1.5 Crossing The Beasts

The XO Chronicles | Volume 1 | Chronicle 5

The treeline arrived sooner than Art expected.

One moment the ground was volcanic rock:
bare, dark, familiar.
The next, the forest rose up through the clouds
as if it had been waiting behind a veil,
dense and tall and breathing,
taller than anything Art had ever stood beneath.

He had seen it from the summit many times,
each time the clouds cleared.
It had always looked green and still.
Up close, it was not still at all.

Leon moved without hesitation.
Art followed.

---

The light inside was different.
Green-filtered, layered,
alive in a way the summit never was.
Art had seen birds at the peak,
small, fast, indifferent.
He had seen chipmunks
that came to investigate the shrine's outer walls
on warm mornings.

This was not that.

This was not a few lives among rocks.
It was the opposite.

Something rested on a root ahead,
wings spread flat,
the size of his palm.
A moth. Grey-brown, perfectly still,
with two marks on its spread wings
that looked, with terrible precision,
like eyes.

Art stopped.

The moth's false eyes met his.
For a moment that had no good reason
to last as long as it did,
he looked at them.
The wings flapped — just once.
The eyes turned red.

Art stepped back in surprise.
His foot came down on something hollow,
a sound that didn't belong;
sharp and crisp,
echoing in the close air.

The forest went quiet.
Not the quiet of nothing.
The quiet of everything
holding its breath.

Leon turned.
His eyes said: *do not move.*

Too late.

---

They came from all directions,
not charging, not fleeing.
Walking.
The deliberate movement of things
that had no reason to hurry.

Leon stepped in front of Art.

The circle thickened on the ground.
Dark clouds gathered in the sky above.
Then the herd turned, all at once,
to face the same direction.

Black Thunder came through the trees
the way weather comes,
not arriving so much as
becoming present.
A black horse. Unmistakably.
But larger. Denser.
Athletically built.
Between his sharp eyes,
a strip of white
that made his stare even more thunderous.

One ear.
Where the other had been:
a scar, old and clean,
the kind left by something precise.

Black Thunder stopped.
Looked at Leon.
A silence that had history in it.

Then:

*"LEON."*

Not a greeting.
Not a question.
A verdict.

---

Art had known the Beasts thought. He had not known they *spoke.*
Certainly he had not expected them to know Leon.

"Black Thunder," Leon responded.

"I remember the hand that took something from me,"
Black Thunder said.
"The hand is here."

Leon said nothing for a moment.

"We are passing through.
We have no quarrel with your forest."

"You left a quarrel,"
Black Thunder said.
"It waited."

His eyes moved, just once,
to the trees beyond Leon's shoulder.
A signal Art noticed but didn't yet understand.
The herd shifted,
spreading out with military precision,
layering.

Black Thunder was not buying time.
He was buying certainty:
a formation thick enough
that no warrior could break through.
He had once underestimated the man before him.
He would not make that mistake twice.

---

Leon saw it too.

He turned to Art,
calmly,
as if Black Thunder were weather
and weather could wait.

"The rings," Leon said quietly.
"Watch."

He pressed his index fingers together,
knuckle to knuckle,
rings touching,
held for two seconds.
The rings lit up.

Art followed and felt the warmth in his own rings.

Leon released the charge,
hammering both fists forward,
arms straight before his torso.

A line of fire crossed the forest floor
between them and the nearest layer of the herd.

The Beasts made angry sounds,
but did not scatter.

From the trees, from the ground,
a swarm of insects rose in red bioluminescence,
pulsing through the undergrowth
like a signal through a living system;
coordinated, efficient.

The fire was devoured.

Art was amazed.

"Contact time charges the pulse,"
Leon said, bringing Art's attention back,
his voice low and even,
as if explaining a lesson that had no urgency.
"A strike to release the energy.
Longer hold — stronger discharge."

Art nodded.

"Now just listen:
imagine doing a Gasho,
then a clap,
palms immediately facing down.
What would happen?"

"We'd fly," Art answered.

"Don't burn your own feet,"
Leon warned,
satisfied with the answer.

Black Thunder had watched and heard all of it.
The herd was thick enough now,
on the ground, in the trees.

---

"Finish the humans,"
Black Thunder said,
to the herd.

The Beasts, many large and fierce,
others quick and poisonous,
roared as they closed in,
carrying assorted lethal weapons, if their anatomy allowed for it.

Their pounding feet shook the mountain;
their loud cheer pierced the sky:
a crack of thunder,
and the first raindrop fell.

---

It landed on Art's forearm,
and that forearm was gone.

Not hidden. Not soaked.
*Gone.*

As the raindrops hit the robe,
Art's body disappeared in an inverted polka dot pattern,
each drop erasing what it touched,
until the rain fell through
where Art's body should have been,
hitting the ground as if he wasn't there.

Leon saw it.
The corner of his mouth moved:
relief, and a decision confirmed.

"Hood up."
Leon spoke into the air,
"When I say now,
fly through the gap I create.
Head downhill. Straight south.
Do not stop.
Do not look back."

Art looked south through the treeline.

"And you?" Art asked.

"I'll find you."

Leon set down his backpack.
Then pressed his palms together before his chest –
a Gasho.
Sincere. Unhurried.
Art mirrored him.
All four rings lit.
The Beasts' fangs and claws were metres away.

"Now," Leon said.

He clapped and drove both palms
toward a grizzly bear
whose claw was just about to come down on his head.
The bear was launched through the air,
pushing away all the Beasts behind him,
and a gap opened.

Art clapped,
palms angled toward the ground behind his ankles,
and sped through the momentary opening,
invisibly.

---

He ran, as told.

Behind him:
Leon's voice, raised, finally, fully,
among the Beasts' cries.
Then Black Thunder's neigh.
Then the cracking of thunder
arriving everywhere at once;
a noise that raised Art's heartbeat
but could not slow his feet.

---

Art came out of the treeline
into open air.

He stopped.
A few hundred metres further on.

The storm was full,
lightning finding the high branches in the forest
without preference or mercy.
The red lights moved busily,
dozens of them,
pulsing through the mountain,
tireless and responsive,
keeping their forest whole in real time.

Art watched the treeline.

The rain drew diagonal lines in the air between him and the trees,
trying to distract Art from his worries.

A few thousand heartbeats later,
Art was calm.
He told himself Leon had taken a detour.
He told himself Leon had gone back to the shrine for supplies.
He even tried to be grateful for the rain
that held the mid-day blazing sun in check.

Then: two shapes at the treeline.

One tall, one small,
walked out together.

The big man held an umbrella
over the small figure walking by his side,
carrying a large backpack.

Art ran toward them.

The big figure was unmistakable.
"Leon!" cried Art.

With the sound, Leon found the splashing footsteps.

As Art approached, he saw clearly the figure by Leon's side —
someone Art knew very well.

"H/O2?" Art asked, taking off his hood.
"What are you doing here?"

H/O2 looked at the sky.
Then at Art.

"It was about to rain,"
H/O2 said.
"And Leon forgot his umbrella."

---

Coming up next: 1.6 The Umbrella, The Cat and The Teahouse.

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