Page 105 of Solivagant

EPILOGUE

JOSIAH

Six Months Later.

The trees had changed from deep pink to a periwinkle blue. This forest was beautiful, with more colors and life than I ever could have imagined in one place. At least during the day. At night it was darker. The dense foliage above prevented much of the light from the stars and dual moons from reaching the forest floor.

Motes of magical light would drift down from the trees and up from the earth. The soul of the forest, Khorli had said. There were things like the bunyi which fed on those soul motes.

Khorli had been very excited the first time we’d seen the bunyi. They were fluffy white creatures, similar to moths, with iridescent glowing wings and four eyes of pure light. Only they were much larger than any moth I’d seen before.

He’d told me we could eat them, but something about his expression had told me he didn’t want to eat the bunyi. I wasn’t sure why that was, but I’d refused, and he’d seemed relieved as we watched it absorb a soul mote and fly away. I did wonder a bit what they tasted like, though.

We hunted pretty much everything else. Soul deer were particularly challenging, given their huge size and the amount of power they possessed, but with me and Khorli together, there weren’t much we couldn’t kill.

Pipsqueak, or Pip as we’d come to call her, seemed thrilled at exploring the new forest. She had absolutely no fear of anything, which meant we had to keep a very close eye on her. Though we’d recently witnessed her eating the soul motes. We weren’t sure exactly what that would do for her, or what she might gain from it, but I hoped it would make her stronger, and so I’d been collecting them to feed them to her.

Tash no longer lived with us. According to Aerith, someone named Thalin had moved away from here, abandoning his den and everything inside it a few decades ago. She didn’t know what happened to him, but she’d told us she were almost certain he’d not be coming back. So Tash had taken over the place. She had knives, spears, guns, and her chainsaw where he’d kept jewelry and delicate fabrics.

She seemed to be adapting well to life here too. She liked to hunt and explore. She also liked to flirt with Aerith who wanted absolutely nothing to do with her, on account of her being soulless and all.

I’d tried talking to her about that. She hadn’t been surprised when I’d told her she didn’t have a soul, but she either didn’t know why, or she lied and told me she didn’t. Either way, she was still Tash. Still the best friend I’d always known, and unlike the Benygal, I didn’t see her missing soul as a reason I shouldn’t trust her or treat her any differently at all.

It did unfortunately mean she weren’t allowed in the temple for the soul-binding ritual, though. Aerith was very strict that a soulless weren’t ever permitted to enter her temple, not even for this. She also refused to conduct the ritual elsewhere.

It left Tash watching the ceremony from up in the tall branches with a set of binoculars from one of the bags Khorli had gifted me. I weren’t sure if Aerith had noticed her yet. If she had, she didn’t say anything, and I tried very hard not to look up at her and give away her position.

Though I found myself sort of hoping those binoculars didn’t work too well. There was only so long one pair of jeans could last, and mine were more holes than fabric at this point, on account of all the hunting and either Khorli or me being too rough.

It meant Khorli had needed to find something else for me to wear, which was how I’d ended up here in nothing but a sparkly purple semi-transparent loin cloth. It didn’t really cover anything, but no one apart from Tash seemed to mind at all.

None of them really wore clothes at all anyway, except Aerith, whose fabric was even more transparent than mine. I had to admit, though I wouldn’t have chosen a shimmery purple for myself, the fabric was freeing and far less restrictive than the denim had been. And Khorli really seemed to like it.

So yeah, maybe I wouldn’t rush him to find me something else.

Khorli wasn’t wearing any clothes, as usual, but he had delicate jewelry with tiny glowing gems made especially for his horns that I’d helped him to adorn, and he’d surprised me with some for mine as well. There were also small gems on ribbons we had braided into each other’s hair. He looked beautiful always, but today he was damn near breathtaking.

Aerith reached out for each of our hands. Khorli had explained all the details of the ritual to me, to make sure I knew what I was getting into and so that nothing would catch me off guard. We’d designed our rune together, so when Aerith took the ritual blade to carve it into my palm, I was ready.

My bleeding palm pressed against his wrist, and his against mine. Gold and shimmering red dripped down into the arrangement of herbs, flowers, and colorful ashes that Aerith had assembled at our feet.

His tail wrapped around my forearm, and mine around his.

Then Aerith wrapped vines with glowing thorns around us both, holding our bleeding limbs together as she prayed to Silvyr to bless us, to bond us, to bind us.

I didn’t know whether I would feel it working or not, but as the thorns grew brighter and brighter, Khorli’s blood and my own also began to glow where it dripped onto the tribute below us. The rune carved into my palm started to burn. As Khorli’s nails dug into my skin, I knew he felt it too.

It was working. Silvyr had accepted us and was binding our lifespans together.

Power flowed from him to me, from me to him. Our souls were touching each other, testing each other, then they blended. Khorli was far more powerful than me, so light mostly poured from him as it wound down his arm and up mine before slamming into me like a physical thing.

The only thing that kept me standing was Khorli’s strong grip on my arm, as power and energy unlike anything I’d ever experienced before filled me up. Made me more. I’d thought changing from human to other had been significant, but it had nothing on this. At least this time it wasn’t painful.

When the light finally faded, I felt as if I’d grown ten times larger within the same body.

“It’s done,” Aerith informed us as she started to unwind the thorny vines, no longer glowing.

Khorli was smiling at me with so much warmth.