Back at the tavern.
"Magical beasts!" Ed repeated in the tavern, surprise making him take a strong swig of his alcoholic drink almost by reflex. The liquid burned his throat, but he didn't even notice it. "I didn't think they would be… I don't know. I thought it would be a normal hunt. A giant boar. A huge wolf. Something like that."
But he immediately corrected himself. A flash of lucidity cut through his drunkenness like a lightning bolt.
"But seeing everything you've told me so far… I already imagined it," he murmured, adopting once again that tone of an expert that was so comical in his state. As if he had been expecting that revelation from the beginning.
Samael, in the present, couldn't help a quick, almost amused thought.
Incredible, he told himself. This guy is becoming conceited way too fast. First he's a drunk who can barely speak, and now he's an expert on magical beasts.
"And what magical beasts were they?" Ed asked, his eyes gleaming with morbid anticipation. He leaned over the table so far that his chin nearly touched the wood. "Tell me, tell me."
Samael paused.
It wasn't to create suspense this time. It wasn't to toy with the man as he had before, with those strategic pauses that drove him so crazy.
It was because the memory brought something else with it.
The first genuine taste of fear.
Not the abstract fear of a child who falls and hurts himself. Not the fear of a training session where you know your grandfather is watching over you. It was a cold fear. Animal. Visceral. A fear he had forgotten he could feel.
When he spoke, his voice was lower. As if he feared disturbing the peace of the clearing in his memory. As if the beasts were still there, waiting.
"Well… they were tigers," he said.
And then he added, with a precision that chilled Ed's blood:
"Tigers with steel fangs."
"S-s-steel fangs…!"
Ed's voice cracked. The glass in his hand trembled, and a small amount of liquor spilled onto the table, forming a tiny puddle that his still-trembling fingers didn't try to wipe up.
Tigers with steel fangs, he repeated in his mind, and the words didn't fit. They couldn't fit. Tigers were already terrifying on their own. Adding steel fangs was almost insulting. It was as if nature had decided to play a cruel joke. How… how does a three-year-old child face something like that?
But he said none of this aloud. He couldn't. Because Samael was already speaking again, and his voice, low and deep, was dragging Ed back to the forest, back to that clearing where two tigers with steel fangs waited.
---
In the clearing. Twelve years ago.
The grandfather stopped short.
His hand, which had been guiding Samael with a soft touch on the shoulder, tensed. His fingers closed on the fabric of the child's shirt, a grip that wasn't painful, but was absolutely firm. Non-negotiable.
Samael felt the change before he understood it.
The air had become dense. Heavy. As if someone had poured honey into the atmosphere. The metallic smell that had been floating in the clearing intensified until it was almost unbearable. And then, from the shadows on the other side of the clearing, something moved.
It wasn't just any movement.
It was slow. Powerful. Deliberate.
As if whatever was there knew it was in no hurry. As if it knew the prey was already trapped, and only the moment remained to be decided.
The branches of a bush parted, and an enormous, wide snout, crossed with old scars, appeared from the undergrowth. The nostrils flared, inhaling the air. Tasting the smells. The fear. The flesh.
And then, the tiger emerged.
It was enormous. Much larger than any tiger Samael had seen in books, in the illustrations that fascinated him so much.
Its fur was orange, but not the bright orange of drawings. It was a dull, earthy orange, stained with black and brown, blending into the forest shadows as if it were part of them.
Its muscles moved beneath the skin with each step, a perfect machine of strength and violence. Its legs, thick as tree trunks, sank into the damp earth without a sound. Its tail, long and thick, swayed back and forth with the slowness of a pendulum.
But what captured Samael's attention, what made his small heart stop for an instant, were its fangs.
Two.
They jutted from its upper jaw like curved daggers. They were long, much longer than they should be. And they gleamed. Not with the dull shine of bone or ivory. They gleamed with the cold, deadly shine of polished steel.
The sun filtering through the treetops struck one of them, and the reflection was like a dagger of light piercing the clearing.
Samael felt the air leave his lungs.
That, he thought, and his three-year-old mind, prodigious but still childish, struggled to process what he was seeing. That is not an animal. That is…
He didn't find the word. He didn't have it. It didn't exist in his vocabulary yet.
But his body knew it.
Fear.
A second tiger appeared to the right of the first. Smaller, but no less dangerous. Its fangs were also steel, though not as long. It moved parallel to its companion, flanking, cutting off any possibility of escape on that side.
They didn't roar. They didn't growl. They made no sound.
They just watched.
