By the time John, Kareg, and the driver came into view, Zach felt haggard. His eyes were burning, his arms were sore, his legs had that burning itch to them, though it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been yesterday.

  He’d continued the training the entire way, Noah timing how long he could hold a specific aspect—his vision, his hearing. He’d even tested his speed by running back down the road, coming back to Noah, matching his pace once more before doing it again.

  There was one thing he’d put off, but seeing them standing by the line of trees, Zach decided fear of fatigue would no longer stop him. He lifted his arm up, closing his eyes and focusing on the puncture wounds.

  There was a spiderweb of tissue cells there, all of them slowly creeping toward each other in an attempt to connect and close the skin. It was amazing. He hadn’t been paying attention when his body had healed last night, but now that he focused on it, it was as though Severity was actually showing him exactly what it was doing. A doctor teaching its student.

  That poison had been something dangerous. The knowledge the Creational Force gave him revealed that the strange phenomenon happening within his body relied on vitality.

  The webs of tissue he viewed now were present on every living thing. They were what kept an organism alive. The only problem was that they were naturally slow-moving, constantly covering the body, but at a gradual pace.

  When someone got injured or even ill, the webs moved as if spun by some unseen force, trying to wrap the weak points with as much life force as possible, but sometimes the ailment managed to set in before anything could be done.

  Severity twisted that by accelerating the entire process. However, the energy it used still had to come from somewhere. The reason he’d been able to do a lot of the straining he’d already done was because he’d been unconsciously using either his or Oliver’s stored-up life force—that part was still unclear.

  Either way, that life force was in turn supplied by food, explaining the ravenous hunger he’d felt back in the hold, and his deep sleep when he didn't have enough food to replenish it. It seemed healthier to fuel Severity in that way as opposed to offering large chunks of your life.

  “You can feel it?” Noah asked beside him.

  They’d been keeping a steady pace, knowing that as much as they could see the others standing by the side of the road, all three of them could just as easily see them. In fact, they were probably watching and remarking at this very moment.

  Zach nodded, still focused on the webs. He pushed as much vitality into them as he could, actively drawing from the components of the energy he could get back through sleep and eating. The webs rushed together, each strand meeting and fitting into the other perfectly.

  He opened his eyes just as the wounds started closing, the flaps melding together until his skin was smooth once more. He marveled at the strangeness of it all. Having knowledge deposited in his mind was a little jarring. It felt eerily similar to how his or Oliver’s memories would come to him from seemingly nowhere.

  And he knew it wasn’t only his healing. There was some link between vitality and his straining ability as well, but his mind couldn’t understand that part yet.

  “It’s gone,” Noah said, sounding genuinely impressed, though he found his usual tone almost immediately. “They’ll still ask about the blood and the torn bags. What was our story?”

  Zach glanced at him flatly. He’d already made him say it twice. He wondered if Lucas was the same way. If he were, Zach couldn’t see how they’d survived this long with one another. Granted, Noah had lived in the hold for the last few months.

  “What was our story?” Noah asked again.

  Zach sighed, looking up at the sky. “We were attacked by angals when we paused for a break.”

  “Stopped for a break,” Noah corrected.

  “Like there’s a difference,” he muttered to himself before he continued. “When we stopped for a break. They were tearing through the bag, looking for food, and I had to fight them off.”

  They had to go with a spun version of the truth. No matter what they came up with, nothing could explain away the blood without any physical injury, or the torn bags.

  “The blood?” Noah pressed.

  “From when I hit its head in. It wouldn’t stop.”

  Noah nodded.

  The closer they got to the trees lining both sides of the road, the more rapid their breathing turned. It wasn’t all for show. All the healing and straining had truly taken a lot out of him. In Noah’s case, he hadn’t Stepped once. By the time they reached the wagon and the three men, Zach was fully aware of how they looked.

  There was one small mercy Zach hadn’t stopped to acknowledge before now. The day had a deep heat to it, but the endless expanse of clouds stopped the sun from beating down on them.

  Kareg whistled.

  “You look like a... well, like a mess. What happened to you?”

  John looked on quietly, his eyes moving over them intently.

  Zach took a deep breath and relayed the entire story. By the end, all three of them were looking down the road, wary the creatures might come running. The driver lowered his leaf, looking up at the treespace overhead.

