BREAKER: MONSTER TAMER BOOK ONE

by Hooke, Isaac

  Maybe I need another slot?

  He released Spirit, and then tried again. The black mage surrendered, and Malem seized control. His mind was right up against the mental barriers.

  So an orak takes two slots. And an orak mage, four.

  “Are you alright, Exalted B’aranth?” one of the oraks beside the mage asked.

  Malem wasn’t sure how to use its magic, so he decided not to take direct control. Instead, he commanded the black mage to begin slaying the oraks. With everything it had.

  The orak extended its robed arms, and darkness erupted in waves from its body. The streams of blackness wound through the trees, targeting the bronze-clad oraks between them. The mist penetrated the targets through the chests, and the stricken creatures straightened horribly, flinging out their arms, and freezing in place. Black veins crept across their exposed flesh, traveling outward from their cores, where the mists had pierced. Their skin turned completely black, and then began to rot, revealing the skulls underneath, which too began to disintegrate. Malem sensed confusion and disbelief among the remaining beasts: they didn’t know why their Exalted was angry with them.

  Go! Malem sent.

  Gwen raced back to Neeme, while Xaxia mounted.

  Malem helped Abigail to her feet, and led her behind the tree where Ember waited with Bounder. He was about to give her a hand onto the steed, but she waved him off.

  “I’m good now.” She scooted into the saddle, and then her arms ignited. The flame was weak, but definitely viable.

  Malem mounted Bounder, and loosened his collar to give Felipe some breathing room. Then he steered the iguanid through a path between the screaming oraks as the mage killed them with its dark magic.

  One of the oraks chose to stand its ground rather than flee, and threw its sword, scoring a lucky hit on the mage. When the connection severed violently, Malem knew he had lost his most valuable monster yet.

  Damn it. I wanted to keep that mage.

  Xaxia hewed down the responsible orak a moment later. The other beasts, meanwhile, continued to run. They didn’t know the mage was down.

  Malem could barely keep straight in the saddle... controlling the mage had drained him severely. It was even difficult to hold his eyes open. But he couldn’t close them. Not yet.

  Gwen seemed just as tired on her mount beside him. No doubt because of their link.

  Abigail launched two weak fireballs before she had to shut down her flames once again. She did hit a pair of oraks, however, which raced from the scene on fire.

  Though exhausted, Malem reached out experimentally, searching for a mind to Break, but those he tried were too strong for him. Maybe if he wasn’t in such a weakened state, he would have been able to do it, but as he was now, he doubted he could Break more than a bird. Even so, he tried the two oraks that were on fire, but in moments he couldn’t sense their minds at all—they had succumbed to the flames.

  It didn’t matter. He and the others were going to get away.

  He spurred onward, and soon the orak energies were well behind him.

  He hadn’t noticed before, but he realized he could feel Abigail beside him with his beast sense, no doubt because of her weakened state. Hers was a bundle of faint energy, barely detectable, but present nonetheless. He was too far gone to do anything about it, however. Besides, it seemed kind of rude to enter her mind at the moment, considering she had saved his life moments before. He wasn’t going to repay her selfless act by Breaking her merely for the sake of expanding his own power. Though if he had more strength, it would have been tempting, he admitted.

  He reconnected with Spirit before he was out of range; usually re-Breaking an animal he had broken previously was easier, but in this case Malem almost failed. His weakened mental state, along with the range, were both contributing factors. He tried again, and finally had Spirit in his control; he ordered the hawk back into the skies. It mirrored their path above the pines.

  “I don’t know about the rest of you, but that felt really good,” Gwen said. “Cleansing, in fact.” She had recovered her strength well, as compared to a few moments ago. No doubt thanks to the monster half of her. That was probably why Malem was feeling better, too.

  “Cleansing?” Xaxia said. “Your robes are drenched in blood.”

  Gwen smiled, baring her teeth. “I know.”

  “How did you do that?” Abigail interrupted from her mount. “No Breaker can do what you did.”

  Malem exchanged a glance with Gwen, but remained silent.

