The next morning, a storm rolled in and forced everyone to wait inside, except for the twins who were enjoying the downpour. With the forced break in hunting or training, Axel’s group decided to wait in the wagon as it was the largest dry space and allowed everyone to relax. Aria again began to try and teach everyone poker, but the only one who beat her was Sky, much to Aria’s joking accusation of cheating, who won the pot of snacks.

  While he had the time, Axel moved over to Jareth, who was sitting near the front of the wagon, also enjoying the weather like his nieces but staying in the wagon so that he could smoke his pipe. As Axel moved over to Jareth, he saw the man seemed to be deep in thought as he slowly puffed his pipe, letting the smoke flow out of the loose flap.

  As Axel sat down and waited for the older man to finish his thought, he used the sound of the rain as a form of meditation to clear his mind. When Jareth had finished his pipe, he looked over at Axel and raised his brow, waiting for Axel to speak.

  “So we have hit our minor goals with this trip, and based on this storm, the summer storms will become more frequent soon. What’s the plan on how much longer we are staying?” Axel asked while enjoying the fresh air coming into the wagon.

  “My nieces will hit their goal in another few days, and I should be fine with what we have already gotten after all of it is harvested,” Jareth said while leaning back against the wall. “I would not say no to more, but with another week we should have everything completed. This has been a very profitable trip as it generally takes a much larger amount of time or a bigger team.”

  “Back home, this would be a modest spring hunt, but my village was working in known territory and not in an area where we would need to scout as much,” Axel replied in a quiet tone and added, “We also got lucky with the territory hunt of the Thunderer and the Quakes.”

  “Luck is also a skill, young man,” Jareth laughed heartily and began to refill his pipe. “Now, can you tell me more about what happened on your group’s hunt of the Duradons? Aria told me some, but I would like to hear about it from you.”

  “The hunt started with Aria and me finding tracks,” Axel started, and then went through what his group did until he arrived at the strange beast he had never seen before.

  “Then, while Lyra and I were killing the Duradons, Sky alerted me to Roran having an issue, so I reassigned tasks and went to help,” Axel said, a shiver running down his spine remembering the look that beast had in its eyes. “It was a beast I had never encountered before and moved with great speed and agility. This beast also coated itself with an oil that it lit with Sky’s flame breath or from the looks of it, the beast’s claws could also do this.”

  “After we dispatched the beast and started to collect everything, Aria found that each of the people was dumped there with all their belongings missing and the core of the summoner likely to have been sealed,” Axel finished, and as he talked, the fight ran through his mind as if he was still there at the time.

  “They seemed to be recent deaths, which means there are bandits, or this was an assassination of someone in that party,” Axel decided to add as this had been eating at him since it was found. “The only thing is we traveled the only safe way here, and neither I nor Aria found any sign of these people. So either they followed us or took a much more dangerous route to be here, but whoever killed them also cleaned the trail they left, and what little they might have had was destroyed in our fight.”

  “Interesting,” Jareth said but did not elaborate any further than that.

  Axel and Jareth fell into silence again, listening to the storm and Lyra now trying to teach Aria a game that the villagers loved to play while waiting for better weather. As time moved on, Axel soon noticed that the storm had released its fury and was receding into the distance. With a stretch, Axel got up and with a loud clap gained everyone’s attention.

  “The storm should be over in a couple of minutes, so let’s get the camp cleaned and back to work,” Axel said, then left the wagon from the front. While it was still raining, the rain was a light warm drizzle, which felt nice to him as he noticed that the wind had collapsed his tent.

  Axel moved through the mud and started to fix his tent while working through the timetable and deciding if they could hunt any more Quakes or if they were going to hunt smaller Novice beasts. The Quakes would mean more money but would not help him directly with his Cycle. From what his medical data was telling him, he was very close to finishing Cycle three, which meant he could take a trial when they made it back to the city.

  The good thing about hunting more novice beasts would also mean that they would not need to worry about the group’s growth until they reached the Adept tier. Axel felt that the growth was better than the money, as while they could buy meat and cores, they would still be getting a decent sum, minus Roran’s cut from Axel’s group’s share, to get their journey started.

  With this decision, Axel went to help the others fix their tents while Larimar and Pearl moved the water in the area to dry out the ground. As Axel worked with each member of his group, each agreed to the plan of faster growth with lower profits in the immediate future.

  “I don’t think I should be part of this planning as you already took a risk on me and helped Star,” Roran abstained while keeping his work on Star after what happened with the earlier fight. Axel gave some suggestions he noticed while fighting but did not go further as he did not have the knowledge of beast training.

  After settling everyone, Axel decided to train for a while with his training weapon, as moving through the jungle after rain was not something he wanted to do. When Aria came over and pulled out a pair of training blades, with just a small look and smile, Axel moved them off to the side, to an open area that was used to train Star in, and created a large circle using his training weapon for them to fight in.

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  “Our standard rules?” Axel asked and got into position, waiting for Aria to do the same. This meant first to surrender or be forced out of the ring while keeping lethal strikes in check based on who was attacking, as something lethal to Aria would only be a major wound to Axel as his healing would take care of it.

  “Power?” was Aria’s only question.

  “No fire or gravity,” Axel said back, as he did not want to burn, and gravity would not be a fair or good fight with Aria.

  “Wager?” Aria then added with a sly smile on her face, causing Axel to have a bad feeling.

  “What would you like to wager?” Axel asked while trying to figure out her scheme but was coming up with nothing.

  “The loser needs to have a date with the winner and one favor to be agreed on by both parties,” Aria said confidently.

