Rivers of blood and sand

“I’ll need some of your blood,” Ander said when I suggested we get moving. We allowed ourselves to rest for over an hour, after eating more of the bland food. We didn’t have much to say, too drained to do much, else. The entire time I was acutely aware of the few feet between Ander and me. He sat with his elbows propped on his bent knees, and I lay in the sand with my eyes closed. It was hard to explain, but it was like this building energy between us, sparking with jolts of electricity.

Ander’s mention of needing my blood wasn’t a surprise, I’d been expecting it. At my nod of approval, his approach was slow, almost like he was afraid I’d freak out or run off. I held his gaze as he dragged his ring across my forearm, bringing a slight sting that I was somehow growing accustomed to. The moment was weirdly charged with a sensual energy, one I hadn’t ever expected to feel while allowing someone to use my blood. I doubted it was like this for him when he borrowed his friends’ blood. At least I hoped it wasn’t.

Maybe this time was different than the last because of the beginnings of the bond. As he drew the sigils on his arm I swore I could feel the slightest tug on my energy. Normally, I only felt the tug once the spell was put in place, not before.

Another stand-out moment was when Ander grabbed my wrist and tilted my arm so my blood dripped onto the blood pooling on his forearm. I was just barely able to hold back my gasp. Mixing blood before drawing sigils was another intimate act for blood mages, or so I heard. When they used multiple bloods, they’d use one and then the other. The blood never mixed before being drawn.

I’d be the first to admit that I didn’t know all the ins and outs of what was acceptable with blood mages. I was pretty sure this act held significance to them. From what I observed, Ander never did this with his friends when he borrowed their blood. I’d never witnessed Seth doing it either. Did this mean he was willing to accept our bond, or was I just making something out of nothing, and he needed to do this for the spell to work?

Ander’s eyes glazed over as the blood sank into his arm. A slight zip of electric energy flowed through my body and energy as it did, and I knew for certain that never happened before. This had to be bond-related.

Spending so much time with him these past two days, I realized how little I truly knew about blood mages. I knew the basics about their powers, their limitations, and weaknesses, but not about their culture. Maybe mixing blood wasn’t as big of a deal as I thought it was. Maybe it was only used on spells that required a good deal of energy. Other than Seth and a few others, I hadn’t spent too much time around blood mages. At least not enough to start asking all these questions.

I know I’d be annoyed if someone started badgering me about what it was like to be a summoner and asking all about spirit animals, and spirit animal familiars—which I refused to think about ever since Jade dropped that horrible bombshell on me two months ago. No wonder Roman hated summoners switching clans. The knowledge that my once spirit animal was tossed to the side made me want to throw up. Even though it wasn’t my decision, I still felt guilty whenever I thought about it. I didn’t hate Koa’s parents for having me switch, since they hadn’t known and were trying to keep me safe.

I was still on the fence on whether or not Roman knew. A big part of me wanted to say yes and that was why he was so against it. To the outside clans, Roman was seen as a dick because of all the hoops he made his summoners jump through to be able to switch spirit animals.

If he knew that spirit animal familiars—which when I thought about it, their names were so damn similar that it was absurd we hadn’t figured it out sooner—were discarded spirit animals, then it made sense why he made it so difficult.

After a few minutes of sitting with a far-off look in his eyes, they finally focused on me. His eyebrows were pulled together as he was still deep in thought. “I think we’re fairly close,” he finally murmured.

“Close as in, we won’t have to leave this island and risk running into the bitch again?” A hopeful note entered my tone, even though I knew we wouldn’t be that lucky. Ander almost looked amused as he shook his head.

“It’s probably around fifteen miles.” Ander’s tone was casual and I gaped at him.

“Fifteen miles? You consider fifteen miles as fairly close?”

Ander shrugged, unfazed that I was staring at him like he was insane. “It is considering how big the creature’s realm is and how much further it could be. What do you consider close?”

“A couple of miles, no more than five.”

He shrugged again before finishing off the last of the food and taking a long drink from my thermos. It was moments like these I was grateful to the elementals, sorcerers, and sorceresses that came up with this invention. Having a thermos that had unlimited water and was always cold, was something I’d never take for granted after all these missions.

“Do you think they’ll figure out our new plan and will be waiting for us?” I asked after a few minutes of trekking over the sands toward the water. Maybe it was a dumb question to ask and would probably jinx us, but it was something we had to consider.

Ander shot me a sidelong glance. “There’s a strong possibility, which is why we need to be prepared for anything.”

