65 BEAST-BOY AND FERAL-FATHER

"Yea."

What a bold faced lie.

He wasn't ready.

Ready for what?

He was in a Tangent way above his price range with his father— in monster form, and his seven foot tall magic sex buddy facing off against a magical anomaly.

He was so unready it was near comical.

Even so, he ran.

Especially so, he blended with the nature around him, turning into a feral forest guardian to oppose the wave of undeath looming in all directions.

All he knew was he needed speed. Even in protection. He'd never make wooden armor strong enough to block a sword that could cleave trees in two. Not at level nine. He needed to maintain his speed like he needed to maintain the presence of blood within him.

He kept that in mind as his family closed the distance.

Ms. Oracle's solidified rainbow aura armor expanded, moving like waters in high tide until she became an iridescent multicolored glow-metal juggernaut with one golden eye.

Gil remained the same. That in and of itself was still hard to comprehend.

Claude struggled to keep up with his betters. But he did.

The undead titan was less than one hundred feet away.

Claude jumped over a treestump. Freshly killed. Healing in his presence. In his wishes. His palm slapped the severed top end. Growing sticky from the rich and incredibly warm sap.

The sticky warmth never left. Even as he landed and closed in on the beast. In fact, it spread. Up his arm like he was being dipped in hot wax.

The bugbear was on him, raising a hide-booted foot to stomp him.

Ms.Oracle flew past him and tackled the twelve foot tall brute.

The bugbear didn't budge. Speaking to it's strength since it was still on one leg. They grappled.

Gil came from behind with a viscous swipe that ripped out a chunk of its spine, leaving it standing at an angle.

Claude went the other way, using his claws to tear the tendons that allowed the bugbear to grip its world crushing blade.

He did so swiftly, jumping over the weapon as he let his claws dig into the tough dead skin on its wrist.

It felt easy.

Too easy.

Skin sizzled.

He knicked bone.

The bugbear screamed and dropped the weapon as he landed in the grass.

"Dig!" He yelled to his hounds who followed him.

Immediately, they began kicking up the dirt over the weapon. Even in the midst of all the new experiences and stimulants, Claude remembered one thing.

"The undead have trouble grasping object permanence. So…. earth-shattering sword, goodbye."

Suddenly, the bugbear was in his face bellowing a foul-mouthed hello.

It swung.

Claude panicked and tried to guard himself. Warm slithered across his body and the hit came with a sizzling roar. It felt…. muted. Like he wore a chest plate made of gum.

Still, he flew backward, rolling through the forest before hitting a soft stone.

"Soft…?" Claude didn't have a chance to look back as the bugbear advanced.

Ms. Oracle came from behind and shouldercharged the brute.

It stumbled forward before trying to hit her with a spinning back fist with a hand covered in burns and melting skin.

She ducked. At the same time, her glow-metal aura armor slimmed, transforming her from a juggernaut into a speed based fighter.

She spun around to its front, ripping out the rotted intestines leaking from its back wound. With the fleshy rope, she wrapped its leg and pulled.

The beast fell onto its back.

Gil pounced on the bugbear and slashed out its eyes before flipping away as it roared a stream of bubbling rotted ooze.

It was suddenly faster as it burst to its feet.

"Sometimes— advanced Necromancers can force the decaying process of their subjects to work faster and for a purpose. If they empty their innards and become a shell midcombat, they lose a significant amount of fluids and weight— making them harder and faster." Claude remembered the text he read in one of his fathers books— that he wasn't allowed to read.

The blinded bugbear was suddenly all skin, muscle and bone. A true wraith. And it was hot on his heels.

Claude got up onto his feet and back stepped, planting his feet on the treestump.

He bounced.

For a fraction of a second, he looked down and found a sticky brown honey-like substance pouring from the trees open wounds. Bolts and arcs of green lightning raced through the substance. If slithered up his feet and legs, forming a sort of dark-wood slime protective skin.

"….Sap?" Suddenly he realized why he was hearing the sizzling.

He imagined blades— tendrils. Attacks from all directions. A rending nightmare.

Spiked tendrils extended from his back. His hands— coated in the supercharged sap, morphed into blades.

He swung.

A dozen sap tendrils surged, stabbing into the bugbears chest.

It's dry skin bubbled as it roared in pain.

With the tendrils in its skin, he morphed the blades into hooks and pulled himself into the writhing zombie-monster.

Up above, his father barked and howled, disorienting the monster as he slid low and ran his bladed slime arm through its leg.

It cut like butter. Smooth and slick. Clean. Spirals of steam followed his movements.

But he couldn't help but think about the beast above and the tank behind.

They were both strong enough to handle it themselves.

Ms. Oracle had enough aura control to create constructs. Enough mana to flood an ocean.

Gil was a Lupine. A terrifying seemingly perfect evolution of the werewolf— carrying both qualities of its strength and speed, and his human mind. He could've roared in its face and turned its organs to mush.

But they didn't.

They avoided killing blows and slowed their attacks.

"This is my kill…." Claude realized as the bugbear fell over behind him, now missing a leg.

As he skidded to a halt in the dirt, he spun around, a new focus filling him as the direct challenge rose with him.

"Frosty."

Frosty trotted over to him.

Claude threw a glob of the sap.

Frosty jumped up and ate it. The slime coated his fangs.

He did the same for the rest of his hounds.

The bugbear hopped up onto one foot.

A sap mask slid over his face, turning him into a slime-skinned dryadic warrior.

