"Take one step, and then another. Cast aside hesitation. Take one more step. The next one will not be lighter than the last. Keep walking. Do not let your mind linger on the agony of striding down the long and lonely path." 

- Traveler 3:9, Holya New Inter-Alliance Translation

“Call it off,” Lord Black whispered.

Nemira turned back around. He shook like a dry leaf in the wind, glancing from the beast to her. His eyes were so wide they were in danger of popping out of his skull. “I surrender! Call it off!”

“Too late now,” she told him, voice flat. She forced out a breath, and the arms of the Colossus dissipated at her wordless dismissal. The sudden release of her pneuma made her light-headed.

“Y-you don’t believe me? Here, watch!” He fell to his knees, shoving his containers back into his bag before wrenching the ring of Anima Rex off his index finger and tossing it at her feet as though it had scalded him. “I’ll do anything you want, just call off your hellbeast!”

"Call him off?" Nemira repeated, bending down to pick up the ring before Lord Black could change his mind. It was icy to the touch and much heavier than it looked. "You, sir, are once again making a lot of assumptions about the extent of my capabilities."

The beast's ragged, sawing laugh rent the air. The Road began to tremble with the growing proximity of his giant footsteps.

"Where is all your bravado, human?" asked the monster. "What happened to the steel in your spine? You used my divine kin as a cudgel against the Worthy One so callously, I thought even my appearance would not move your hardened heart."

He was clearly enjoying himself. Nemira had to bite her tongue to keep a new well of anger from bubbling over from the pit of her stomach at his audacity.

Lord Black gave up all propriety. He fell onto his rear with a cry of horror and scuttled backwards on his hands and feet. With his legs in sorry condition, he did not move very fast.

"P-please," sputtered the nobleman. "Please, please, please. I knew not what I was doing, what was in those bottles. I thought them mere trinkets, I swear! The seller told me they were simple charms for defense—"

At that, the great armored creature crouched down and rushed at them on all fours with a horrific wet snarl. He blew past Nemira with the strength of a tornado, jaws wide and ready to snap close around Lord Black. The man gave a final shriek, his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he collapsed flat on his back on the Road. The monster halted right above him, his fury gone as quickly as it had come.

"Hm." He did not start feasting upon Lord Black's body, but gave it a curious sniff. "His heart still beats. Fainted, not dead. Would you believe such a reaction is a first for me, Kha-hesh?"

With her quarry unconscious, Nemira popped the stopper on her emotions. She grit her teeth, her whole body beginning to shake, and decided to pretend it was all indignation. "You insubordinate asshole."

Sai-em looked around at her. His neck was longer and more flexible than any wolf's. Up close, she could see the plain stone embedded above his brow through a hole in his visor of bone. Strange how even in that form, he still could not hide it.

"I remained in the forest until my intervention was absolutely necessary," he said. "And as your dayam I should have intervened much sooner than I did."

"I had no need for your intervention at all," she cried, pointing an unsteady finger at him. "You should have stayed at the shop until I returned!"

His answering laugh made her deeply consider leaping up and punching him in the snout with the last bit of energy she had in her. He turned around with ponderous movements, careful not to step on Lord Black or smack Nemira with his thickly furred tail as he did. "That look upon your face...I know it well."

"I don't believe I’ve ever been this mad at you before, actually," she snapped.

"No?" Sai-em lowered his face until he was very close to her. Somehow, he still smelled mostly of incense. "I still do not remember much from our first encounter on this Road, possessed and despairing as I was, but your face after the heat of battle was unforgettable. It had seared itself into my eyes."

His intrusion upon her personal space did not bother her, though the low crackling of his chartreuse-tinted pneuma threatened to chafe against her skin. It was the spark of curiosity threatening to overtake her anger. She couldn't recall anything particularly noteworthy about herself by the end of her very first Council-approved mission. "Was my face really anything other than sweaty and exhausted?"

"It was the rage in that exhaustion, Kha-hesh,” he told her. As guttural and growling as his voice sounded, the reverence still came through clear as day. “So furious at the limitations of your own endurance and your rapidly weakening flesh. I think I could have torn you to shreds, and you still would have tried to put yourself back together and free me from my sword. This man could have killed you, and you would have spent the final dregs of your life reaching for that accursed ring. It’s a look that would inspire devotion out of the most stoic of warriors in search of a master.”

Nemira’s trembling grew worse with each passing second. “That’s…that’s ridiculous.”

“No more ridiculous than you.”

“You really are trying to provoke me!” If the Road hadn’t felt so perilously unstable beneath her feet she would have started swinging at him, everything else be damned.

"No!" The bark was so loud and sudden that she couldn't help but hop away in shock, catching herself before she teetered over like a clumsy newborn foal. "I am trying to uphold my sacred oath to keep you alive!"

Whatever harsh invective Nemira expected from him, it wasn't that. Any retort she had for him died low in her mouth.

Sai-em gazed down at her with fire in his green eyes that looked so eerie set in his monstrous wolf face. "Who was it that insisted that no matter how much of my flesh, blood, and bone I dedicated to the Kha-hesh, my mind should remain entirely my own?"

Nemira clenched her teeth and said nothing.