For some reason, this time when we swam in the water, we couldn’t go a couple of minutes without being attacked. The most notable were these piranha adjacent fish. There were three of them and they were a couple of feet long and fast as hell. We managed to kill them, but not without getting bitten several times, and fuck if those bites didn’t hurt. I used my claws to dispatch one since my dagger and short sword were my only weapons. No way did I want to risk losing them in water, not when it would be difficult to wield a sword in the water anyway.

The bites on my body were in varying stages of healing when we finally exited the water. As I had done with the sand on the island, I used one of the jars Ander conjured to collect water, and then sand from the desert.

Ander was in constant surveillance as we followed the desert “river” rather than going across it. His worry made sense and mirrored my own. Every time we entered the desert, we’d been attacked. My neck ached with phantom pains, remembering how that bitch tore into my neck. A shudder ran through my body and I jolted when Ander grabbed my hand, giving it a comforting squeeze. He wasn’t looking in my direction, but somehow he knew what I was thinking about.

My confusion about everything regarding Ander and me only grew. Did he know about my internal turmoil because of the bond, or did he know me well enough to know where my thoughts went? It was strange to think about either, since before recently, I didn’t think he really knew anything about me.

This part of the desert was wider, with at least a couple of miles between the bramble maze and the water. We walked down the middle of the desert, that way we weren’t too close to any one region. Even though we had yet to see any animals, we didn’t dismiss the possibility, since we knew the sand was deep enough to allow a shark to “swim” under it.

As time went on, I began struggling more and more to keep my thoughts at bay. I needed to talk about the bond with Ander. There was no way in hell I could stay in this awkward in-between place. How did Koa and Jade go through this? Their situation was a big reason why I couldn’t remain in this limbo for too much longer. I wouldn’t put myself through that.

If Ander didn’t want me or this bond, it was best to know now rather than later. Don’t get me wrong, it would fucking crush me, but it was better to get it out of the way. I was already too attached as it was, putting it off until a later date would only make it all worse.

After what felt like an hour of walking I found a distraction from my endless questions, in the form of a scenery change. A while back the water ended and was replaced by more desert, but now a new region appeared. Mountains rose in the distance, but unlike normal mountains, these appeared to be green. They were too far away for me to know why they were that color. Was it grass? Did that region have green-colored snow?

I considered getting a closer look and taking samples, but it was a detour that I wasn’t sure if it was worth it or not. With how everything had been going for us lately, the odds were that we’d end up getting attacked again. All I wanted was to get the hell out of this damn dimension.

Was that too much to ask?

We were taking a break, having fully passed the bramble maze region, when we came across an animal that lived in the sand. The snake came slithering out and immediately attacked. Thankfully it was nowhere near the size or thickness of the form the summoner had taken. It was fairly easy to dispatch and we took that as a sign to keep moving. While the animals weren’t any true threat to us, each time they attacked they slowed our progress and wasted our energy.

We came across several more animals, a few of them I vaguely recognized, but for the life of me I couldn’t think of their names. Surprisingly the lizards were the hardest to kill. They weren’t small like in the human realm, but the size of a medium-sized dog, with thick scales.

Strangely enough, the animal attacks were a good distraction from my thoughts and our lack of communication—other than Ander checking to make sure we were on the right track and telling me how much further. But even with the distractions, my thoughts always found a way back to my worries and questions.

Eventually, we came across a new region on our left and Ander directed us toward it. The land was full of rocks, ranging in sizes and shapes, from pebbles to boulders, to rocks standing up straight like a pillar. The naturally shaped rock pillars created almost a forest with how closely spaced they were to each other in the distance. It brought a whole new meaning to the term concrete jungle. All of the rocks were various shades of gray, ranging from nearly white, to so dark it was almost black.

The pebbles and rocks shifted under our feet as we walked and I nearly groaned. This shit would not be fun to walk on, much less run when shit inevitably hit the fan. Because that was the theme of our time here.

I took a moment to grab several different-sized rocks and put them in another jar in my bag.

We’d been walking through the stone forest for at least a half hour when I couldn’t hold back the rising tide of questions any longer. “We need to talk about this,” I said, unable to speak the words. Speaking them made this all real, and I still wasn’t sure how to feel about all of this.

Ander exhaled a long breath and at first, I thought he’d brush off my statement, as he’d done before, or purposely pretend not to understand what I meant. I was surprised when he eventually said, “I think it’s time to tell you about my little sister.”