Damien took a deep breath, tensing his muscles and letting the air fill his lungs. He waited for a few moments and then let it out, waiting for the warmth of his blood to circulate through his upper body, and then he swung.

  His spear came down with a silent whoosh, like a scythe, on the standing figure in front of him, tearing through the surface of the skin with dreadful speed. Red liquid spilled out of the slash and then dripped onto the floor, morphing an instant later into smoke that wafted into nonexistence.

  He frowned, a grimace on his lips as he bent down over the fallen humanoid form.

  Damien trailed his finger down the line running from the left shoulder of the training dummy down to the left hip.

  "Not clean enough," he muttered, and as if in reply, a near silent hiss reached his ears.

  He looked over at the little pink serpent curled up on the pauldron of a standing suit of metal armor.

  "Yeah, I'm sorry, Pinkie," he smiled apologetically, watching as the little pink serpentine creature raised its head to glance at him, after which it went back to munching on the tiny slab of meat in front of it.

  Yes, he'd named it Pinkie. And yes, he knew that was a little bit embarrassing, especially for the creature, considering that it wasn't he who was gonna carry the name for the rest of his life. But at least it beat Wriggly, which had been his first option.

  Damien sighed as he stood back up, glancing around at the huge training room he was standing in the middle of.

  Apparently, aside from the general training room given to all the soldiers serving in the household of the Verrilles, there were personal training rooms reserved for the main family.

  The one he was standing in was Vanis's, and Damien only had to inquire from the house seneschal, and the elf had swiftly opened the doorway for him.

  The wall to his left was chock-full of weapons—a myriad of them. Damien even saw what looked like a fishing net. Like, who used a fishing net in battle?

  Strange.

  To his right was a simple plain old wooden wall, embellished with nothing other than a small piece of dull red gem sticking out in the middle.

  He walked towards it, his footsteps silent despite the combat boots he was putting on and the granite floor.

  Stretching his hands, he pressed his palm on the surface of the gem, feeling it slowly grow warm and glow.

  Aside from the weapons and the single armor Pinkie was curled up on, the room itself was bare. The training room, which was as huge and wide as a hangar, was so bare that Damien at first thought the seneschal had been playing a joke when he'd said this was Vanis's training room.

  At least, that was until he'd directed Damien on how to use the gem on the wall.

  Once again, he felt a single tendril of essence try to connect with his mind, and unlike the very first time which he'd freaked out and pushed himself off, this time he accepted.

  He glanced at the training dummy, at the cut which had easily parted the surface of the body like paper—not a clean cut—Damien picked something else this time.

  "I want a rock. A large piece of rock," he said, and then pictured what he wanted in his mind.

  Soon enough, where the fallen training dummy had once been laying, a single six-foot piece of oval solid stone now rested.

  Damien pulled back his hand, gripping his spear which had been levitating behind him, and then slowly approached the rock.

  "Let's hope I make a clean cut this time," he said, and then called out to Pinkie. "Wish me luck, Pinkie!"

  Pinkie raised its head once again, glanced at him, and then made a hiss. And then it went back to tearing apart the last piece of meat remaining.

  It was still a mystery to him how a creature that small could manage to devour food that was twice as large as it... And at a speedy pace too.

  Watching it tear through the last piece of meat, Damien now wondered what would have happened to those giant rats that had tried to fight it back in the Alley. Would they have survived Pinkie's teeth had it managed to grab hold?

  Damien shook his head, snorting. That was unbelievable. There was a difference between tender cooked meat and the hardened skin of a sewage crawler.

  Turning his mind away from the little muncher and onto the rock in front of him, Damien's eyes narrowed and his mouth twisted thoughtfully.

  He ran a finger on the rock, feeling the ridges on the extremely hard surface.

  He looked around for a while before he found what he was searching for, a piece of undisturbed smooth patch running from the top of the rock down to the bottom.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  [Whaaatcha doing?]

  Damien froze, quickly tamping down on the scream that had nearly spilled out. He closed his eyes for a moment, tightening his lips, and then turned over.

  "You could have alerted me that you were coming out." He glared.

  [And miss you jumping and screaming like a little girl? No, no, no,] Gray chuckled.

  The little gray figuring glanced around, looking over at the walls, and then his eyes landed on Pinkie.

  [Ah,] Gray gasped, and then blitzed over to Pinkie. [What do we have here?]

  Pinkie, who'd just finished devouring the meat he'd left for it and looked to have been about to take a nap, opened its eyes to Gray, and then froze.

  "Stop scaring it, Gray," Damien said as he quickly walked over to pick up the shivering creature.

  [But I'm not,] Gray looked at him innocently.

  "Its shivering body says otherwise."

  [You mean, she.]

  "What?"

  [ I mean it's a she,] Gray pointed at Pinkie, who was now curled up in Damien's hands.

  "How do you know that?" He asked, bringing the creature to his face to have a closer to at it.

  Gray shrugged. [I don't know. Intuition, I guess...]

  "Intuition?" Damien looked at the gray figurine with a deadpan gaze. "That's your source?"

  [You do know I have Ascendant level perception, right?] Gray folded his arms, returning Damien's deadpan gaze with one of his own. [If I can see what's happening in the closest systems around us, I don't think the gender of a creature standing in front of me should be that hard to piece.]