  “Tell me!” Abigail insisted, her voice weak. “You controlled those oraks. And then one of their mages. How?”

  “We already said that I wasn’t an ordinary Breaker…” he told her.

  Abigail shook her head in frustration and looked away.

  More horns sounded from behind, and were answered by others some distance away.

  “Was the answering horn in front of us, or behind?” Gwen said.

  “I can’t tell,” Xaxia said. “That’s the problem with the forest: the echo from the trees.”

  “It was behind, I think,” Malem said.

  “You can sense if more are coming in front, right?” Xaxia asked.

  He shook his head. “Too weak. I have Spirit scouting from above, and that’s it.”

  Xaxia seemed confused. “A spirit?”

  “That’s the name of his hawk, I think,” Gwen said.

  “You know we’re headed directly into the heart of monster territory, right?” Abigail said.

  Malem nodded. “We have no choice. We can’t go back. We’re in no condition to fight more oraks.”

  “And yet we move forward blindly, without your scouting ability,” Abigail insisted.

  “It isn’t foolproof anyway,” he said. “I can’t detect all monsters. I missed those two black mages, for example.”

  Before he finished speaking, he heard terrible barking coming from behind. The howls of wolves.

  He glanced at Abigail.

  “Dire wolves,” she said.

  “Dire wolves, too?” Xaxia commented. “Maybe it was a bad idea to join your madcap little party!”

  “We’ll never outrun them!” Gwen said.

  “Maybe we don’t have to,” he said.

  18

  Malem scanned the trees above him, and spotted a branch that was just the right size for what he had in mind. He extended an arm and tore away the branch in question as he rode by. He tucked it under one arm, grabbed his jar of healing unguent, smeared a liberal portion around the tip, and returned the jar to his saddlebags.

  He scanned the forest around him and spotted what he was looking for. He reached down, and scooped up the small kindlebramble. He wrapped the dried material around the unguent-smeared tip of the branch, and then held it toward Abigail.

  “Ignite the kindlebramble for me, if you please,” he told her. “I’d use my tinderbox, but it’s difficult while riding. Surely you have the energy to—”

  And then the tip ignited.

  “Thank you,” he told her.

  A passing branch nearly clipped the flaming stick away, and Malem snatched it closer to his body. He pressed it down into the foliage as Bounder advanced, holding it on the left side of his body, away from the other steeds that ran behind him and to his right. He ignited the undergrowth behind him.

  After he had created a long line of burning plant matter, he called: “To the right! North!”

  He steered his mount in that direction, keeping the women on his right, and burning the plants to his left. He raced for at least a quarter of a mile, and then ordered them to turn west again.

  He continued to lead them in a zigzag pattern like that, proceeding for a quarter of a mile each time, igniting the forest behind him as he went. The smell would drown out their scent, and the flames would spook the wolves. At least, that was the hope.

  The howls of the dire wolves grew to a loud fever pitch behind the party, but then abruptly began to diminish: the flames were having the desired
effect.

  Soon the din of barking wolves faded behind them, until he heard only the trample of galloping hooves and flat feet.

  Another crisis averted.

  Barely.

  He wondered how close those dire wolves had really come behind him. Perhaps it was for the best that his beast sense was so severely reduced at the moment: he didn’t really want to know.

  Malem tossed the flaming branch and the party continued at its fast pace for several minutes.

  The horses were flagging by then, their sides slathered in perspiration. Bounder was growing tired as well.

  So when the undergrowth thickened, he finally gave the order to slow down, and the party members did their best to advance as stealthily as possible. They steered around most of the denser underbrush, though he still had to wear his scarf to prevent too many nicks and scratches to his face. He wrapped it around his head so that only his eyes were showing.

  Now that the fighting was over, at least for the moment, the throbbing in his leg seemed to flare. Or he noticed it more in any case. The ice shard in his thigh had melted, leaving behind the gaping wound which had torn a hole right through his breeches. He was lucky, in that it seemed to have missed any major arteries. Still, it bled. He ripped a piece of already torn fabric from the blanket, and wrapped it tightly around the wound as a temporary measure. He also retrieved the jar of healing unguent from his saddlebags and smeared it into the wound. He squeezed his eyes shut at the pain.

