Erich struggled to keep the smile off his face as Michelle washed herself in one of the nearby rice fields. The otter’s head popped above the water’s surface, whiskers twitching as she cocked her head.

  They hadn’t made it to a waypoint. Erich had barely been able to hold the otter off for ten minutes before she’d started devouring the garr. Evidently, war otters didn’t need human contrivances such as ‘seasoning’ or ‘cooking’ for their meals.

  The end result was a giant mess of viscera and bones that cluttered the path and stained Michelle’s fur. Almost the second she was done eating the otter had slid down the side of the embankment and washed herself in the flooded rice field.

  Part of him wanted to chastise the otter, but she seemed so excited and happy after her meal and swim that Erich just couldn’t bring himself to be angry at her. Michelle scampered toward him, water spraying off of her fur as she galloped toward Erich.

  “Nope!” He said, skipping forward. “You just finished washing off the garr gunk. Give it a couple minutes before I give you a piggy back ride. You can walk until then. It’s good for the digestion anyway.”

  Michelle trilled at him, whiskers shaking as she cocked her head.

  “Look,” Erich replied. “You’re not going to cute your way onto my back. You’ve got four perfectly functional legs and you can walk on your own.”

  She chittered again, scampering up next to Erich and reaching up to put a single paw on his hip.

  His mind went back to the cave. To training next to Sathis’ failing body while the corpses of his friends rotted in the nearby stairwell. To the realization that his entire life was a waste, an inefficient pursuit of meaningless goals.

  Michelle pressed her paw incessantly against him, begging for Erich to pick her up.

  He pursed his lips. He’d survived hell itself. An environment that wanted to devour him and turn him into food for demons even as it tried to corrupt him. Everything that had led him to this point was a burden, an emotional weight of duty and loss dragging Erich backward into a past that he was trying to forget.

  “Just dry off first okay?” He asked, looking down at the otter. She gazed back up at him, blinking in confusion at Erich’s reluctance. “I’ll carry you in a little bit.”

  She didn’t move, her claws digging lightly into the chain armor at Erich’s side and pulling down gently. He bit his lower lip, trying to keep his expression serious.

  Five minutes later, dignity in tatters, Erich was adjusting her on his back. Despite Michelle’s bath, she still smelled like a combination of garr guts and stagnant pond. She chirped happily, nestling her chin onto his shoulder.

  Part of Erich tried to justify himself. As tough as his life was, Michelle had just watched her parents die. He wouldn’t always coddle the war otter, and it absolutely didn’t have anything to do with her being an adorable pup.

  The rest of him accepted reality. Years of sacrifice and pain had transformed him into a survivor, a dour specter haunting the battlefield, but all of that was nothing before the power of Michelle’s disarmingly large eyes.

  He sighed, letting his mouth twist into a wry smile as he walked down the raised dirt path. Maybe it was all for the best. He was still a bit traumatized from the emotional whiplash of his unit’s death followed by his time with Sathis and in hell. It was easy for him to shamble forward as a shell of himself, but that wasn’t who Erich wanted to be.

  Michelle shifted on his back, head moving to track a bird as it flew above the two of them, looking for something to eat in the relative lull in the rain. Maybe it was because she was an animal, but the otter had bounced back from her experience so much quicker than he had. Erich couldn’t help but feel jealous. Even with Michelle scampering around and lightening the mood, his thoughts couldn’t help but return to his time on the bridge between worlds, to the friends he had lost in the pointless battles that didn’t gain either side an inch of ground.

  “Feeling any better?” He asked, adjusting his gait slightly to take into account the squirming ball of fur and curiosity on his back. “I know that you’re a growing girl and that a handful of jerky isn’t enough to fill you up. If you’re still hungry, we can stop so that you can eat the next garr we find.”

  The otter trilled back.

  “I’m just going to assume that’s a yes,” he said with a light chuckle. “Let me know if you spot another garr. Until then, I guess I’ll just keep moving. Unless we want to be stuck in Madla for the next month, I really need to take advantage of this lull in the weather.”

