Motus blinked hard as he stared at the beast before stuttering out his gratitude, tripping over his words as he shot them out like a bullet train. Wade held his hand up, stopping the boy when he was in the middle of his seventh apology.

  “I was joking, are you hurt, Kid?” Wade said with a comforting smile.

  “N-No, Sir.” The boy stuttered out.

  “Name’s Wade. Call me Sir again, and we’ll have words.” Wade said with a grimace at the word, as if it physically struck him.

  He smiled nonetheless as he extended his free hand to Motus; the hand being used to keep the creature in place was firmly kept at his side. Motus shifted nervously, lightly moving on the balls of his feet, his golden eyes darting back and forth quickly between the older boy and the creature he kept immobile. Before long, he asked the question that had been plaguing him since he first caught sight of the creature.

  “I’m M-Motus, but what is that thing?” Motus said, unable to truly look away from the wholly alien creature.

  Just as Wade looked ready to respond to the question, he was interrupted by a stern, feminine voice that held just a tinge of annoyance.

  “That—is a beofre.” The new voice called out.

  Motus whipped his head towards the sound and found just who that voice belonged to, staring at him impassively. It was a girl slightly shorter than him with flaming red hair and stern jade-green eyes. Dressed in black tones with a hint of gray, she wore a plain black shirt with a collar that rose to cover her entire neck, long sleeves that extended to form pseudo half-gloves, leaving the upper part of her hands exposed. It was matched by dark gray pants meant not to impede movement, and black unmarked boots. Something about her attire did catch his attention; however, it was the dark brown belt with numerous pouches fitted upon it.

  “Wow.” The only word that left his suddenly all too dry mouth, yet even that was barely above a whisper.

  The new girl merely scoffed at the boy and stared at the creature in clear disdain. “A low-class Berserker from the looks of things.” Her voice turned colder. “Stop wasting time, Wade. Kill it, or I will.”

  “Geez, Zemora, don’t bite my head off, I’m on it,” Wade said, holding up his free hand in faux surrender.

  His eyes glowed a brighter green, and the forest around them seemed to hum with life. All the plants seemed a little bit healthier. Suddenly, the foliage was a much brighter, more vibrant green; trees lost scars brought about by decades of life, and budding fruit began to ripen.

  “Nothing personal, big guy, just doing my job.” A small smirk spread across his lips, clearly amused, his tone light, almost strangely casual considering what it was he was doing.

  He clenched his clawed right fist tightly, causing long blade-like thorns to sprout from the vines entrapping the beast. A single drop of a silvery liquid, that Motus could only assume to be the monster’s—beofre’s—blood hit the ground, before a downpour followed like a free-flowing river, pouring from the hundreds of wounds peppering the creature. The creature trashed in pain, actually managing to tear a few of the vines that bound it. With an almost triumphant, but utterly ear-piercing roar of defiance, the beast slammed its now free arm around wildly, smashing into a tree. The blow reduced it to splinters before it finally fell to the ground with a hefty ‘thud’. The silence that followed was nearly louder than the beofre’s final death-scream. Wade cut through the tension with all the grace of a chainsaw and let out an exaggerated exhale that did not indicate he had truly met with any form of difficulty.

  “Whew, man, that was rough,” Wade said, his body language not quite agreeing with his words.

  How he spoke left Motus wondering just how much of that was Wade joking; he looked at the splinters and chunks of wood that had once been a full tree, before the beast struck it. Wade turned back to grin at Zemora, who simply rolled her eyes and walked over to the corpse of the beofre. She reached into one of the multiple pouches lining her gray belt and produced an odd device shaped like a warped musical note. She pressed the center of the device and tossed it onto the corpse of the beofre; the device glowed a bright silver, a similarly colored light pouring out of the beast in flashing pulses. With every pulse, more of the creature dispersed before ultimately erupting in a burst of similarly colored light.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Motus, understandably concerned and confused, opened his mouth to question what he had just witnessed, what that device was, and just what in the world was a beofre. However, before he could accomplish what he set out to do, she raised a hand to cut him off. When she spoke once more, he noticed something; her voice was oddly serene, not a proxy of her tone, no, that was still quite cold and biting. Her voice itself merely had an oddly melodic undertone.`

  “We don’t have time for your questions, and to be perfectly honest with you, I don’t care.”

