At night Goba came back, he looked at my wound once more and he clicked with his tongue in an annoyed way. Then he taught me how to stitch my wounds, I had three cuts that needed to be stitched cause they didn't want to close of their own even though they're such clean wounds. He showed one, I needed to do the other two myself. Stabbing a needle in yourself is even worse than seeing someone do it to you.
After that we talked about different kinds of monsters again, this is the subject we talk about the most. Different monsters and different kinds of herbs, and how to recognise different kinds of characteristics. But tonight Goba told me about hares.
And what surprised me is that no one knows what their ancestral monster is, all hares look a bit like rabbits, but all the smartest monsters agree that rabbits and hares have a completely different origin.
There're even a lot of opposites between rabbits and hares. Their diet is different, rabbits eat soft grasses, leaves, or even soft meat. Hares eat almost exclusively hard things, bark, twigs, or even bones. Rabbits dig, hares run. And their affinities are different, rabbits are earth based, ground, metal, or even force. Hares are mostly air, darkness, or space.
A fun fact is that Goba's ancestral monster is a kind of bird, a savage four legged flightless one though. After walking on its hind legs for a long time and using tools with its front legs it evolves into a what will become a goblin, the Winged Imp. A Winged Imp can't fly, it just has featherless wings on his back that wiggle once in a while. These wings disappear entirely somewhere down the line.
Some goblins still have a strong affinity towards air due to their bird origins, but most are like humans, their affinity can be directed towards anything. This affinity can be tested, many places have an Affinity Wall, these walls don't hold any elements but are very sensitive towards them. Goba told me that these walls will show your affinity in a special way, some would even call it art, but he said it's hard to explain and I'll probably see one day.
The next day after training with Goba we return to the forest, today's training went just as yesterday, the juggling practice is extremely hard and to practice my scythe I need to get beat up by Goba. That part went really well, the getting beat up.
Arriving in the forest after cleaning and masking my smell again I got to practice my sneaking skills. And before long we're back at the clearing, and there he sits again, the hare that cut my leg. Look at him sitting there, all shiny and sparkly.
He turns around and looks at us after I make some noise, he actually looks relieved that we're there, he hops up and down worriedly and then runs off. I look at Goba and he nods at me, I run after the hare, deeper into the forest.
It gets darker and darker the deeper we go into the forest, I know Goba is behind me, and that Goba is strong. But it still scares me a little it's not just getting darker, it's like the mood of the forest is getting darker. Almost like the forest doesn't want me here, but now that I'm here the forest will kill me if I lose focus.
Spon the hare stops, and I stop behind it. "Where're we going? What's wrong?" I whisper at it, hoping to get even the slightest hint at what we're doing here.
He looks back at me, he hops once, disappears, and reappears back on my shoulder. This startles me, what if he cuts off my ear just by being close!? Before I can do anything he puts his head against my head and two thoughts enter my mind, foreign thoughts. It's a really creepy sensation. But the first and strongest thought is one of hunger, a hunger that's full of need and desire. The second thought is an image. In this image I see a silver colored turtle with purple markings over its shield. When I look behind the bushes where the hare first stopped I see a turtle like that, so it wants my help in hunting?
Turtles are generally slow with high defence, they like to hide in their shields and they dislike attacking. I might have a chance to take it out, but I'll need to cut its neck before he pulls it back into its shield.
"Okay mister hare, I know why you need my help. You're fast, but you can't kill the turtle because it's sturdy, so you want me to read its head before he can hide. But what do I get in return?"
He's the one asking something now, now he should be the one who's polite, and I like teasing him too, I should start thinking of a name for him... As I'm thinking that he touches my head with his again.
This time I see five slightly different tortoises, four of which are silver with purple markings, and one is dark blue with silver markings. After those five I see something else, it's slightly more fuzzy. I think this is imagined in stead of a memory. In this imagination, here I see the hare and I being bound together by a golden light rope. This must be the tamers contract! I'll hunt all those tortoises down got that! Let's go! But first think of a plan.
It is a tortoise, just walking around, probably looking for something nice to eat. And we are going to sneak attack it, so there's not much of a plan needed. The only think I worry about is that I might not be able to cut through its skin right away... It'd be easier if it's stretching its neck, but how do we make him do that? Maybe if we have something that it wants to eat just high enough so that it can't reach it easily? Maybe it's curious about sparkly things hehe. I look at the hare with a creepy smile on my face, let's go with that plan!
And so our first hunt began, a hare hiding on a branch being all sparkly behind a slightly special looking leaf, making it look way more special. The tortoise sees it, stretches its baggy neck, and that was the last thing it saw.