Their eyes, a pale, intense yellow, were fixed on the two humans. On the old man. On the child.
"Grandfather," Samael whispered, his voice barely a thread of air. "Grandfather, that… that is…"
"Silence," the grandfather cut in, but his voice wasn't a whisper. It was a low, firm command that admitted no argument. "Don't move. Don't breathe more than necessary."
The hand on Samael's shoulder tightened a little more, and the child felt through the fabric the tension in the old man's muscles. A tension he had never felt in him. Not in the hardest trainings. Not when he split rocks with his sword.
His grandfather was afraid. Well, according to his three-year-old thoughts.
He didn't show it. His face was a mask of calm, his eyes didn't blink, his posture was that of a warrior ready to strike. But Samael felt it.
In the beat of his heart that he could now hear through his shoulder. In his held breath. In the hand that, for an instant, trembled.
The tigers didn't move.
They seemed to be waiting for something. Evaluating. Calculating.
One of them, the larger one, lowered its head slightly. The steel fangs gleamed again, and for a moment, the entire clearing seemed to fill with that cold, deadly light.
And then, the grandfather spoke.
Not to Samael. To them.
"These are my territories," he said, and his voice was completely different from the one Samael knew. It wasn't the voice of a grandfather. It wasn't the voice of a teacher. It was the voice of a warrior. Of a predator older than them. "If you dare take one more step. I will kill you."
The words fell into the silence like stones into a pond.
The tigers didn't react immediately. Their yellow eyes shifted from the old man to the child. From the child to the old man.
And then, something changed.
The larger one snorted. A dry sound, like a bellows expelling air. Its fangs disappeared as it partially closed its mouth. It took a step back.
Then another.
The second one imitated it. Their enormous bodies began to dissolve into the forest shadows, as if they had never been there.
And when they had completely disappeared—when the last ray of light stopped reflecting off their steel fangs—the grandfather exhaled.
It was a long, deep sigh, one that seemed to carry away years of his life.
Samael felt the hand on his shoulder relax. The fingers, which had been firm as claws, loosened until they were just fingers again.
"Grandfather…" the child whispered again, and this time his voice trembled. His whole body trembled, with that tremor that comes after fear, when the danger has passed and the body allows itself to feel it. "Grandfather, did… did they leave?"
"They left," the old man replied.
But he didn't move. He didn't let go of Samael. His eyes remained fixed on the spot where the tigers had vanished, as if expecting them to return.
A minute passed. Maybe two.
Slowly, the forest came back to life. The birds, which had fallen completely silent, began to sing again. The wind, which had stopped blowing, resumed moving through the leaves. The sunbeams, which had dimmed, regained their brightness.
The grandfather finally lowered his hand from Samael's shoulder.
He knelt slowly—more slowly than usual, as if his knees weighed more than before—until he was at the child's height. He looked him in the eyes.
"Today you have learned something more important than any spell," he said, and his voice was the grandfather's again. But there was something new in it. Something that wasn't there before. "You have learned that there are things in this world that you don't face with magic. There are things you face with… presence."
"Pre… presence?" repeated Samael, the word strange in his mouth.
"Yes. Presence. The certainty that you are dangerous. The certainty that, if they attack you, you won't fall alone. That's what they saw. Not your magic. Not my sword. They saw that if they attacked us, even if they killed us, they would die too. And they decided it wasn't worth it."
Samael nodded slowly. He didn't fully understand, but something in his grandfather's words resonated inside him. Something that wasn't magic. Something that wasn't strength.
Something that, perhaps, was more important.
"Now," said the grandfather, standing up with an effort he tried to hide, "let's go home. You've had enough hunting for today."
"But… but we didn't catch anything," Samael protested, though his voice was weak, and his legs were still trembling a little.
The old man smiled. A tired, but genuine smile.
"Of course we caught something," he said, and began walking back, his pace slower than before. "We caught a lesson that no book can teach. And we caught something else…"
He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was deeper.
"We caught the respect of two predators who could have killed us. And that, little Samael, is a better hunt than any trophy."
The child looked at him, confused but trusting. And though he didn't fully understand, he nodded. He took his grandfather's hand—that large, calloused hand that moments before had trembled—and began walking back home.
The sun, which had been hiding behind the clouds, emerged strongly again. The golden light of midday enveloped the old man and the child as they ascended back along the forest path, leaving behind the clearing where two tigers with steel fangs had looked them in the eyes.
And for the first time, Samael felt that the world was bigger and more dangerous than he had ever imagined.
But he also felt that, as long as he had his grandfather by his side, nothing could truly hurt him.