  After he could no longer sense the oraks, he waited another fifteen minutes, and then called a halt. He tended to the injuries Bounder had attained. When that was done, he shared the unguent jar with the others so they could treat their own scrapes, and the damage to their horses. Meanwhile he cut up the blankets that had covered Bounder—they were all ripped and torn anyway, thanks to the fighting, and the flight through the clawing branches of the woods and were essentially useless as far as hiding the iguanid’s identity went.

  Xaxia returned the jar, whose contents were getting rather low. “It’s too bad your fire mage can’t heal.”

  Abigail didn’t take the bait.

  The three women used the cut up pieces of the blankets to bind their own heads and the faces of the horses, protecting them from the wayward branches. Their eyes would still be exposed, like his own, but there was nothing they could do about that except keep watch.

  Malem left Bounder’s head free of the blanket pieces; the iguanid was thick-skinned, and didn’t need any such wrappings against mere branches. Though Malem should probably invest in some good custom armor at some point to protect the animal from pikes and swords.

  They set out again but had to constantly swat shrubs and ferns from their eyes.

  “It’s almost like a jungle in here!” Gwen complained.

  Malem soon gave the order to travel in single file, with Bounder breaking a path in the lead. He used his sword to carve away eye-level branches as necessary. The women behind him kept their wrappings in place, as there were still smaller limbs he missed, ready to scratch at uncovered faces.

  “That was no random attack,” Xaxia said when they were moving at a good pace once more. “Oraks don’t prey upon travelers like bandits, especially not this far east, well outside their stomping grounds. Why are oraks hunting you?”

  “Not me.” Malem eyed Abigail over his shoulder. “You owe them an explanation.”

  “Only when you tell me how you controlled those oraks,” Abigail said.

  He frowned, cutting away a branch. “I will. At some point. But for now, you only need to know that I can do it. But these two, they fought and nearly died, for you. If you won’t tell them why, then I will.”

  Abigail sighed. She said, wearily: “I’m delivering a message for King Goldenthall of Mulhadden.”

  “Who is the recipient of this message?” Xaxia pressed. “What is your destination?”

  “The shoulder of Mount Ademan,” Abigail told her.

  “The domain of the Metal Dragons?” Xaxia said. “Either you’re insane, or you have the biggest balls I’ve ever seen.”

  “Hey, you’ve seen her fireballs,” Gwen piped in.

  Abigail’s face was obscured behind the fabric that covered it, but Malem could imagine her smiling politely at the comment.

  Abigail returned her attention to Xaxia. “We hope the message will draw the Metal Dragons into the war on our side.”

  “Oh really?” Xaxia said. “And what, pray tell, are the contents of this fabled message?”

  “I don’t know,” Abigail said. “I haven’t opened it.”

  “Maybe you should...” Xaxia told her. “Or if you don’t, maybe I will. When you’re not looking.”

  “Go ahead,” Abigail said. “In fact, I hope you try. My belongings are protected with enough flame traps to roast a small village. What will be left of you won’t be pretty, that’s for certain.”

  Xaxia snickered. “Enough to roast a small village.” She glanced nervously at Malem. “She’s joking, right?”

  He glanced at her and shook his head.

  She nodded slowly. When she looked at Abigail again, he thought he saw respect there.

  Seeing a fire mage in combat would do that.

  “I’m not coming with you to Mount Ademan,” Xaxia announced. “Fallow Gate is my limit, I think.”

  “What’s the matter, afraid of a few dragons?” Gwen taunted.

  “You should be, too,” Xaxia told the half-gobling. “If you ever met one, you’d understand. You’d be pissing in your booty banglers right now.”

  Malem glanced at Gwen past Xaxia, and saw her scrunch up her face. At least, he thought she did, given the way the fabric wrapping her features shifted. “Booty banglers?"

  “Bandit slang, never mind.”

  “Come with us as far as you’re inclined,” Malem said, cutting away another limb, this one from a big tree. “You have our thanks, for what you did back there.”

