“Just let me die,” Sy groaned while Kenneth was carrying him along the streets.

  “Don’t say stuff like that,” Kenneth angrily responded as he tried to minimize the pain Sy must have felt from being carried.

  “The only reason why you are helping me is that you don’t believe her, but she spoke the truth,” Sy sighed as he lowered his head while even more tears were still running down his face. “I admit we attacked you. Now you have your answer, so put me down and let me die.”

  Kenneth only kept walking toward the great hall, his mouth shut. He wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or not, but still, Kiki had seemed adamant they had done it, and he had taken her memories of the event.

  ‘I don’t know why I even asked her if she was the one who attacked me. I had nothing but emotions and feelings to go on, and still, I accused,’ Kenneth thought as he continued to walk through the empty street.

  “Are you only saying what you think I want to hear, so I’ll let you die?” Kenneth said in a somber and low voice.

  “It’s the truth. We attacked you and tried to see your memories, but what happened next was not supposed to happen,” Sy admitted as he started to struggle. “You have the truth now; just let me die.”

  “Hey, stop that,” Kenneth said, tightening his hold on the Aki, making it impossible to do much more than move his head and feet.

  “Why won’t you stop carrying me!” Sy yelled.

  “Listen, right now, I don’t care what the two of you have done, but I’m not letting you die! So calm down!” Kenneth yelled back as he started to walk a little faster, the throbbing in his head becoming worse.

  After that, Sy went quiet and stopped struggling. Kenneth wasn’t sure if he had finally calmed down or had already made up his mind to Kill himself and just waited for the right time.

  Regardless Kenneth’s first priority was to get him to Kica.

  The rest of the trip went more or less as well as it could. With the blue flower bush inside the outpost, almost all of the Aki was gone, and those that did remain on the streets didn’t strike Kenneth as those who cared about an odd sight or two as he carried Sy.

  “Kica, you think you can heal this one as well?” Kenneth asked as he walked into the great hall.

  She was still in the middle of healing Kila, but the second he placed Sy on the table, the healing light dimmed, and she walked over to him.

  “What happened?” Kica asked as she looked at the crying Sy.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Sy whispered, turning his face away from Kica.

  “Kenneth, what happened?” Kica asked as she looked at him with a serious look.

  “Questions can wait, but all you need to know is he was shot by an arrow,” Kenneth stated as he walked around the table to the side the arrow was on. “Do you need to rest before healing him, or should we just start now.”

  “I’m mostly done with the others, so yes, let's do it now,” Kica responded, looking a little tired but not a lot.

  “Okay, I’ll pull it out then before he can lose too much blood you heal,” Kenneth said as he snapped the arrowhead off, drawing a grunt or two from Sy.” Fenik and Kila, could you hold him down?”

  “Of course,” Fenik said as she walked over to the table. Kila followed suit as he quickly stood up and froze as a loud cracking sound could be heard.

  “That was weird,” Kila said as he began to inspect his knee.

  “What happened Kila?” Fenik asked, sounding a little worried.

  “I think my knee was in the wrong place, then it suddenly moved back to its normal place,” Kila responded, confused as he kept inspecting it and moving it about.

  Kenneth just looked Kica in her eyes as he asked her, “Didn’t you fully reset his leg before healing him?”

  “Reset?” Kica repeated, unsure of what the word meant.

  “Well, that’s the next lesson then,” Kenneth said as he returned to the matter at hand.

  He held Sy’s leg and arrow tightly as Kila finally joined them.

  “Okay, on three,” Kenneth said as he started to count. “One… two…. THREE.”

  Kenneth, with all his strength, pulled out the arrow. Sy screamed as it happened while Kila and Fenik kept him from moving too much.

  Kica was quick as ever as she reached the wound, gushing blood like a fountain. Sy didn’t struggle for long once Kica began to heal him.

  And as Kenneth watched, he was both impressed and saddened. ‘I’m here to teach them something about healing when some can do that. I can keep them alive, but all I ever do is bring them to her. Can I even make a difference here?’

  The thought hung over Kenneth like a dark cloud; even after Kica had healed him, it still remained.

  “That was a lot,” Kica admitted as she slowly walked over to a chair and sat down.

  Kenneth looked, and there was only a bald space of no fur where the arrow once had been.

  “Can I leave now?” Sy whispered as Kila and Fenik let go of him.

  “Who shot you?” Kica suddenly asked, short of breath. “Those are our arrows.”

  “Kica, I don’t think you need to be asking that question right now,” Kenneth softly said as he found and chair and sat down beside Sy.

  “If we have a traitor, Ulric needs to know,” Kica insisted.

  “The only traitor here is me,” Sy said in a somber voice.

  “What!” Kica uttered in surprise.

  “Listen, Kica,” Kenneth quickly said, trying to avoid a huge misunderstanding. “He hasn’t betrayed the outpost; he’s just in a bad place right now.”

  “How is the outpost a bad place?” Kica asked, confused.

