Max cut through the grass like a fresh blade. His pulse fought for audial dominance in his ears with the howling. He could feel the blood from his ear dripping onto his shoulder. He didn't care.
He didn't care that he was at a clear disadvantage now being this far into the Tamer's Trial and not having an effective weapon, Trinity Flow band or Tamed beast. Which his tormentor seemed to have all of.
He pushed on anyway.
He ran faster.
For one reason. Of all the weapons he lacked, he had one that could trump them all.
Experience.
While all the other students in the tamers trial were in school reading and training on the side, Max was on the streets. In the woods. Max wasn't practicing. He was performing— fighting for his life against Beast-hunters. The main enemy of the Beast-tamers. And not only was he fighting, he was winning.
His opponent had a powerful beast at his side.
But his opponent was someome he knew for years.
Nino Nine-Fingers. The first and last person to talk about Max's father after his murder. He lost three fingers, but was able to reattach two.
It was now more than obvious that he never forgot it.
He stood at the entrance into the marshlands like a swamp-king. Whatever gear— or lack thereof, he came in with was hidden beneath an innumerable amount of layers of dirt and mud. In the shadows, all that stood out were his toadish eyes and the Terramana and Psymana band wrapped around his head.
At his side, a toad-headed boa stood with Martha in its constricting grip. It rose up to five feet tall and still had enough body length to triple wrap Martha. It had dark scales and venomous green and purple eyes that bulged out of its toad like head.
Max moved with a purpose. A wild purpose as he zig zagged.
"Toad-headed Serpents are homing-type hunters. They have to take time to follow my movements before striking with their tongues. With that in mind, I can predict its attack. The moment I stop zig-zagging, it attacks." Max thought.
Immediately after, he stopped zig zagging and began sprinting straight at them.
The toad-headed serpent did as he predicted and opened its jaws. A prehensile glob of black tongue shot straight at him. Faster than he could move.
Which was why he moved the moment it's jaws did.
Even still, he barely evaded the glob of muscle cloaked in sticky toxins.
The tongue splatted against his left arm and the goo soaked through his sleeve. At the same time, with his right arm, he stabbed his stone dagger into the tongue and split it down the middle.
The serpent hissed in pain.
As it pulled its tongue back purely on reflex, Max dropped to a low crouch in the grass. He flipped his dagger with a practiced hand and stalked forward.
"That purple-eyed lady would be a great help right now but I can't count on luck twice. I don't have the funds for that…" Max thought.
"Hey Max, you know I have heat vision right?" Nino yelled from the marsh to him.
"Fuck… he's bluffing. Or else he would've att—"
"You're probably thinking I'm bluffing or else I would've attacked already, right? Yea no. Im savoring the moment. And I want you in your right mind when I cut off three of Martha's fingers. No toadhead toxins….. well, aside from your arm."
"Son of a bitch." Max flipped his stone dagger a final time, now holding it like a throwing knife.
"Max. I've had to wear what you did to me ever since it happened. I see it everyday I wash my face. I hear when people call out to me— my own family. I wonder if they'll do the same for your sister."
Max growled.
Like…
Like the very thing he disliked.
Then he felt…
Bizzare.
He could smell a foul chemical blaze wafting from Nino.
Instinctively, he knew he was smelling anger.
He smelled it in greater quantities on himself. He smelled other things as well. If he focused on them all, he'd faint. Maybe that was the toadhead toxins entering his brain stem. His arm was tingling.
His eyes were drawn to the faint feeling. To his surprise, his arm had a distant glow to it.
But that didn't matter.
Martha mattered.
"That's it Max, keep stalking. You're a rat. My favorite meal." Nino spat.
Max moved to stand and stumbled as visions flooded his mind.
He stood under the moon, beside some four legged creature.
At other times they were the moon. It's light like fiery white smoke.
In another vision, they tore apart Nino and his snake.
In another he was—
"I'm bonding with something…"
"Come out! Max. She's losing a hand today!"
Max jumped up just as something barked.
Upon standing, he realized Nino and his snake were looking off to the far right at whatever was moving in the grass.
Max had a chance. Saved by who knew.
He reared his arm back to throw the dagger.
"Three for one works for me."
Max felt his insides shrivel as his enhanced senses picked up on the voices. They were right behind him.
The three he swore to avoid. He could hear the jackal panting. He could smell the students blood on its teeth.
Stuck between a rock and a hard place, Max threw the dagger.
At the same time, a bone column exploded out of the ground underneath him and sent him flying into the marsh.
Before he was knocked into the air though, it was complete.
A unique coolness washed over him. The howls reached a harmonious crescendo in his mind and suddenly the world was comprehendable in new ways. He felt a chord of connection as strong as iron— like a new appendage, formed in his mind and a word— a being, echoed in his shaken mind.
Lune Hound.