This Beast Tamer Has So Many Questions

Elias didn't notice for a week.

In his defense, there was nothing to notice — or nothing that announced itself, anyway. Angel had simply slotted into his life the way Briar and Valentine had, one more contracted beast who never left his side. Though in her case it was less devotion and more that she could not be bothered to object. Elias carried her everywhere, and Angel let herself be carried everywhere, on the entirely reasonable grounds that being carried required no effort on her part whatsoever. She slept through most of it.

So he held her the way he always did, and for a while he didn't think anything of it.

Then, one day, she felt different in his hands.

He couldn't place it at first. Just a vague sense that something about holding her had changed. It nagged at him for another few days before it finally clicked, and once it clicked he felt slightly foolish for taking so long.

She was smaller.

Not by much — a finger's length shorter than the forearm-sized turtle he'd contracted, easy to miss when you saw her every single day. But once he'd seen it he couldn't unsee it, and his first reaction, before anything else, was a cold spike of worry. Smaller was not usually good. Smaller could mean wasting, sickness, something wrong.

He spent that day's questions on exactly that, and only relaxed once he was certain: nothing was wrong with Angel. She wasn't ill. She wasn't shrinking away to nothing. The evolution had begun, and this was simply what it looked like.

Only once he was sure she was safe did he let himself get curious about the rest.

With his worry quieted, he turned his stored questions on the final step, and the shape of it finally came clear.

It was almost startlingly simple, after all that. The fourth step asked only two things: that turtle and contractor be bound by a contract, and that they remain in physical contact. That was all. With the mind-bond formed and the contract sealed, the evolution simply needed the two of them to stay close — to keep touching.

And he had been carrying her everywhere for weeks.

Elias laughed when he understood. He'd cracked the hardest evolution puzzle of the whole project — the mindspaces, the matching, the thirty-seven crashing headaches — and the final step had quietly been completing itself this entire time, simply because he liked holding his sleepy turtle. The evolution had needed nothing more than the thing he'd been doing anyway.

After a little trial and error, he confirmed the details. Contract and contact, together. Break the contact for too long, and the process would stall; keep her close, and it carried on. Easy enough. He had absolutely no intention of putting her down regardless.

The shrinking, once it got going, did not stay gentle.

That first week she'd lost barely a finger's length. But the pace picked up, and kept picking up, faster and faster the further it went. Day by day Angel grew smaller in his hands — palm-sized, then smaller, then small enough to curl in two fingers — and still she slept through all of it, perfectly serene, utterly unconcerned that she was steadily becoming less turtle than she'd started with.

A full month after the shrinking began, she was no bigger than a fingernail. A tiny, perfect turtle, dark-shelled and dozing, small enough to lose in the folds of a blanket.

And then, all at once, the last of it happened.

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Mental spiritual energy welled up out of her — that same faint dark warmth he'd felt pooling over him in his sleep — and gathered, and drew itself out into a fine chain. The little turtle settled at the center of it. When the light faded, Elias was holding a necklace: a small dark pendant in the shape of a sleeping turtle, hung on a chain of woven mental energy that had, he found when he lifted it, formed itself to exactly his size.

The evolution was done.

And with it, Elias could feel the difference in the feedback. After contracting with Angel, with the new mental attribute, his beast-taming space didn't physically change, but he instinctively felt that all mental damage would heal faster within it, and his mind was clearer and more resistant to mental attacks, while still able to sense them more accurately. It wasn't noticeable at first, the improvement being so little, but now, with the evolved Angel, all this feedback was something Elias could actually feel.

He looked at her changed status, and read it twice.

Name: Angel

Race: Protector Turtle

Type: Beast, Artifact

Attribute: Mental

Current Rank: Commander 4

Potential Rank: Lord 8

Mood: Sleepy

Skills:

Mind Acceleration — Lv9

Mind Share — Lv3

Mind Protection — Lv1

Mind Barrier — Lv1

Mental Resistance — Lv5

Mental Shield — Lv4

Sense Danger — Lv1

Sense Hostility — Lv1

Mental Armament — Lv1

Description:

An evolved Fool's Turtle that has bound itself wholly to a single contractor. Through a shared bond of the mind, it takes the form of an artifact worn against the body, devoting all its abilities to guarding its partner's thoughts and shielding them from mental attacks.

Protector Turtle. Beast and Artifact both, now — the little creature had become, in the most literal sense, something he could wear. And the skills told the rest of the story: every defensive, mind-guarding ability the species had carried in miniature, grown up and sharpened, with new ones besides. Mind Protection. Mind Barrier. Sense Danger. Sense Hostility. A whole quiet arsenal built around one purpose — keeping the mind it was bonded to safe.

A guardian, exactly as he'd named her. He'd gone looking for protection against the mental attacks that frightened him, and he'd found it asleep in a herd of five hundred turtles, and now it hung around his neck, dozing against his collarbone.

"Knew it suited you," he murmured. Angel, naturally, said nothing. But a faint warm hum of contentment came down the bond, and the little pendant seemed, if anything, to settle more comfortably against him.

Then the Wheel of Fortune appeared.

It always did, when he completed a brand-new evolution path — his talent's reward for genuine, first-of-its-kind discovery. The familiar wheel turned in his vision, slowed, and landed on blue.

A year of meditation experience. The accumulated insight of twelve months of cultivation, handed to him in an instant, and he felt his own foundation settle and deepen with it. Commander Rank 4 became Commander Rank 5 between one breath and the next.

And then something he didn't expect. At the very same moment, through the contract, he felt Angel's rank rise too — climbing in step with his own, as though the two of them were tied to the same line.

That was new. Curious, he posed a question about it and got an answer that genuinely delighted him: a contractor and their Protector Turtle shared a rank. As one rose, so did the other. Angel would never fall behind him; wherever his own cultivation took him, his sleepy little guardian would come along, climbing at his side without ever lifting a finger. It was, he thought, an absurdly fitting arrangement for a turtle whose entire philosophy was letting Elias do the carrying.

And because that was a true and new piece of knowledge about the species, his talent rewarded him a second time. The Wheel of Fortune turned again, and landed on white.

A week of meditation experience this time — smaller, but welcome, the kind that didn't push his rank higher so much as it settled what was already there. He felt his Beast Space consolidate around him, steadier and more whole, the new rank bedding firmly into place.

Elias let out a slow breath and sank back into the cushions, one hand closing around the little turtle pendant at his throat.

Worth every headache.

Elias wearing Angel

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