Harper was still undecided as to whether to meet up with the strange labuntan or not. At the time, it had seemed like the ideal opportunity; someone would accompany her into the forest and teach her to hunt. Thinking on it further had revealed challenges to her assumptions. She knew next to nothing about Vayuhn.

  She didn’t know why he was allowed to walk around in armor and carry weapons. He had implied it was because his master profited in some way. From what she had seen, he seemed more like an independent hunter than a ranger. This meant she faced similar issues to signing up with them, and she couldn’t even tell anyone who she was hunting with because that would lead to too many questions.

  She didn’t know if he’d be a good teacher, or if he was even competent enough to be hunting with just her. She thought he would be though, if someone gave a labuntan equipment and free reign, it was probably for a reason.

  Harper hadn’t taken the time to consider the dangers when first meeting him because she had a difficult time looking at him as a possible threat. At the same time, she was heading off alone into the forest with a strange man, labuntan or not.

  She knew she had a bias towards thinking labuntans docile. It was a difficult predisposition to shake. Every member of the species she had grown up around was friendly and harmless. Her labuntan nanny spent more time raising her than her own parents did.

  It was to be expected. The Waspen house treated their slaves well and gave them freedoms that many others lacked. They were closer to house members than slaves, really.

  She had heard about the slave revolts, of course. But those were few and far between, and from what she heard, their masters had it coming. Poor conditions and abuse were hardly any way to treat one’s property. Holding lives in one’s hands like that made it one's responsibility to see them well taken care of.

  Ultimately, she would likely decide to take the risk. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. Independent hunters would demand coin and probably the results of a successful hunt in return for teaching her. This way all she would be trading for training and possibly cores and materials was her time.

  “Harper! Eyes on the forest.” Harper jerked up, having forgotten where she was momentarily. Amelia was giving her a disapproving look. The young woman apologized and returned to scanning her surroundings.

  She needed to be better at that. In a couple months' time, she would be making runs on her own. If she developed the habit of retreating completely into her own mind, it would be all too easy for a predator she would have otherwise noticed to ambush her.

  It was her fourth workday. The first two had been spent delivering to another major city near the western coast. They had left for the current task yesterday; they needed to deliver a supply of bullets to one of the outlying southern forts.

  Amelia had told her that this was one of the more dangerous types of runs. Not only were they heading to areas where creatures hadn’t been culled as well as near the cities, there was a sufficient amount of distance between towns and villages that they would have to spend two of the nights resting in the wilderness. Once on the way there, the other on the way back.

  They would sleep on a rotation, Harper one half and Amelia the other. Such runs were usually taken in pairs for the purpose. If a single courier had to do it, they would just ride through the night. Which, of course, had its own dangers.

  Both rider and horse would be exhausted. Miraculous as Domains were, they didn’t reduce the need to sleep that much, excepting the Umbral Domain. Its pronounced effect on the body made sleep less necessary. Users of the Domain of Dark could stay awake for longer and gain the same amount of rest for less sleep, another advantage Vermon had that made him the ideal courier.

  Around midday they started slowing down for lunch. Harper expected Amelia to pull off the trail when they passed near a log that looked as comfortable a chair as they could expect out here, but she kept going. Harper called out to her. “We not stopping for lunch?”

  The older woman turned in her seat to look back at her. “Not yet. I’m looking for a specific spot. Got something to show yah.”

  After a few minutes, they came up to a knee-high stone with an arrow carved in pointing into the forest. Amelia changed course and started riding right off the path, onto something that may generously be called a trail.

  Harper was wary of following her in. She still remembered well what happened when she had ignored the path and meandered through the forest, even if this wasn’t quite the same. Harper pushed down the foreboding and hurried after her mentor.

  They rode for several minutes, keeping an even better eye on the surroundings than they had already. The path just got thicker and tighter; they would still be able to ride abreast if they wanted, but barely. Eventually, they rode into a clearing.

  A stone sculpture of a large serpent made a circle around the area. No, not stone, it’s too pale. The texture is... off. Harper dismounted and walked up to it, feeling the material. Bone. This is all melded bone. It wasn’t a skeleton, or if it was, bones had been added until it formed a statue from the creature's remnants.

  The creature portrayed by the sculpture was not a familiar one. It was most similar to a wyrm, but several features made it obvious it wasn’t. The head was shaped wrong, the tail ended in a spike and feathers, and the most pronounced, two great wings adorned its midriff. These were not like a dragon’s wings though, which were made of a membrane material much like a bat’s. These had far more in common with a bird’s wings, made almost completely of feathers. A crown of thorns adorned its head, three curved spikes protruding from above its eyes.

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  It was beautiful.

  Like a dragon and wyrm mixed together with some bird thrown in. It may not look familiar, but she knew well what it was. Something that couldn’t be found on any other continent. “An amphithere. Why is this here? Who built it?” Harper questioned in fascination.

  Amelia answered with a small grin. “This is not the work of the colonies. This was here when the efferans were last driven out, all those years ago. They have similar statues scattered around here. A bunch of different types of creatures too. Some of them were destroyed during the colonization. A real shame in my opinion.”

  She continued after a pause. “They’re thought to be some holy monument of the efferans. The savages worship creatures from what I hear. I’m not sure whether or not they offer them human sacrifices like the rumors say, but I’ll give them this, their craftmanship is fantastic.”