  Back at the Store, Zach had thought the man old. But standing there, shaded from the light, he couldn’t have been more than thirty-five. His skin, dimpled with liverspots, clung tight to his skull, pulling back his face to its very limit.

  High-pitched chattering filled the air.

  “Alright, alright,” Kareg said. “None of that now. Poor things.”

  He seemed to be speaking to something behind them on the wagon.

  “That wasn’t part of the plan,” John said. “Still, you made it here in an hour and twenty-seven minutes. Even with an angal attack. I didn’t think we had any angals left. The last time we went on an expedition, we didn’t encounter many wild animals. No angals. Their home ranges aren’t that far apart. Solitary creatures, but they migrate together, if at a distance.”

  “When you go on expeditions, you learn a thing or two about animal behavior,” Kareg said by way of apology. “Though John did always seem to know things about them the rest of us could never figure out.”

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  John gave no comment as Kareg turned away, stepping up onto the wagon. The high-pitched chattering increased as he bent over, moving some things around before he straightened with one fairly large cage covered in a woolen blanket.

  “The next part of your training,” John said, taking the cage, “is hunting. Tracking is an important part of what we do out there.”

  “Plus, this is your lunch,” Kareg said, stepping down from the wagon with another cage also covered in a blanket. “To incentivize you, I should probably tell you, we didn’t bring midday rations. Not for you.”

  They pulled the coverings off the cages, revealing two large four-legged animals. At a quick glance, they looked like rabbits, what with those four legs, floppy ears, and slightly humped back as they sat on their haunches. But that was only at first glance.

  When he really looked at them, they seemed wrong to his mind, which expected them to hold to the image of rabbits. Their back legs and lower half were so thick with fat, they looked as though they could easily break out of the cage with one powerful kick.

  “Yes, boys,” Kareg said, wiggling his eyebrows again. “You’re seeing right. These are laguses. Decent size, so you won’t lose track of them, but they’re fast. John, didn’t you have another name for them? What was it again?”

  “Like I said before,” John said instead. “The angal attacking you wasn’t planned. They might’ve left you tired, but this is part of the test. After a walk like that, there’s a good chance we’d have to hunt or do something else that requires the same level of effort.”

  “Come along,” Kareg said.

  “Damn nice meat, that,” the driver said, taking a deep whiff from that leaf of his. “I get boiled lentil grain mixed with potato, or some such.”

  “Maybe they’ll share with you,” Kareg said over his shoulder. “Though I wouldn’t. All you’d do is complain about the taste, or that they gave you too little.”

  The driver scowled, offering nothing to defend himself.

  “You’ll be cooking it as well,” John said as he walked up beside Kareg.

  Noah scoffed slightly under his breath. Zach remembered how he’d had to skin the rabbit that first night he’d been lucid enough to walk through the hold. Already, that night felt like it had happened months ago.

  “Here’s good,” Kareg announced, setting the cage down to the left of the road. “Are you ready?”

  Zach and Noah nodded.

  John silently set his cage down beside Kareg’s. In showman-like fashion, Kareg removed the blankets, revealing the animals within. One was white, striped down the back with one long black line that bled out into the white at different spots. The other was brown, the same black line running down its back.

  “Wait a few minutes before you go, and keep your eyes open,” John said, just as Kareg pulled the bolts out and opened the cages’ doors.

  At first, the animals refused to move, as if they knew the idea of freedom was a lie. But an ear twitch later, they were hesitantly stalking forward. The second their feet touched the surface of the road, they were off. Bounding through the grass that thankfully didn’t keep them fully out of sight.

  “Remember, you don’t have to see them to track them! Also, you just have to catch them!” Kareg shouted as he and John made their way back to the wagon.

  Like before, Noah waited until they were well out of earshot before he spoke with his usual confidence.

  “Have you hunted before?”

  Zach shook his head, despite the sudden longing stirring in his chest.

  “Lucas used to be part of this Function, before he broke his leg and had to switch. They didn’t give us weapons, so I guess they’re testing our survival instincts. Which means, they don’t want us to split up. We downplayed the walk, so to keep them guessing, let’s catch them if we can.”

  Zach nodded, his eyes still following the brown lagus bounding across the grass. Once in a while, it stopped, its head swiveling side to side, its ears twitching at every sound it picked up on.

