"Pollux… why don't we just attack these sons of bitches?"
The enormous Lycan of nearly two and a half meters observed, attentively, the wall in front of him.
There was a tension held in his body — a tension the others didn't understand. And they didn't understand for a simple reason: they hadn't seen what he saw. They didn't feel what he felt. To the rest of the envoy, that thing in front of them was just a stone wall guarding a human. To Pollux, it was another thing. Something that made the hairs on the back of his neck rise without asking permission.
The Lycans had hunted for thousands of years. And, in thousands of years, the race had learned a single lesson worth more than claws or speed: instinct doesn't lie. When the fur rose on its own, there was a predator nearby. And, if the fur rose before a stone wall guarded by a single human… then the predator wasn't the wall. Nor the stone.
"Do you think it's easy, Broxes? That human, somehow, allied himself with a dragon. I know it. I saw it."
His fur bristled again the instant the memory rose.
The last thing he saw. His brother's body being torn apart between the rows of teeth of that dragon — felt, not just seen. Because what connected the two wasn't sight. It was something deeper.
Pollux gripped the collar fastened to his own neck.
Hard enough to wrench from himself the tension that raised his fur. That item was something his brother had gotten with great effort, on one of the hardest missions of the two's lives — a common item, that came in a pair, and that allowed the two users to share a great deal. Information. Images. What one saw, what one heard. And, above all, that mute pang that warned when one of the two needed the other.
In the end, it was that collar that allowed Pollux to see his brother's last moments.
Swallowed. Chewed. Extinguished.
Pollux had felt every second of that through the collar's bond — the borrowed pain, the borrowed panic, his brother's last thought arriving muffled, like a scream heard underwater. And then… the silence. The kind of silence that isn't the absence of sound, but the absence of someone. Half the collar growing cold on his neck, forever warm on one side only.
And it was also that collar that convinced him to send everyone to flee. Because, unlike the others, Pollux knew — with the certainty of one who felt it in his own borrowed flesh — that what was in there wasn't wealth. It wasn't power. It was death. And it was pain.
But who would have thought.
Even knowing Bestaria was dead, that unknown human still kept himself alive. And, worse: now he was with the other human. The one who refused to flee with them.
Of course Pollux didn't insist with her. Nor did he care to explain what was happening. In the end, it didn't matter — she was just a human, a weak piece on a board of strong creatures. But nothing, absolutely nothing of that, seemed to make sense when the math always arrived at the same impossible point: a human had survived an encounter with the dragon.
Dragons didn't leave survivors. That wasn't an opinion — it was a law of the universe, as solid as gravity. A dragon was the point where hierarchies stopped making sense, where ranks became a joke and armies became a meal. And, nevertheless, there was the exception, behind that wall, breathing the same air as him. The existence of that human was, in itself, an affront to everything Pollux believed he knew about the world.
✦ ✦ ✦
"Even if he did that… do you really think he has some hidden treasure? I mean… if that dragon is in his territory, we'll be doomed. Maybe we should just leave him in peace."
The one speaking was Irepia. A Fairywood — and, of the whole envoy, the most worried by far.
Pollux knew that, if it weren't for his own persuasion, and the information only he carried, he would never have managed to lure Irepia to that place. The fairies weren't cowards — they were cautious in a way that creatures who live little and burn fast learn to be. And her caution, now, smelled of good sense.
"You don't need to worry. I saw the chains. That dragon, definitely, is imprisoned there. We didn't come here to attack… First, we're going to probe his power."
"Yes… And, when we discover that he's weak, and that he's alone, without anyone's help… we're going to tear off his skin, eat his flesh, and drink his blood."
The one who spat the last words was Broxes.
The Orghaal seemed excited — almost happy — while he imagined, in detail, how he would kill that human. Pollux could do nothing about that. In truth, if it weren't for his own capacity for deterrence, and the monopoly of information about the dragon, he would never be in the position he was in.
Because Pollux knew the truth about himself, and didn't delude himself with it: on his own strength alone, he would never have become leader of the council. Never. A Lycan doesn't command a Belt. But the strange disinterest of the two Burmans — who, even now, still spent every hour trying to understand how Bestaria had died — opened an empty chair at the top. And he knew how to occupy it.
Strength gives you the throne. But it's information that seats you on it when you have no strength.
The problem is that a throne sustained only by information is a throne of glass. It takes a single new truth, a piece of data you didn't foresee, and the chair cracks beneath you. Broxes obeyed him out of fear of what Pollux knew — not out of respect for what Pollux was. And, on the day that Orghaal discovered that his leader was, deep down, just another common Lycan with a good story to tell… his loyalty would turn to appetite. Pollux had already seen that happen. It always started with a sidelong glance. It always ended with blood.
And it was exactly for that reason that he couldn't fail there.
What Pollux needed was to prove, to those who walked at his side, that he would be useful. And, for that, he needed one thing above all: to understand what that human had done. To find out whether he carried some kind of draconic treasure — torn from that place before leaving.