  About forty five minutes later, Erich was beginning to doubt the wisdom of his promise. Michelle had spotted a garr in the water and jumped off of his shoulder with enough force to send him staggering. By the time he’d realized what happened, Michelle was already in the rice field chasing down the fleeing garr.

  After that, she proudly dragged her prey back toward land. Erich needed to help her pull it up the hill of dirt that sheltered the road. The next ten minutes after that were him trying not to be horrified as Michelle happily tore the corpse apart.

  Those needle-like teeth that had been chirping happily in his ear barely ten minutes ago were slashing through the garr’s rubbery hide like it was made from paper. Michelle popped up happily, her entire upper body soaked in the animal’s blood.

  “Now go wash off,” Erich said with a sigh, pointing back toward the rice field. “We both know that you’re about to beg for another ride on my back, and we both know that I’m going to eventually give in, but the least you can do is make sure you’re clean first.”

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Michelle cocked her head to the side, whiskers twitching at him as she feigned innocence. Erich simply crossed his arms in front of his chest and rolled his eyes, tapping his right foot impatiently.

  “Go on,” he said. “If you’re full, wash up. I’m not giving you a ride until you’re done.”

  The otter pouted for a second before bolting for the water. Erich watched, once again struggling to keep a serious expression on his face as she rolled and splashed in the flooded rice field.

  He shifted his attention, scanning the water for the closely set pairs of eyes that would mark a garr. He trusted Michelle’s ability to detect the animals, but at the same time, she was a bit distracted and the last thing he wanted was for a surprise attack to injure his companion so soon after he’d met her.

  “Companion,” Erich mumbled to himself. He liked the word. Allthier was something like a companion, but as friendly as they were, their relationship was temporary. Eventually Erich was going to leave the cinderborn’s home region and leave him behind. It left a certain damper on their friendship. After all, it was hard to completely throw yourself into a relationship with a stranger when you know that it was doomed to end sooner rather than later.

  Michelle popped out of the water, chirping happily before scampering up the dirt embankment. Erich smiled back at her.

  The otter would be different. He might not be able to understand exactly what she trilled in response, but there was no doubt in his mind that she could understand everything he said to her. It made for an interesting dynamic, one that left Erich feeling like he was more than a little crazy as he more or less talked to himself, but Michelle filled a gap that he hadn’t noticed.

  While fighting in the space between worlds, he’d had his squad. After his squad died, he had Sathis, but that only lasted for a short period. After that, he’d thrown himself into hell only to find his psyche cracking and degrading as he struggled with the mind altering nature of the plane on his own.

  He’d never really thought about the emotional toll that walking across an entire country would inflict on him, but now that Erich started to actually think through the implications of his quest, his mind balked at the idea. Without Michelle, he’d almost certainly have some sort of breakdown. With her? Well, there wouldn’t be any promises, but completion was within the realm of possibility.

  Michelle jumped onto Erich’s side, pulling him down slightly as she scampered across her body and onto his back. He hissed slightly in pain as one of her claws cut a line across the skin of his bicep, but mana thrummed through his body closing up the superficial wound almost immediately.

  Once the otter trilled her readiness, Erich began walking again. Even with Michelle’s weight added onto his armor’s, the trip seemed lighter, almost carefree. Miles evaporated as he made good time in the comparatively good weather, only stopping to fight off garr attacks as they grew in frequency.

  The otter didn’t really need any more food so the two of them only needed to pause one more time to eat and wash herself after a battle. Finally, just as they were about ready to turn around for the day, Michelle froze on Erich’s shoulder, growling dangerously.

  He paused, glancing once at the otter before following her gaze. Two sets of eyes popped up out of the water, but none of them made a move toward Erich. In the next field, barely visible over the raised roadway obscuring his vision, was a huge mound of dirt.