  “I mean a bad place in his head. Dammit, this is giving me a headache,” Kenneth mumbled under his breath.

  “No, you are wrong,” Sy cried. “I betrayed my sister and took her memories.”

  “Wait!” Kica gasped. “Did you take her memories when she was screaming about the blood on her hands and the girl?”

  Kenneth suddenly froze at the mention of those events and broke out into a cold sweat. ‘She saw that. What else must she have seen?’

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  “She had gone insane!” Kica protested. “If you hadn’t taken them away when you did, she would never have recovered.”

  “I still broke our promise. Our one rule that neither would ever again do to one other,” Sy sobbed.

  “Listen, Kica, right now, I think he just needs some time to recover,” Kenneth said as calmly as he was able to.

  “If you say so,” Kica said in an unsure voice before walking into the other room in the great hall.

  In the meantime, Kennet hadn’t noticed that Kila and Fenik had already left. He guessed they weren't too keen on listing to him talking.

  “Why did you help me?” Sy asked once more.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s not as if I care about you in any meaningful way outside of you being my patient,” Kenneth said as Sy sat up. “But it’s not as if I was about to let you die. And thank you.”

  Sy looked at him for a moment, dumbfounded, before speaking. “But we attacked, and I admitted to it, so why?”

  “I simply confronted Kiki on the bases of her ability to see other’s memories, and in turn, she confronted you on the basis of you being able to take other's memories,” Kenneth said. “None of it is definitive proof of you actually having done anything.”

  “And even though you admitted to something doesn’t mean you are actually telling the truth. For all I know, you just said whatever you believed would get me to stop helping you.”

  “People say I worry a lot,” Sy sighed as he looked away from Kenneth. “None of them truly understand that I see all the horrible things that can happen in my mind. Whenever I see my sister go on a hunt without me, I always think of the ways she could die. It's torture.”

  “I did the same when I was younger,” Kenneth somberly added.

  “Yo-you did,” Sy said supirsed.

  “It wasn’t always, but whenever I didn’t see my mother or father, my mind would just lose control and imagine all the ways they could die,” Kenneth responded.

  “It sounds like you do truly understand,” Sy said, his jaw quivering. “I don’t have any reason left to live. Even if I left with the merchant, I would only be waiting til the day I die, so I’ll tell you the whole truth.”

  “Listen, you already said you and Kiki attacked me, but--”

  “NO!” Sy yelled. “We attacked. That is the truth, but I know you won’t believe it, so I’ll tell you one more thing.”

  Sy then took a long pause, his eyes closed. “It was Ulric.”

  “What,” Kennet blurted out.

  “Ulric was the one who ordered us to see your memories and take them away so you wouldn’t remember it even happened,” Sy confessed.

  “Ulric, but wh--” Kenneth tried to say, but the words got stuck in his mouth.

  “If you don’t believe it, just ask him. I know he can’t deny it if you ask him directly,” Sy said as he jumped off the table and found a chair.

  Once the initial shock of Sy’s words wore off, Kenneth rose from his chair and, without a word to speak, walked out of the great hall.

  On the entire trip to Ulric’s house, Kenneth kept thinking over the situation, trying to give himself any reason why he shouldn’t even think to ask Ulric if he did it, but no matter how hard and long he thought about it made sense.

  ‘Ulric was the one who asked Nya to leave the house, so he knew I would be alone,’ Kenneth thought.

  ‘And even after I had been attacked, he never once made an effort to find out who was responsible. He never asked me what I remembered, and with his ability to see only the truth, he should have been able to find the culprits in no time.’

  ‘Now that I think about he also said he didn’t know whether or not I was lying without knowing I was wearing a mask. Seeing my memories would have been the only way to somewhat know if I had told the truth or not.’

  All of it made too much sense to simply be a coincidence, and so that was why he didn’t stop before he knocked on Ulric’s door.

  It took some time but eventually, he opened the door and looked down at Kenneth.

  “Why are you here?” Ulric asked, sounding mildly confused in his booming voice.

  For a moment, Kenneth felt unsure if he should ask the question. He could still make up an excuse and leave, but that wasn’t what Kenneth did as he raised his head and met Ulric’s eyes.

  “Did you… Did you order Kiki and Sy to attack me the day I joined this outpost?” Kenneth managed to say, feeling unsure if he should have done so or not.

  Ulric took a deep breath as his voice became calm and quiet,” come in.”

  Ulric then opened the door to his home fully, and Kenneth walked in, not sure what was about to happen.

  “Which one told you?” Ulric asked as he closed the door.

  “Does it matter?” Kenneth responded as he glared back at Ulric, the sight of him igniting the anger inside him little by little.

  “I would guess Kiki was the one since you had so much time to talk to her,” Ulric said as he walked passed Kenneth and took a seat at his table.

  “Are you going to kill her if she is the one?” Kenneth asked as he tried to control the slowly building anger inside him.

