The road to Carihine, or, more accurately, the wagon-path, disappeared slowly out from beneath Kyo’s feet.

  It was not that he was being lazy, or even unhurried, only that in the last twenty to thirty years of his Slayer’s contract he had begun to truly enjoy the slow, easy moments of life.

  A small bit of the world’s energy, spinning in through the vacuum-pressure of his shattered Being, clarified in the remains of his meridians, was being used to power the Dense Pressure of Glacial Passage technique he had only recently regained use of, - after many years of effort and extensive modification to be sure, but finally, finally, it was his again. But the technique was far more a combat movement form, not well suited to long distance travel, and his progress along the wooded and almost overgrown path could be measured in almost mortal speeds.

  Not that he minded.

  That, more than the million other minor personal changes, had rattled his self-confidence. He could feel it, sometimes, late at night as he twisted and turned, trying to fall asleep; or as he relaxed, deep in meditation, finding himself shocked deeply enough by some minor revelation as to almost be thrown back to the waking world.

  He had lost his desperate want. He had lost the need to move forward, to progress, to grow.

  The disaster that had shattered his Being and birthed the screaming, spitting spirit trapped against his mind and core had changed him in many ways beyond the immediate and obvious. He had been angry, and violent and depressed and terrified… and all the rest. But the emotions had calmed, after all had finally settled and time had begun to pass. The fear had been assuaged by years of easy life and calm meditation and soft fights.

  Kyo had come to realize, slowly, how truly boring his pain was. How devoid of weight his anger and hatred were. He had healed, mostly, from those mental scars, though he was yet clearing the last of the truly emotional devastation he had gone through from his mind and shattered Being.

  What he had been left with was a deep and unassailable passivity.

  It was all… boring.

  The screams that still echoed in his ears.

  The beauty and joy of the summer day around him…

  The old hatreds and the new tranquility… All felt thin, weightless.

  He sometimes wondered, deep down in well hidden pockets of his mind where he rarely dared tread, if what was left of him might simply float away in the winds one day.

  A presence, moving swiftly and silently through the sparse sagebrush undergrowth towards him, drew him back to the real world and mortal concerns.

  With a soft exhale of breath he hefted the weight of Verlassen, a broadsword styled blade.

  These small chances to spend his own meaningless time in helping others, clearing land and killing smaller, mortal threats, seemed to be doing his slowly reforming Being some good.

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  The creature’s presence felt low and long, moving rapidly in towards him from off to the right of the path in a sort of half-spiral approach.

  An ascended beast, a mink or large rodent or small cat of some type maybe?

  He settled into his stance and, rotating to keep the still hidden beast always to his front, danced his blade back and forth a little, held out in front, loosening his wrists.

  Presence and mind and instincts slowed and settled and focused in, pulling forwards and sharpening on the approaching threat.

  It was laughable, really. This little thing could probably barely offer him a threat, but the first lesson he had had to relearn after the shattering of his being had been to treat every enemy with great respect.

  Even without a whole Being for Kyo to wield, he still had many of the resources of a greater mind to wield against the beast.

  It, like most of the threats he met out on these roads, only dared approach him because his lack of a whole Spirit made him appear as little more than an unawakened mortal, detectable only by his scent and other normal senses, - or a truly advanced Phyriker. It that way, his spiritual injuries made him more suited to the task than most highminded. Where they would only scare away this beast, maybe never even seeing or feeling it, he was a perfect lure.

  A darting shape, leaping silently from the bushes, a startling howl as cold steel severed through the beast's spine; and a careful twist of his swing’s momentum managed to redirect most of the blood spray.

  He stepped forward tentatively, pressing his spirit sense casually out into the scrublands and thin trees just in case, and bent down to examine the seizing corpse.

  A mink, definitely, or its far distant ancestors had been.

  For all that Impyrium-trained terraformists insisted on using primordial lineages to populate their worlds, the process of artificially populating a world could have extremely mutagenic effects. It looked like this beast had started life as something far closer to a small dog/large rat than its ancestors would have.

  Beyond that, the process of cultivating the world’s energies, if not carried out with a firm hand or in complete accordance with nature, often wreaked havoc on genetics.

  A shame, that, Kyo mused to himself. The meat was far too cyst-filled to harvest. No sane person would eat anything that smelled like this.

  Still, waste-not-want-not.

  A moment to clean his blade, (Verlassen was practically singing with joy at the chance to enact its purpose,) before stabbing it a foot or so into draught-hardened soil, and Kyo settled down to skin the beast.

  Someone, not him but a crafter or forger or some other artisan, would have good use for the hide and bones and teeth at least.

  He would probably meet several more such threats along the road, maybe even some true threats, and if he was diligent enough about his harvesting, he could arrive at Carihine with a tidy little bundle of sellables.

  Not that he truly needed the money, he had barely touched his Slayer contract’s wages, and had only ever dipped his toes into the stipend he was given for day to day expenses, but it felt a little silly to him to simply let the valuable bits go to waste. It felt disrespectful.

  He had only ever read the Adjudicator’s works out of mild interest, and did not go nearly as far as to treat the books as religion, as some Slayers chose to; but the original slayer’s works resonated with him, on a deep level, and frugality and the effort to make use of all possible resources were baked deep into the whole philosophy. And, he could practically feel the slowly rebuilding fragments of his Being resonating with the work.

  When he was done, he sat for a while before rising again, taking a moment to mourn the dumb beast’s unnecessary death, enjoying the growing night, and stretch his soul and body.

  Eventually he did rise, and walk on.

  It really was a nice day, for all the pain and despair. Not to mention the sword still sticking out of his shoulder.