  The boy merely nodded mutely, not perturbed in the slightest by her tone; he was used to harsher after all. Instead, he nodded and kept his gaze downcast, his posture low and drawn in, making himself smaller to not draw her ire once more; he knew better. Wade briefly noted Motus’s behavior and frowned lightly, both at Zemora’s attitude and at Motus’s reaction to her words. That hadn’t been conscious, Wade knew that much. People didn’t move the way the younger boy had naturally.

  That sort of behavior needed to be learned, and it made Wade wonder. He knew it was the little things that told you about a person; the way they walked and carried themselves, the way they sat, the first things they did when walking into a room, crowded or otherwise. They were minute, definitely, but all observations hinged on detail, and luckily for Wade, he always did have a keen eye for detail.

  He did not bring up his questions to the boy; he was already frightened enough. Instead, Wade merely put on his best show-stopping smile and stretched; his previously glowing forest green eyes had dulled to a deep, earthy brown.

  “Alright, time for a crash course in genetics.” Wade paused, seemingly giving Motus a moment to acknowledge his words before he continued. “Motus, you’re not human, not fully at least.”

  He quickly stopped Motus from interrupting with a flick of his wrist and a flash of his eyes. A particularly determined leaf wrapped around the boy’s mouth, just as the younger boy went to open it. Wade knew this would be hard enough to explain without the boy asking a question every other word,

  “You are Falem, honestly just an unnecessarily fancy word for what we are, Demigods.”

  He rubbed his eyes and clenched his fist, allowing the bright forest green glow to overtake his previously brown iris. As he did so, the plant life in the area seemed to hum and grow slightly healthier. Multiple leafy tendrils sprouted from the branches of the trees before retracting as the glow left Wade’s eyes, leaving them a much more normal, brown color. The gag around Motus’s mouth faded into the wind.

  “That….how?” Motus questioned. He blinked once, then twice, then roughly four more times before his brain rebooted and he stared at the plant life before stuttering out a gasping response.

  Wade grinned at his reaction; he’d expected him to scream or something in denial, not just completely shut down on him. “Earth to Motus?, Anyone home, bud?”

  “R-Right, Sir, I’m s-sorry…”

  The young boy was quick to apologize, his raven colored hair shadowing his golden eyes. Wade took note of the situation, also taking note of the growing pit of dread in his stomach; something it was clear Motus was also feeling, if the fear-stricken expression he was currently sporting was anything to go by.

  ‘Oho? A Senser is he? Quite the diamond in the rough already, I wonder who his parent is?’ Wade allowed himself to think idly, but he knew they needed to move.

  The tall young man threw his hand forward and, with a bright, nearly unearthly-green glow—the color of the forest—in his eyes, a thick vine sprouted from the earth and rushed forward to wrap around both Motus and Zemora. With the two firmly secured, he drew the vine back towards him; after firmly ignoring the indignant shout of ‘Wade!’ from his red-haired partner, he took off running through the forest back towards the truck. The forest blurred slightly past the trio as he did so. Leaping high above the treeline and into the air at points with jumps that were assisted by a bolstering of the foliage beneath him. Other people leapt over tree roots—Wade leapt with them.

  Motus, despite having seen what amounted to a secret world he didn’t know existed, was still stuck on his own, dreary reality. He was currently being dragged away by Mother Nature come to life, but despite the enchantment of it all, he could not help the darker side of his thoughts. The thoughts that crept back to his supposed guardian, Mr. Mansion. Would he search for him? Would he even care that he was effectively kidnapped? Did he care?

  “You’re wondering where we’re going, I’d imagine?” Wade said, his voice almost teasing, as they slowly came upon a large vehicle.

  “Yes, Sir, I-I’m a tad confused.” That was not what Motus had been wondering; however, Wade did not need to know that. Motus murmured his response, feeling a tad apologetic at the annoyed hiss his constant usage of the word ‘Sir’ drew from Wade.

  As he stared at a matte-black truck, entirely out of place in their wilderness locale, he was a bit baffled. It made sense that Wade and his red-haired companion had to have come from somewhere; however, a truck in the middle of the forest was an odd sight to him, nonetheless. Its design was strange to be sure, but it wasn’t something he could quite put a finger on; visually, it was quite mundane.

  A sleek black color scheme with lightly tinted windows—however, it had this feel about it that was alien. Nearly as alien as Wade, the girl, and the creature from earlier had felt. The truck seemed to hum, vibrating slightly despite the engine likely not running for quite some time.