Ms. Oracle and Gil backed off completely.

***

Gil stuck to the trees— moving less as the Lupines once taught him and more like the StoneApes he hunted when he was stranded in the Isle's of Indus as a young man.

He swung and flipped and roared, forcing the bugbear to swing at a perceived pack of wild animals when it was only one.

One animal.

One Lupine.

In awe.

It was supposed to be another day. Another research-run in the tangents then return home and get some shut-eye.

Instead, he'd exposed himself. Claude knew the truth now. His worst nightmare had come to fruition.

But that wasn't right, was it?

What he was watching wasn't a nightmare.

"He's... he's marvelous." Tears welled in Gil's glowing eyes. The pride was like fire in him, searing his brain with positive memories forming. Ones that wouldn't ever leave.

The boy flipped and swung around with his sap tendrils and claws. His beasts fell into step with him, zipping and sliding around the forest with sap slathered paws and fangs.

The bugbear was being ripped apart. Melted down to nothing. Overcome by the overpowering life of Claude's element. Of his focus. His will.

Gil eventually stopped barking.

Claude didn't need it.

He missed just about every formative moment he should've had with Claude. But in those moments, it was like watching him ride off on his bike without training wheels for the first time.

"This….. you, Claude. My father would've called you a true GreyMane. You wouldn't have been stripped of your name like I was." Gil thought before shaking off the thought, "That isn't right. You're not merciless and cunning. You're not like them. You're smart. You're intelligent. But you're also goofy. You're self aware. You know what world you're in. You know you aren't born on top of it. But you're climbing. Even now…. And you're bringing them all with you…." Gil thought as Claude cut off an arm of the bugbear.

It chased after him as he swung away through the trees.

Frosty came from behind, climbing up its back to bit down on its neck. The PitWolf was going for the kill before being shaken off.

The Islanddogs caught him.

The bugbear jogged after Claude, swatting and roaring at the gremlin-cats that were supposed to be its ally.

Claude grabbed them with his extra limbs, pulling the predatory grunts out of harms way. All the while, he was spinning a web of sap charged by the electrical pulse of the nature they battled on.

Gil could feel it in the trees. The thrum of power.

He followed.

His mind was all over.

Memories. Futures. Everything in between.

"This is the moment…" Gil said.

He said it again.

He chanted it in the Remian language he hadn't spoken since….. since a long time.

"This is your birth." Gil thought.

Not his literal birth. He couldn't see the beauty like many parents did. He couldn't when he knew what it meant.

Claude would've been the first natural born Lupine after their kind had been trying for ages. A king at birth that would've turned Gil and his mate into gods. The start of a new generation. Beastial Alchemists and war-generals exalted them.

His birth was a spectacle. A holiday to the others but to Gil it was horror. The boy was burned and scarred by the magic of a race he wasn't meant to be. He was too good. Too pure. Even at birth— he only cried when he saw Gil crying. A newborn trying to console a monster.

A human was born. A nightmare was lived.

But as Gil watched his son now, it was a dream come true.

For all the fireballs, magical nature slime, ocean waves and rainbow blasts, the real magic was watching his son become his own man. Become what he trained for alone in forests for hours on end.

He was his will manifested.

He was more than what the world had in store for him.

Gil threw his head back and howled.

"You're awesome, kid. Keep going…."

Claude bounced around the forests, using his recently made web of sap as trampoline-wires to move in a blur around the bugbear, cutting it open again and again and again while the forest itself began to consume the creature up to the neck.

From there, there was only one thing he could do.

He went for the head.

The cut was soundless. Not even a sizzle.

He crashed and burned a hundred feet from the scene.

Gil sat on the tree branch. Breathing as if it was him who amazed everyone with eyes. He wiped his tears.

"Kids... they're something else, I've heard." Ms. Oracle said from below, on the grounds— that had grown considerably with flowers and bush life.

Gil huffed.

"Go get your son and celebrate with him." Ms. Oracle said.

Gil's ears flickered. In a blur he was off.

"For now…. It's good. But I don't know what happens next. That doesn't matter, though. We live."

***

[+400 EXP]

DING!

[You have Leveled Up!]

[You are now Level 10!]

[PHYS UP]

[+1 Stat Point]

[+1 Level to Beast Tamer Starter Skills]

[New Skill, (Companion Bond), Unlocked!]

[Racial Element Mutation Recognized!]

[You are a novice Sapomancer!]

"Well…. that happened."

Claude was surrounded by his hounds as they licked his face, trying to get past the sap armor to reach him.

"Enough, guys!" Claude giggled as he sat up and sighed.

Before he could even react, a beast landed on the forest floor a hundred feet away, yowling as it chased him down and tackled him.

"WOOHOOO!!!!!! MY BOOOOOOY!"

They rolled and tumbled before coming to a stop at the edge of the forest.

Claude recovered just enough to feel the excitement of the event truly hit him. "Man, HELL YEA! LETS GO!"

They all howled for a moment of bliss before another added portion of reality hit.

Claude's sap skin fell away like water. He faced his father, seated in the grass with a gremlin-cat kitten on his lap. He didn't remember ever grabbing or seeing one but it didn't matter in the moment.

His father stood on all fours, ears flattening with discomfort as they eyed eachother.

"What now?"

They both looked to their side as Ms. Oracle approached, back in her dress and jewels, "Now you talk. You probably don't have much time before the Shaman tries something else. Chop-chop."