  Axel could not see anything wrong with this, and the favor needed to be agreed on by both of them, so there should not be anything wrong with it as the wager.

  “Deal.” Axel nodded and readied his stance.

  “He agreed,” Aria called over to Lyra, who seemed to have been hanging around the wagon. “Can you referee for our spar?”

  “Sure, I can,” Lyra agreed and moved over to the pair as they both got into a fighting stance.

  Axel was keeping loose while moving his legs to stay limber as he would need to move and react quickly against Aria. Aria started in a low stance, holding each blade in a reverse grip that hid them from Axel’s vision and seemed to be ready to blitz Axel. Lyra raised her hand and looked over both of her friends before bringing it down and saying, “FIGHT!”

  On this, Aria charged in a random zigzag pattern, trying to move in a way that would avoid Axel’s attack while Axel was attacking in small sharp thrusts to keep the reach advantage. This situation held for about thirty seconds before Aria, who was using wind to dry the ground throughout this whole fight, created a dust cloud to obscure Axel’s vision.

  This worked but not completely, as while working with his new power for all this time, Axel had begun to gain a sense of objects around him like a sixth sense and could, even when not actively using his gravity anchors, still find Aria, who had gone over Axel with a quiet wing-assisted leap. Though Axel did have a general sense, it was not very precise, as even when Axel tried to block the overhead strike to keep away a ‘killing blow,’ he still received a bruise on his upper arm from the attack.

  Aria did not get away clean, as Axel used the contact made with the partial block to send her tumbling across their impromptu training ground. However, she stopped herself before going out of bounds as Axel could not transfer the needed leverage or strength in the brief contact to send her out from her angle of attack.

  The attack also cleared the dust cloud with the air wave that followed his strike, allowing Axel to see Aria was already on her feet and moving in to attack again. What happened next was a blur to Axel as he parried and blocked while Aria attacked from every angle that she could contort her body to strike at while using her aero to distract Axel.

  As the fight made it into the third minute, Axel had received and healed a dozen bruises to what Axel thought was about five Aria received, but he could tell that he was winning this as she was starting to flag visibly from the fatigue of her assault over the last few minutes. As Axel waited for his moment to finish this spar, he received two more bruises on his right thigh and inner right arm, just missing where an artery would be. Aria surprised Axel again by throwing both blades into the air while on the inside of his weapon.

  Not able to help himself, Axel’s eyes followed the blades up for a moment before he corrected himself and returned them to Aria, who was the threat, with or without those daggers. When Axel returned his eyes to Aria, she had a pair of stones in her hands that she slapped together. This action caused a blinding flash and ear-ringing bang that disoriented Axel for a few critical moments.

  In this short moment, Aria seemed to have had a backup dagger, as when Axel could see and hear, there was a blade at his throat.

  “Lethal Blow!” Lyra called, though Axel could only tell by reading her lips as it was taking a moment for his regeneration to restore his hearing.

  Axel then lowered his weapon and leaned on it while breathing a little hard from the exertion and adrenaline pumping through his body. Aria gave him a deep kiss, then went to retrieve her thrown daggers from the ground outside the training circle.

  Axel just smiled as he knew she had a trick, but she still pulled it off with that fake all-out attack to lull him into her pace. This also caused him to get complacent as he was waiting for a moment to make the perfect strike.

  “Well, you won fair and square, love,” Axel said while walking over to Aria, who was putting away her daggers.

  “Not that fair, as Aria had Sky make that trick to win the bet,” Aria said and looked down from Axel’s gaze.

  “That was well within our rules, and you pulled it off very well,” Axel praised and hugged his mate before kissing her deeply. “Now I think I will pull the others in for some training.”

  After releasing Aria, he then went and pulled Lyra into a match, but she was limited on how much power she put into her vibrations. She would lose if her training sword was damaged by the power, and Axel used his gravity to help against her enhanced reflexes.

  This fight was also a back-and-forth fight, as while Lyra had issues moving from her location, she deflected all of Axel’s attacks. But it ended with Lyra putting too much power in her vibration power on reflex and shattering her sword, which failed her this time.

  After this, Axel decided to take a break for lunch, but Aria dragged Roran onto the field. The young knight’s personal weapon was a hand-and-a-half sword that was forged in a curved manner to better take advantage of his mount’s momentum if he used it to strike during a charge. While mounted, Roran would likely use a lance or pull electrical discharges from what Axel had seen of his training and the little of the Duradon fight he could see before everything went sideways.

  Aria was the more skilled melee combatant, though, and even with neither using any powers, she tore through Roran in a matter of moments, several times as she reset the spar after each kill to show him what he did wrong. With this, Axel also added in his observations for both of them to try and help them grow, as while Aria did get the better of him with her trick, Axel could still see several issues with her fight with Roran.

  When the sparring finished, Axel moved over and helped Pearl with dinner as there was a lot more meat with the recent kills, along with another Quake being fully harvested. Dinner was fun as Larimar decided to regale everyone with tales of her and Pearl’s adventures in the Tidewalkers, mostly guarding the main trade river from bandits and river beasts.

  As the last story was told, everyone readied themselves for their nightly routines as another day was completed. Axel decided to take the watch from a seat on the wagon and let the sounds of the night jungle take him in. As he listened, he could hear Aria talking to Lyra, though it was too quiet to hear what words were said, and then the thunder of another storm off in the distance rumbled, but from what Axel could tell from the winds, it would miss them this night.

  The night watch swiftly ended with Axel watching lightning dance among the clouds in its deadly beauty. Axel found peace in watching the far-off storm, but he could feel life, like that storm, could change at any time and leave him in dire straits, but all he could do was try to navigate through it with his friends.