  “I’m just surprised more than anything that she would tell you before she ever got back to me, but I suppose I never needed to know what she saw and heard once I learned you had something covering your face,” Ulric responded as he began to looked over some papers on his table.

  “How am I supposed to trust you?” Kenneth asked in a low tone that almost became a growl. “That day you asked me how you could trust me, all the while having ordered an attack on me that… that… that forced me to see things I shouldn’t have remembered.”

  “Trust me,” Ulric mused. “Why do you have any need to trust me?”

  “I did what I did for the sake of this outpost, regardless of what it might have done to you. The people inside these walls and their lives are my responsibility, and if you hadn’t told me about the mask you wear all the time, I would have killed you.”

  Kenneth was shocked into silence after that as he lowered his gaze to the floor. In the back of his mind, he had known much of what Ulric had already said, but him saying it now and so bluntly was painful.

  “You should be happy. You got the flowers back to the outpost, and once the merchant arrives, you can get the favors,” Ulric said, looking intently at the piece of paper he was holding. “Just forget what you heard today, and everything can go back to normal.”

  “Forget,” Kenneth chuckled for a moment before abruptly stopping. “I WISH I COULD FORGET! Those memories that Kiki forced me to remember haunt me! I forgot them once as a child, but that won’t ever happen again!”

  “I see,” Ulric sighed as he put down the paper he was holding and looked Kenneth dead in his eyes. “You are always difficult.”

  “Do you know how many have wanted you dead that I have prevented from even trying anything,” Ulric said calmly yet with an almost deadly intensity.

  “I’ll spare you like I always do and say it’s a lot, and that isn’t even the worst part,” Ulric ranted as he rose from the table. “I was fine with that just being it, but no! Every so often, you say things only a heretic would!”

  “Each and every time, I had to control myself and cage my anger! The few times I couldn’t cage it was when I warned you of what I did to others who would do similar things!”

  Kenneth was stunned, silent by all of this. On some level, he had considered Ulric a friend, but in truth, that might only have been a delusion.

  “If I’m such a problem to you, why not kick me out or kill me already? I still remember a few of the threats you told me when we first met.” Kenneth said as he felt his hand twitch in anger.

  “And here I thought you might actually be clever,” Ulric sighed. “The knowledge you possess, as well as your methods, is something no healer in these lands knows of. You have seen what happens to the healer when she can’t heal anymore.”

  “If it wasn’t for you and your methods, there would have been more dead hunters than just the one. You have proven your usefulness.”

  “In your eyes, am I only a tool then?” Kenneth asked.

  “In my eyes, you are nothing but a small, fat, ugly-looking, infuriating, dangerous creature that is useful,” Ulric answered.

  Every single word that came out of Ulric’s mouth was like a gut punch. Each hurt, but still, Kenneth kept standing.

  Suddenly Kenneth started to chuckle a little, “well, it’s good to know where we stand.”

  Kenneth then calmly turned around and walked over to the door.

  “One more thing before I leave,” Kenneth said just as he opened the door, and then in a low and emotionless tone, Kenneth calmly spoke. “I’m never taking this mask off again for you. Enjoy not knowing if I’m lying or telling the truth.”

  “I can always rip it off,” Ulric responded, unfaced.

  “We both know I’m stronger than I look,” Kenneth said as he was in the middle of closing the door. “And a word of advice. I wasn’t lying when I said I could die if it’s off too long.”

  “You are more than welcome to try, but be careful you don’t damage it too much since I’m so important to you."

  With then, Kenneth closed the door and walked away while grinding his teeth.

  On his way back to the great hall, Kenneth's thoughts were like a tornado of emotions that grew and grew the more time passed.

  The emotion most prevalent in his mind was anger, and while despair and sadness were still there, they were overshadowed easily.

  The moment Kenneth saw Sy, everything went red as he slowly approached him.

  “So, did you learn the truth?” Sy asked, his gaze firmly on the ground.

  Kenneth stopped only a few steps away from him as his free hand and fingers kept twisting and moving, trying to stay in one place but failing as the inferno inside him forced them to do so.

  Before either of them knew what happened, Kenneth grabbed Sy by the neck of his leather T-shirt and pulled his face close to his before yelling. “Listen to me, you son of a bitch! YOU ARE NOT KILLING YOURSELF!”

  Sy, shocked by this, completely froze in the empty hall.

  “I-I-I-I-I,” Sy studdered as he watched in fear the monster that was holding him so ever close his legs almost giving out.

  “You truly are pathetic,” Kenneth said in such a low tone of voice it was easily a growl. “You want to kill yourself just because you have separation anxiety!”

  Kenneth then let go and pushed him back into the chair with so much force it fell over.

  “I’m going to leave and fix everything, and once I return, you are never going to speak of this again, or I will break you! UNDERSTOOD!” Kenneth growled.

  Sy, terrified for his life, was only able to nod silently.

  “Good,” Kenneth said before he walked away, leaving Sy on the floor, his hearts beating like never before.

  In that instance, Sy had only truly understood one thing what it felt like to be prey to a predator.