  Harper nodded in agreement, still studying the statue. Its head was turned to point straight up at the sky, and its wings folded over itself to rest on the ground. The body of the large snake was raised in one place, permitting entrance into the statue’s coils. Harper ducked in, finding a small area with stone flooring. The sides were curved in a way to make it more comfortable to sit against. They set their backs to it, eating their lunches in companionable silence.

  Soon, they were back on the road again. Harper resolved to check Mentril’s cartography stores to see if anyone had compiled all the areas these statues could be found. She would not mind taking the time to see more of these if she passed nearby.

  The rest of the day’s ride went smoothly. Before the sun began to set, they began to look for a defensible camping spot. To their poor fortune, it looked like it would rain, so they added cover to their list of preferred criteria for the resting spot. Apparently, this route and fort was newer, and so didn’t have any spots popular enough to be known by the couriers and rangers.

  Most other overnight trips had an area that was either made to be used by those traveling through it or was already a natural campsite. No such spot had been made or found yet here. So, they were left with whatever they could find.

  What they found was only marginally better than nothing.

  A tree had broken at the trunk, definitely not from natural means, and landed in the branches of another. This allowed them to build a cover of leaves and branches around it. It lay on the top of a small hill. On one hand, if it started raining, they would be in little danger of flooding. On the other, they were more susceptible to the wind, which only got worse as the sun went down.

  They had to tightly lash their cover to the fallen tree, having trouble with the wind sporadically kicking up. The bugs came out in droves. Harper had never wanted an Apex Domain more than she had at this moment. With Sun, she could keep them warm and incinerate the insects, with Sky she could calm the wind in the area around them, with Earth, she could build them an ideal shelter in minutes, she could even find a use for Sea. She’d be able to keep them dry if it began raining.

  It was a moot point though. Neither Harper nor Amelia had any aethereal abilities that would make their night easier. Maybe Amelia has something in her aetherspace, but if she does, she isn’t pulling it out.

  Unfortunately, the horses would be even more miserable than them. They stood next to two trees with branches and leaves lashed between them. It was in the direction the wind was currently blowing and would hopefully stop the worst of it. It would do nothing against wind from the other directions and the rain though.

  They sat in their meagre shelter and ate a cold dinner. It was decided that Harper would take the first watch and wake Amelia around midnight. Once it lightened, they would be on their way again. The experienced courier bid Harper goodnight, wrapped herself in her woolen blanket, and promptly fell asleep.

  The noble sat on the most comfortable rock she could find and settled in to watch. Strangely, she didn’t hate this as much as she thought she would. Sure, she would have preferred a warm bed, and hated the insects enough that she could have made it her life’s purpose to kill them all, but spending the night away from civilization wasn’t too terrible. There was something appealing about listening to the sounds of the forest and smelling its natural scents. It was... peaceful.

  That was, of course, when it started to rain. Never mind, I hate this.

  The rain continued to fall, eventually forming into a light downpour. At least she couldn’t ask for better inspiration for connecting her Aquatic Domain with the Aerial Domain. She allocated a portion of her attention to pondering it while she kept an eye on her surroundings.

  Understanding Domains was not just about understanding the physical aspect of them, but also the conceptual. The Sea Domain was not just about water and how it interacted with the world around her, though that was a large factor, it was also about how it acted compared to everything else. Next to Earth, it was free flowing and flexible, next to Sun, it was gentle and regenerative, next to Sky, it was stable and dependable. She felt something shift in her understanding at this.

  Sea went hand in hand with Sky. The clouds, which were firmly under the Domain of Sky, owed their formation to water, something firmly under the Domain of Sea. The clouds, in turn, returned the water back to the planet. It went back to the ocean, lakes, ponds, rivers, and more.

  Just like their namesakes, Sea and Sky fed into one another, borrowing each other to show their full potential. She needed to remember that for if she developed either as an Apex D-

  Movement. Harper stood at alert, focusing in on the area that she noticed. After a few seconds, she saw the movement again, holding the area in her mind and making out a vague shape. She slowly moved her hand towards her gun, dry under her cloak and loaded, ready to be fired for just such an occasion.

  The shape moved closer, but Harper couldn’t tell what it was. It was like a cross between a squirrel and a tiny bear. It was hard to tell in the rain, but Harper thought it had white, grey, and black patterned fur. It didn’t seem very threatening, but if it had a core-

  The small creature suddenly began moving faster, scurrying up to her. Harper panicked and held up her gun pulling the trigger from only a few feet away.

  She missed.

  The creature jumped and dashed away into the forest as fast as it could. The horses gave startled neighs, staying in place, both due to their training, and because their reins were tied around nearby trees. Amelia dashed out of their shelter only seconds later, bow out and scanning for the threat. Not seeing anything, she turned to Harper for an explanation.

  Apparently, the creature she had shot at was called a “raccoon.” It was native to Vanax. Harper hadn’t bothered researching the mundane creatures that lived here, except the few that could be dangerous. That may have been a mistake. The one she saw was not big enough, nor had the proper marking to delineate it as having a core. Had she shooed it away, instead of firing on it, they would have been able to stay there the rest of the night.

  Harper was very embarrassed. Fortunately, Amelia took it in good grace. It probably helped that her sleeping shift was pretty much over anyways. They packed up and left; Harper would have to go until the next night without sleeping. Oh, joy. She thought, yawning.