  “Which wasn’t much,” Abigail interjected. Malem could almost sense Xaxia’s offense at that remark; Abigail must have too, because she amended: “But it was appreciated.”

  Xaxia inclined her head, realizing that was about the extent of the respect she’d get from the self-important fire mage, at least for now.

  They continued traveling deeper into the Midweald in single file, the trees seeming to enclose upon them from all sides. Thankfully, no more oraks intercepted the party.

  “The heart of monster territory,” Xaxia muttered. “How’s your beast sense recovering?”

  “Still too weak to scan very far ahead,” Malem said. “Spirit remains airborne, however. She hasn’t spotted anything.”

  “I hope this message of yours is worth it,” Xaxia told Abigail.

  He struggled to stay awake for the next hour—swinging that sword at branches in his path was the only thing keeping him from sleep. The blade felt heavy, but he forced himself to wield it. He began to flag at even that task, and soon simply ducked or dodged most of the branches, hacking at only the biggest.

  The sky was readily visible thanks to the view the hawk provided him with, and he used the sun to guide him, turning north shortly after the one hour mark passed.

  After a time, the undergrowth began to clear somewhat, though the trees maintained their original density. They spread out once more, abandoning their single file formation, and Malem took the opportunity to remove the bindings from his face, as did the others. He lowered his hood: he was soaked in perspiration from cutting all those branches, his hair was matted with sweat, and his sword arm felt like it was going to fall off. He had rested his blade on the pommel of his saddle while stripping the facial wrap, and he promptly sheathed the weapon now, sliding it under his hood and into the scabbard on his back.

  “About damn time,” Gwen said. “It was getting hot in there.” She stripped off her blood-caked robe, shoving it between her legs so that she rode only in her loincloth and midriff-baring top. All that green skin for him to look at...
>
  The half gobling suddenly sat up straighter. “Shit.”

  “What is it?” Malem asked.

  “I just realized I lost my bow,” she replied. “I don’t know how, or where. It was hanging from my shoulders by the bowstring only a while ago.”

  “The bowstring must have snagged on something,” he said.

  “Yeah, I guess,” she said. “Damn. You know how expensive bows are?”

  He nodded. “They require a substantial investment, that’s for sure. Not just in coin, but time. If you don’t practice every day, the skill atrophies.”

  “Archery is certainly a time sink,” she agreed. She glanced around the forest. “I wonder why the undergrowth is suddenly so clear here?”

  “That would be the spiders,” he said. He was gaining a second wind now that his face was exposed and he had begun cooling off. “All kinds of variants exist here. Bog, tree, dirt, you name it. They live throughout monster territory. They like to keep the undergrowth clear, because their hooked legs get snagged too easily. When you’re hunting prey, the last thing you need is to get caught in some bush.”

  “Great,” Gwen said. “You know I hate spiders, right?”

  “Few women like them…” Malem said. “Nor men, at that.”

  He was feeling slightly livelier, perhaps because of the sight of Gwen’s exposed flesh. As the party continued its advance, he couldn’t keep his eyes from drifting often to Gwen; he felt a sense of self-satisfaction emanating from the bundle of energy in his head whenever she caught him looking at her.

  “How long until we’re out of monster territory?” Gwen asked at one point.

  “You’re a gobling, don’t you know?” Xaxia replied.

  “I’m a half gobling,” Gwen snarled.

  “Assuming we’ve traveled as far east as I think we have, by my reckoning, five hours,” Malem said. “Unfortunately, the sun sets in three. I’d advise setting camp before twilight. It’s unwise to travel through monster territory in the dark, at least in the Midweald. Even the quietest sounds will awaken them, if they are nearby.”

  “I know a little about traveling through monster territory in the Midweald,” Xaxia said. “He’s right. If we ride on, we’ll definitely bring the forest down on us. Some monsters are active in the day, but the night, the night is when they truly come out. It’s the time of prime hunting here. When dusk comes, the best course of action is to make camp, set a watch, and hope the monsters don’t scent us on the breeze.”