"So here is my mind: there was no excuse for leaving me behind, Kha-hesh. I could have waited outside of the station while you dealt with those repugnant Grays. We could have entered the Vale together, and this coward behind me would not have run you absolutely ragged before I scared him out of his wits. I am a Champion of the Nova Order with almost a decade of experience and over a quarter of this place memorized. You had everything to lose dismissing me from your side. Surely you know that!"

Her reply weighed on her tongue. She wanted to scream it at him. You fool! Stay with me long enough and you'll end up poisoned by Anima Rex like everyone else!

To say the name aloud was enough to invite temptation. She swallowed it down and remained silent.

Sai-em bent his head until they were almost eye-to-eye. "What was the point of attempting to accomplish this by yourself?" he asked, his ugly voice much quieter. "What were you trying to prove?"

"I..." Something hot and shameful burned the air from Nemira's lungs as she tried to untangle her tongue. "I have spent years in preparation for becoming a summoner who can handle all assignments on my own. I cannot accept having struggled on just my second assignment from the Council."

"You’ll need to accept it. Sometimes, all the effort in existence will still not be enough to accomplish what you want."

He had not said those words with even a hint of aggression, but they still sliced through her heart with terrifying ease. Her eyes began to burn with unshed tears. She clapped a hand over them instinctually and blew out a harsh breath before she said, as calmly as she could while hiding under her palm, "Are you quite done berating me, sir knight? It's getting late and we need to deliver Lord Black to the Grays."

"Your sense of responsibility endures like adamant," said Sai-em. "But it makes you foolishly reckless at times."

He did a rather peculiar thing, then, quelling all her thoughts on striking him or fleeing down the Road in a single action. His mighty jaws opened wide and closed down over Nemira’s shoulder with such gentleness that she felt the bearable discomfort of his pneuma shivering along her nerves more than the press of his impressive fangs. Like a puppy trying to initiate a play fight. She could even see his tail swishing languidly behind the great mass of his body.

"Is this supposed to be a hug?" she asked, a little bemused. She removed her hand from her wet eyes and gave a loud, soggy sniff, and didn't feel as mortified about it as she thought she would.

Mouth full, Sai-em replied with nothing but a rumbling sort of hum. She patted his neck, and if he drooled a bit over her shirt she decided she didn’t mind that so much.

"You're a lot more agreeable about touching me while you're wearing your monster skin." It was an observation she didn't mean much in saying aloud. In his normal nephilim body, he always found a way to stand a respectful distance apart from her no matter how small the space they shared. Still, she felt him freeze at her words, and then slowly pull away.

"My apologies, Kha-hesh. That was too forward of me, especially as I am now."

He had mollified her enough that she was ready to excuse his apology, but before she could do so, he rose up on his hind legs and wrenched the sword from his chest.

The sickening sound of blade slicing against flesh filled the air. Her eyes swept over the weapon she had seen only once before. It was not made of any typical metal, but of a dark and glossy material as though hewn directly from a mound of obsidian that perfectly camouflaged Sai-em's ichor dripping from its edge. Red-gold electricity bounced around within it in an eternal tangle of violent arcs. As she watched, a black mist began to rise from Sai-em and fall into the blade as though suctioned into it. The wolf beast shrank, smaller and smaller until all the fur and fangs and claws were gone and Sai-em the nephilim stood before her once again, as austerely handsome as ever. His exposed chest bled freely, but he didn’t seem to mind it at all. It made her wonder just how long and how often he’d been stabbing himself into a monstrosity.

“You should rest,” he said calmly, flicking his ichor off his sword before sliding it into the sheath at his waist. “I will tie up the noble. I let the North Gate Watchmen know we are in here before I arrived. They’re expecting our return. It should not be a difficult journey back to Coine.”

Suddenly, Nemira was all too aware of the adrenaline leaking out of her as though she had her own open wound. Her back throbbed from having broken her fall in the fight with Lord Black, and her legs felt most resentful of the weight they carried. A pulsing pain beat against the back of her head. “If I stop now, you’ll have to carry me, too. I’ll handle his bag. And I have flares in my pack. The Watchmen can come to us at the border. Hopefully with a cab.”

A fragile peace established, they set about cleaning up the scene of Lord Black’s chaos. While Nemira rewrapped the much-trampled-upon food left on the Road back into their parcels with sluggish movements, she heard Lord Black groan in pain behind her.

“Good evening, human,” said Sai-em, his voice colder than ever. “Know that the Worthy One’s mercy is the only reason you get to keep your pathetic life.”

She shook her head as she carefully placed the messy parcels back in Lord Black’s bag, mindful of whatever other “mere trinkets” he may have stuffed into it. In hindsight, it was a miracle Sai-em held off on interrupting their battle as long as he did. Nephilim were widely believed to be direct descendants of the aetherians, and none of their races took kindly to abuse of their holy progenitors. He was being markedly polite to Lord Black, all things considered.

Nemira glanced over in their direction. Sai-em was busy tying the now meek nobleman’s wrist and ankles with long lengths of rope Nemira had retrieved from her waist pack. The phantom of his kindly teeth and hot breath clutched her shoulder again. If she truly could not uphold her duties alone, could she trust him? She nibbled her lip, unable to tell if the unease weighing her down was doubt or hope.