  Damien paused at that, unsure how to respond. The knowledge that the creature in front of him, which looked all harmless and childish, could see at such a distance was somewhat hard for him to digest.

  Every Essence wielder needed perception to survive. It was one thing to be so strong as to have the power to crush a mountain, but when your perception was so terrible that you could only perceive what was in front of you, then you became easy meal for the first assassin that came your way.

  Damien spoke from experience. After all, he'd taken down powerful creatures he shouldn't have any chance of standing up to by preying on their lack of perception.

  What worth was their sense of smell or hearing if Keilan could simply wash it off with a wave of his hands?

  Finally, he spoke. "Well, that knowledge was... Hard to swallow," he admitted. "But intuition just doesn't explain how you managed to get Pinkie's gender. You could be wrong for all we know."

  [Pinkie?]

  "Don't interrupt" Damien wagged a finger at Gray. "Besides, it was either that or Wriggly."

  [Understandable.] Gray nodded. [And to answer your questions, I don't have a way to explain it, so you'll just have to take me at my word.]

  "Is there a way to check?" Damien brought Pinkie over again, looking over it, her, body. Aside from the smooth, soft pink skin that looked to be slowly hardening, he found no tell that the creature might be female.

  [As you can see, there's no physical way to tell. You'll just have to take my word for it.]

  Damien sighed, and then brought the creature onto his shoulder, ignoring the strange look it was giving him.

  "What are you doing here, Gray?" He finally asked. "Is there another bad news I'm about to hear?"

  [What? Why would you say that?]

  "'Cause these days, every time you appear, it's always to deliver one bad news or another. Should I be expecting Merak, too?" He asked, looking around to see if he'd catch the appearance of the stoic Ascendant.

  [Since when did I become the bearer of bad news?]

  "Since when you started showing up less and less and only came around when there was bad news to tell," Damien answered, looking back down at Gray.

  [I didn't realize that was what you thought."

  Damien sighed. This was already going to come up sooner or later. He might as well just say it now. "Look, Gray. I don't claim to know what's happening, since neither of you will tell me, even though it has everything to do with me. I get that you're both trying to 'Protect me', but I need my agency back. I don't like being kept in the dark, especially when the secret pertains to me. And I so definitely do not like being swung around everywhere without even my opinion.

  [What are you saying?]

  "I'm saying that if you both aren't going to include me in what's going on, then I'm better off finding my own path."

  There, he'd said it. Damien wasn't going to deny, this had been eating at him for a while. Merak and Gray had both came into his life, claiming to be protectors yet refusing to include him on the knowledge of the people they were protecting him from. Sure, they'd warned him to stay away from the Cult of Order, but Damien knew that that wasn't all there was to it.

  He'd promised himself not to become a slave to anyone, and it was getting very apparent now that he was slowly becoming more of one, even though it wasn't written in black ink. What was a man without any agency in his life?

  He waited for Gray, who looked to be deep in thought about something, or maybe he was just speaking to Merak. Damien couldn't tell.

  After a few moments of silence, Gray spoke up.

  [There are secrets even I am not privy to, and I'm your first line of defense. Merak knows less than I and he's going to be risking his life for you, sooner or later.]

  Somehow, Damien found that hard to believe. He didn't know much about Merak since the man was like a book with a lot of blank pages. But what he'd figured out was enough to clue him in on the fact that Merak wasn't a hero, or an idealist. The Oblivion Ascendant was a pragmatic and ruthless killer who wouldn't hesitate to eradicate anything in his path.

  Damien had met people like that. Menoe, the Spirit lady high priestess of the Winter cult had been one. Menoe might have been motherly and projected warmth, but everyone who'd really known her had understood that there was a deep layer of coldness hidden within her, locked behind all the warmth she projected.

  That was why he'd never relied on her protection during the war or before it. Because he knew that when it came to it, she wasn't going to risk her life for him. He found it hard to believe Merak was any different.

  "So, you aren't going to tell me," Damien said as a cold feeling spread through his chest.

  [What? No! What I'm trying to say, Damien, is that you should understand if it all doesn't add up. Some things, even we, The Ascendants, don't know.]

  Keeping his sigh of relief in check, he nodded. "That's fair. So to confirm. You promise not to keep anything from me again?"

  [Yes, I promise,] Gray answered solemnly, and Damien narrowed his eyes at the Gray figurine. Though he didn't push. He wasn't going to. Actions, after all, spoke louder than words.

  [Now that all this is done, can I play with... Pinkie?]

  "Only if she agrees."

  Damien looked Pinkie, who was very much wide awake now, glancing at both of them with a cocked head.

  Surprisingly, when Gray approached once again, the creature didn't panic. Gently, with telekinesis, Gray picked her up from Damien's shoulder, even though they both weren't that much different in size. The creature trailed behind Gray as he levitated back towards the metal suit of armor.

  "By the way," Damien called. "Do you know what sort of creature she is? I pegged her as a snake at first, but no snake has hind legs... or legs at all."

  Gray looked back. [You want to learn something surprising, Damien?]

  "What?"

  [I don't know!]

  "What?!"