  Noah was saying something, but Zach didn’t focus on it. He couldn’t. Something stirred deep within his chest at the laguses’ sight. Something about knowing he was hunting them, knowing that they were his prey.

  Time seemed to slow down. He could see the individual blades of grass waving in the dry wind. Before he knew he was even doing it, his eyes scanned the surroundings, trying to work out the logical point of where the animals would go.

  It felt automatic, as though he were falling back on some training. His senses were strained on the animals. Standing on the road, he could see how it brought its front paws over its tufted ears again and again, before moving to its eyes. Its nose twitched, smelling the subtle changes in the wind only an animal could pick up.

  “What’s happening here?”

  Noah’s voice.

  But it didn’t matter.

  They wanted him to hunt, so he’d hunt. This was something he could do. Without warning, as if sensing his intentions, the creature dropped to all fours and took off. Zach went after it. Not in the way he wanted to, knowing they were still watching him.

  He was dimly aware of Noah stalking beside him.

  The laguses were faster than he’d thought. He’d thought they looked like rabbits; well, they certainly had their speed. The creatures ran on suddenly in a desperate attempt to flee. They’d gotten their taste of freedom and found they liked it.

  Zach followed behind, content to let them get as far as they could if it meant putting some distance between him and his audience back at the wagon. He thought Noah was doing the same thing.

  They continued until they reached a part of the landscape where the grass stood taller. The idea of cover seemed to spur the laguses on. But the noise they made was sloppy work. They might as well have left signs in their wake.

  Zach paused.

  For a second, just before they’d run into the cover, they’d looked eerily human. Soldiers retreating on a battlefield. There was the smell of smoke, and the grass near him turned black from an old fire.

  Chains rattled around him, the sound filling his mind. He blinked and found himself in Severity, that dead, rotten smell filling the air. Noah was gone. The day’s heat was gone. Everything that had surrounded him a few minutes ago—all gone.

  But... in the near distance... There was a hint of something. A small pool of darkness. His mind immediately registered it was water. He even interpreted the distance from where he currently stood to where he’d find that pool of water back in the real world.

  Closer to him, there were track marks in the burning field.

  Then he heard men screaming. He heard the sound of blood splattering across the ground. The sharp sound of metal on metal. More screams erupted and were cut off just as they were loosed. The black sky above shook, the chains swinging toward him.

  A thin silver beam shot up before his eyes. He reached for it, remembering the silver balls the last time he’d entered with Noah’s help.

  He gasped himself back into the real world. Noah stood there, a frown on his face, the silver dagger in his hand. Zach could see he was angry before he even spoke.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Zach said, looking around, trying to orient himself. “I was in Severity.”

  “Lucas isn’t going to be happy I did that,” Noah muttered, turning back in the direction of the road.

  “Did what?” Zach said, still feeling dazed.

  “When you slipped, your body collapsed,” he explained. “I had to put up a shield so I could guide you back. That was reckless. I thought you had a hard time entering.”

  “I...” Zach sighed frustratedly.

  He felt more than frustrated. He’d spent the walk practicing with it, and for the most part, he thought he’d actually gotten some understanding. Then something like this happened. As if the wall hadn’t been bad enough.

  He scowled. He was whining. He was actually whining. Thankfully, it hadn’t been out loud.

  “I’m still practicing,” he said. “I just pushed too far.”

  Noah shook his head, cutting through the air with his knife.

  “We’re far off. They shouldn’t have seen anything. I don’t have the guides with me, so I had to use the shield. Lucky for you, all types of theurgy show up in a Creational Force. I lost the laguses. It’s going to take a while, but if we—”

  “We don’t have to look for them,” Zach said. “I know where they’re going.”

  He knew the answer, though it bothered him. Last time, he’d had Eve’s Deck. Why had it happened this time?

  Hopefully, I don’t pay for that tonight.

  Noah was quiet. That frown deepened. “How could you possibly know that?”

  “The same way soldiers are trained to get in the enemy’s head,” Zach said, realization dawning on him.

  That’s when he understood. Severity was made up of all the aspects of soldiers at war. The needed strength, the hearing on the battlefield, the vision for reconnaissance, and the needed speed for military engagements.

  Severity was war incarnate.