-with-the-river.”

“You did,” he concedes. “But I have learned another philosophy since then. One where the weak are only that because they have not had the time or opportunity to become strong. Where differences are desirable, needed, because no one can be strong in all things at all times. Where weakness is a responsibility of the group to strengthen, not an opportunity for them to take advantage. And then I come back here to find that Shaman, and Herbalist, two of the pillars of our village, the two who should be our greatest protectors, have instead killed hatchlings in pursuit of power.” The grunts falling out of his mouth are heavy, his spikes no doubt flaring with the deep colours of disappointment.

Herbalist stands straight, as if he has just run his claws sharply along her spine.

“You dare to philosophise at me? You who are not even three Great Cycles old?”

“I do,” he responds, stepping forward and clicking his jaws together. Even Unevolved, he is bigger than the slighter Pathwalker; that has never seemed like an advantage before today. “Because I have learned better from a being who is over twenty Great Cycles old.” Herbalist rears back in shock.

“That’s as old as Shaman,” she responds, her teeth clicks barely a whisper of sound. “Older, perhaps.”

“Precisely,” River agrees, though he keeps his master’s words about the significantly different ageing of his kind to himself. For now, his pure age is an advantage in this discussion. “And, just so you know, if we had continued with the original plans for Lathani – the Great Predator’s cub – the Great Predator herself would have come to wipe us out.”

“The Great Predator was killed by the hunting party which captured the cub in the first place,” disagrees Herbalist, as if she’s holding onto the thread of the argument only by a claw.

“Wrong. By the time my master, the cub, and I got back to her den, she was in perfect condition,” River refutes grimly. “The only reason our village has yet been spared was because my master argued for our continued survival.”

“And why would he do that?” demandes Herbalist, her eyes half-mad. “If he is so intelligent, so old, so powerful, why did he care one bit about us? We, who put him in a cage, who would have used or eaten him happily.”

“Because of me,” growls River. “Because even if I was weaker than him, he valued my service well enough to defend what I cared about. And that is why, whether you are with me or against me, I will defend those of my kin who will let me. I will not let Shaman – or you – sacrifice any more of their lives. They deserve the chance to grow, to develop, to learn what I have: that weakness is not failure, but the opportunity to succeed.”

By the end, he’s almost panting, his claws curled so tightly that the tips risk piercing his own skin. He quickly loosens them – since absorbing a large portion of the Core of the danaris, his master had informed him that he now has active poison glands. They don’t seem to be particularly powerful – not yet, anyway. Since they’re apparently still in flux, that might change even before he Evolves.

Herbalist looks at him, her jaw sagging loosely again. She closes her mouth a couple of times, seeming to search for what to say.

“Weaver, sister, what say you to this madness?” she asks weakly. “Do you support it? To throw the order of our village on its head?” Joy cocks her head to one side and flicks her tail in uncertainty.

“I do not know whether I truly support it or not,” she says slowly. “But I don’t have much choice.”

“He’s an Unevolved!” cries Herbalist. “If you do not agree with him, why is he not trussed up right now?” Joy twitches her tail again, though River notices the faint colouration of embarrassment playing through her spikes. She’s silent.

“Tell her, Joy,” River says quietly. He doesn’t use the Bond to force her compliance, but as she looks up at him and they meet eyes, he sees that she knows very well that he could.

“The truth is, that we, too, have been subdued by River’s master,” Joy admits, sounding ashamed.

“What?” demands Herbalist, her grunts faint.

“It was a trap,” Joy almost falls over herself trying to explain, the grunts and clicks tumbling out of her mouth like a rain-swollen stream over rocks. “We fell into it – literally. We didn’t have a chance. There was poison, and there was the life-devourer, and then he and I were facing each other in some other space. He was too strong. I tried to fight him off, to push him away, but he just kept coming. And then…and then…” She trails off, closing her eyes and swallowing dryly. “And then he promised power. Knowledge. He…and I believe him. He is…you need to meet him.”

“If he’s the prey beast we ordered shoved in a cage, I believe I have,” comments Herbalist faintly.

“No, properly.” Joy shakes her head violently as if to flick water away from her eyes. “In that space where you feel yourself completely bare to him, and he to you. Where only truth is possible, and it is only your will against his.”

There is silence for a few moments.

“So the whole hunting party is, in fact, a group of galaba come to infest the camp,” Herbalist asks tiredly, referring to a type of creature which tend to hide under the skin below the lower claws of villagers, laying their eggs where they would easily fall free to be picked up by another. One villager with a galaba infestation quickly passes them around to all the other villagers, only for it to be discovered when a number of kin fall sick with foot infections.

“Not galaba,” River breaks in before Joy reacts in offence. “We do not seek to hurt, but to improve. It is Shaman who seeks to destroy – for no more reason than power.”

Herbalist holds still for a long moment, then sighs.

“Runs-with-the-river, speak plainly, if you please,” she starts, sounding like her patience is wearing thin. Were this to be the past, he would have lifted his chin and paid close attention to anything she asked of him, for fear of inciting her wrath. But this is not the past; she is no longer his master, no longer the gatekeeper to his survival. “What do you wish of me? Why have you come here, in the middle of the night?”

River, too, takes in a deep breath.

“I wish you to help convince the other Pathwalkers not to aid Shaman. No matter what happens.” She eyes him carefully.

“You do not intend to fight her, do you? She is a powerful Pathwalker, and has held the highest place in both rankings for the last four Great Cycles. Longer than you’ve even lived. And you are still Unevolved, besides. You know what the consequence of raising a claw against a Pathwalker would be, even if, somehow, you won.”

“I will do what I must,” River answers with determination, meeting and holding her gaze in a way he would have never dared to do before. “But all I wish is to protect our people from her. When my master comes, he will help sort things out and decide her fate.”

Herbalist continues to gaze at him, her eyes unreadable, her spikes neutral.

“If your master is strong enough to prevail over Shaman, then he has earned the right to decide her fate.” She pauses for a long, tense moment. “If you are right and the Forest of Death is no more, then I agree that sacrificing five adults upon Egg-rise is the wrong decision.”

“It is,” River assures her once more. She flicks her head slightly, expressing her dubiousness.

“I do not know whether I believe you, but I do not wish to be proven wrong after having condemned five of our village to death. I will support you in protecting our villagers. I will talk to my sisters and try to convince them of the same. But any further than that is your responsibility.”

“Thank you,” River says with a sigh that is more relieved than he thought it would be.

“Don’t thank me yet, Runs-with-the-river,” Herbalist warns. “You have made many claims this evening. If but one of them proves false, you will find yourself in so much trouble that you will wish you had kept running.”