They could, yes, simply invade. Kill everyone. Take everything the human had.
But there was that sixth sense. That ancient itch, at the base of the skull, that whispered that doing so would bring far more disaster than victory. He needed to go slowly. He needed to understand what the enemy thought, before finding out how much the enemy could do. He just wanted to feel the other's weakness — and, if the human demonstrated a single gap, a single soft point… Pollux would take advantage of it. And he would kill him right there, without ceremony.
✦ ✦ ✦
"Hey… seems there's someone on top of the wall."
Pollux raised his eyes upward.
And the first thing he saw was an enormous Yokai.
It wasn't the first time. When the envoy arrived at that human's kingdom, he himself had already seen that creature — fallen, motionless, dumped on the ground. Honestly, he believed it was dead. And it wasn't. Even lying down, even shattered, it still exuded a kind of power that very few creatures in the universe managed to exude. Pollux knew how to recognize that. That wasn't a common creature.
He still remembered having stood there, still, trying to understand how a human — a human — had managed to conquer a creature like that.
And he remembered, too, having thought of killing it. In that moment, fallen and defenseless, it would have been easy. One blow. Maybe two.
But something held him. Not Bestaria's order — that came later. It was another thing, more primitive: the same instinct that now raised his fur. An ancient voice whispering that creatures of that size, even fallen, even apparently dead, tended to take with them whoever underestimated them. He hesitated. And, in doubt, he waited. It was the hesitation that made him leave that creature alive — and the same hesitation that, now, haunted him.
But Bestaria asked him to wait. To not touch anything until they descended to the nest. And he obeyed — as everyone obeyed the Burman.
"That bitch…"
She managed to screw them. Even after dead.
✦ ✦ ✦
"The human is there too."
The voice pulled Pollux from his own thoughts about the giant spider — and brought the focus back to the human who kept himself at her side, up at the top of the wall.
He was much smaller than the Yokai. Obvious. A small, straight silhouette against the sky, between stone and monster. And, even so, he kept his chin raised — two heroes posted one on each side, like columns.
One was an Aqrabuamelu. Pollux recognized it right away, by the shape of her body and by the way the air seemed denser around her. Knowing the history of the races of the Oasis made everything easier — but the quantity of races that had already passed through there had forced him to summarize each one in one or two words, no more than that. And, of that one, he remembered well. One word was enough: Strong.
The other… the other was an Archon. A race he didn't see frequently. A race that didn't tend to end well for whoever encountered it as the wrong enemy — the males, with bird heads, were known for their brutal capacity with long-range weapons.
In truth, the more Pollux looked at that human, the more a single idea grew inside him, sour and insistent: it wasn't possible for someone to have so much luck.
It made no sense. A human — the weakest race, the most despicable, the one that filled the last rungs of any rank — had strong heroes. Had strong creatures. Had a dragon imprisoned under his feet and a giant Yokai guarding his rear. Each piece of that puzzle was impossible on its own. Together, they became heresy.
And Pollux had lived long enough to know that, when something made no sense, it usually wasn't luck. Luck was random. That had design. It had intention. It had the smell of something too big moving behind the scenes, choosing favorites — and the hair on the back of his neck didn't like at all being in the favorite's path.
It was as though the Oasis itself had knelt before that man and asked what he desired.
"Let's get this over with. And remember: the objective here, today, is only to investigate. Question the human. Nothing beyond that."
He said the words more to himself than to the others.
Because a part of him — the old part, the hunter part, the part that had survived a thousand hunts exactly by knowing when to retreat — was already screaming that this wasn't the place. That this wasn't the day. That the right thing to do was to turn his back, swallow his pride, and take the envoy back far from that wall before it was too late.
But he couldn't. Broxes watched him. Irepia watched him. And a leader who retreats without visible reason stops being a leader at the first bend of the way back.
✦ ✦ ✦
And it was then that Pollux felt it.
Or, more precisely, it was then that he didn't feel it.
Unlike all the other days, unlike everything his brother had transmitted to him through the collar before dying, Pollux couldn't capture, in that human, that which Castor had captured. That opening. That softness.
When his brother observed him for the first time, what he felt was a sheep. A frightened lamb, trembling in a field full of lions — something to be slaughtered at the right time, without hurry and without risk.
But that sheep was no longer there.
However much Pollux searched — and he searched, with every instinct the race itself gave him — there was no opening at all. No crack. No soft point where prey usually leaks fear. And it wasn't only that.
Even at a distance, even with an entire wall separating the two, Pollux managed to feel the eyes of that human upon him. Settled. Weighing. Like a cold hand set on his own shoulder, calm enough to say, without hurry: I see you.
The predator bristled.
And, for the first time since the envoy had set out, a question crossed Pollux's mind — small, cold, and much worse than any answer he had come to seek.
Who, there, was probing whom?