  It was hard to tell exactly how tall it was given the distance, but after a bit of squinting and mental calculus it was clear that it was at least fifteen feet tall and twice as wide. The small hill’s surface seemed to shift as a trio of distant garr scampered down its side before slipping into the water.

  Erich reached up, brushing a hand against the fur of Michelle’s cheek. Her growl quieted, but the otter remained frozen on his shoulder. Every muscle in her body was rigid, practically popping out of her hide as she glared at the distant garr.

  “I think we found the den,” Erich said softly, dropping down to one knee so that he could take out Allthier’s map without disturbing the otter. MIchelle quivered on his back, growling softly a second time.

  “Not now,” he whispered. “I think I can see at least a dozen juvenile garr swarming over there. That’s enough to give me pause on its own, but that’s only what I can see. The grown ups have to be somewhere nearby and that’s not something that you and I can handle on our own. We’ll need to grab Derl and whoever he can scare up from the militia. They might not be amazing at fighting, but they can at least help us enough to make sure we don’t get overwhelmed by their numbers.”

  Michelle sniffed. Erich didn’t really know what to make of it, so he treated it as acceptance. Quickly, he marked down the location of the den, scribbling its coordinates on a piece of scrap paper before folding up the map and storing it away once again.

  He stood back up, keeping an eye on the garr in his surroundings as he turned around to begin the long trek back to Madla. The predators lurked in the water on either side of the raised walking path. If they were intelligent, Erich would’ve suspected that they were setting up an ambush for him. Instead they simply followed him in the water, unblinking eyes locked on Erich as he rapidly walked away.

  The peace didn’t last forever. He had two more quick fights with the frog creatures on his way back to town, and by the time he saw Madla’s gates in the setting sun, there were fresh claw marks on the wooden walls accompanying a pile of garr corpses. Evidently, the town itself hadn’t been terribly peaceful in his absence.

  As soon as he entered town, tension seemed to settle on him. The cinderborn farmers huddled around their huts, some playing a game that looked like dominos while others took advantage of the rare lull in the rain to try and dry their clothing under overhangs.

  Erich’s first step inside seemed to draw every peasant’s gaze. Their eyes burned red with a sort of listless hope. They’d been trapped inside Madla for weeks now, watching their crops grow overripe.

  One of the farmers took a step toward him. The man’s chest was bare revealing dark, wiry muscles over a skeletal frame with scar tissue. He coughed, looking back at the rest of the workers for support before finding the courage to address Erich.

  “Warrior sir,” his voice was a bit deeper than Erich expected, with just a hint of a wet rattle. “Did you manage to find the garr? Can we return to the fields yet? Boss Tarrl is going to be angry if we can’t harvest enough rice, and we’re starting to run out of time so-”

  The man gripped his left hand in his right, muscles in his forearm squirming as he wrung his hands together.

  “Don’t bother Erich,” Derl called out, clambering down the wall and jogging toward the two of them. “Sorry about that, I know you’re doing us a favor by sticking around here and helping us scout for the garr den. The farmers are anxious, so I hope you’ll excuse them. If they-”

  “I found it,” Erich replied, reaching into his back to pull out Allthier’s map. “It’s about a four mile walk from town, and the last mile I ended up getting interrupted constantly by garr, but it shouldn’t be all that hard for us to get there in a day or so.”

  Derl’s eyes lit up, a giant grin stretching across his face.

  “Well,” he said happily, slapping Erich on the shoulder. “Why didn’t you say so? You hear that everyone? We found the garr. Erich can lead the militia out to their den tomorrow and we can put the infernal pests down for good. Only a couple more days and you’ll be able to get back to your harvest.”

  A cheer filled the compound and Derl leaned closer to Erich, his face barely a couple inches away from where Michelle was perched on his shoulder.

  “Come on down to the mess hall,” he whispered, his voice theatrically loud. “I’ll treat you to dinner. It's your favorite. Rice.”