This Beast Tamer Has So Many Questions

Over the next few days, Elias put Angel's new skills to the test.

Most of them explained themselves. The shields and resistances did what their names promised, only stronger and steadier than the base turtle's had been. But two of the new abilities took a little exploring before he understood them properly.

Mind Protection turned out to guard against the inside as much as the outside. It worked on the negative things a mind could be made to feel — fear, trauma, the lingering grip of a bad memory, the creeping wrongness of a hallucination. With Angel at his throat, those things slid off him before they could take hold. It was, he realized, exactly the sort of defense that would matter most against the mental attributes he'd been afraid of, the ones that didn't break your body but broke your composure.

Mind Barrier was the quieter cousin of Mental Shield. Where the shield was something Angel raised on purpose, a wall thrown up in the moment, the barrier simply stood there always — a passive, constant thing that turned aside mental attacks and, more usefully still, kept out anyone who tried to pry into his thoughts. He wouldn't have to ask her for it. It would just be there, the way a closed door is always a closed door, whether or not you're thinking about it.

His one real worry had been feeding her.

A turtle ate vines, flowers, and fruits. A necklace, presumably, did not, and he'd spent an anxious hour wondering whether he'd accidentally turned his guardian into something he had to keep alive by some method he hadn't worked out yet. But the answer, when he asked, set him at ease. Angel now fed on his spiritual power, drawing what she needed slowly through their bond. As long as Elias was healthy, so was she. They were, in the most literal way, sharing the same well.

And for all that she'd become an artifact, she hadn't stopped being a creature. That was the part Elias found quietly charming. The little turtle pendant at his collarbone still blinked its white eyes when something caught its attention. It still yawned — a tiny, slow, contented yawn against his skin. It still slept, which was to say it still did the thing it had always done best, only now it did it as jewelry. Beast and Artifact both, the status had said, and she lived up to both halves. She was an object he could wear and a turtle who napped, at the same time, without the slightest contradiction.

The biggest problem, by some distance, was Valentine.

The Blood Crystal Butterfly had not taken kindly to discovering that something now lived near the territory he considered his — the side of Elias's neck, his favorite resting place, where he liked to settle against the warm pulse beneath the skin. And now there was a turtle there. A necklace-turtle, hanging too near to where he wanted to be, with absolutely no intention of moving.

Valentine made his feelings known. He circled. He glared with all the wounded dignity his multifaceted eyes could muster. He landed pointedly on Elias's other shoulder and fanned his wings in a way that was clearly meant to be noticed. He took to wedging himself into the small space between Elias's collar and the pendant, as though he might reclaim the spot by sheer territorial presence.

Angel ignored all of it.

That was what truly got to him, Elias thought, trying not to laugh. Angel did not rise to the challenge, did not so much as acknowledge it. She simply slept, serene and unbothered, while Valentine fumed himself into a glittering fit beside her — and nothing infuriated a creature like Valentine more than being completely, peacefully ignored. Elias spent a good deal of those days stroking his crystal wings and murmuring reassurances that no, the turtle had not replaced him, yes, he was still the most treasured, please stop sulking.

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Valentine remained unconvinced. But he stopped trying to evict the necklace, which Elias counted as a victory.

Then came the part that had become tradition: the compulsory celebration.

A third contracted beast was an occasion, and occasions meant family, so Elias invited them over to show Angel off. They arrived in their usual cheerful crowd, and the moment they were through the door they began looking around — left, right, behind him — clearly expecting some new and impressive creature to be standing somewhere nearby.

They did not find one.

Elias, enjoying himself far too much, lifted the little turtle pendant at his throat and presented it. Not one of them understood. Kyle squinted at it. Selena waited for the actual beast to appear. It plainly never crossed any of their minds that the necklace was the contracted beast, right up until Elias explained that it was.

Even then, Angel declined to make an impression. She simply hung there, asleep, looking very much like a nicely made piece of jewelry. It took a frankly embarrassing amount of begging — Elias quietly pleading with her through the bond to please, just this once, do something — before the sleepy turtle deigned to crack one white eye, let out a small hum, and give a faint vibration of greeting against his collarbone.

The family was charmed. Damian laughed in delight. Rime zipped in close to study the tiny turtle from every possible angle, firing off questions. Selena declared, with grudging approval, that it was the most sensible spirit beast in the family precisely because it couldn't be bothered to do anything.

The celebration, Elias had to admit, ended up being far more about him than about Angel. She listened to the whole thing, half-asleep, and contributed nothing. But he didn't think she minded — and with Angel, not minding was about as close to delight as you were going to get. He decided that counted as her enjoying herself.

After the celebration wound down, Elias brought in the other turtles.

He sat his parents down and explained properly what a Protector Turtle was — what Angel now did, the way she guarded a mind against the mental attributes, the shared rank, all of it. And then he told them the thing that had started this whole project in the first place.

Four discoveries. His anonymity wouldn't last forever. Sooner or later someone would put it together, and when they did, the people closest to him might become targets too — and the kind of attack he feared most was the kind you never saw coming, the kind that went for the mind. He'd built himself a guardian against exactly that. He wanted them to have one too.

Would they each contract a Protector Turtle?

His parents agreed at once, the way he'd known they would. Damian was already looking thoughtfully at the herd, and Selena gave a short nod that meant the matter was settled as far as she was concerned. The process would take time — the mindspaces, the matching, the headaches he'd warned them about and they'd cheerfully ignored — but they were in.

Kyle, for once, looked away.

"I can't," Kyle said. "Sorry. I just — can't, this time."

Which was so unlike Kyle that the whole room turned to look at him. Kyle, who charged at everything headfirst, who never met a new idea he didn't want to try immediately. Selena's eyes narrowed. Damian tilted his head. Even Angel, Elias would swear, stirred slightly.

Kyle scratched the back of his neck, looking uncharacteristically sheepish — and then he summoned his second contracted beast.

A bird appeared in a flicker of light and settled onto his outstretched arm. A Carrier Raven, Elias recognized after a moment — a common species of Elite potential, the sort used all over the Federation to deliver small packages, prized for being clever and fast. About the size of a full-grown eagle, they were striking birds when healthy, all glistening black feathers and sharp bright eyes.

This one was not healthy.

Half its body was a ruin of old burns, the feathers there grown back patchy and spotted where they'd grown back at all. One eye was injured, clouded and half-shut. It looked, frankly, miserable — a battered, lopsided thing that had plainly been through something terrible and come out the far side of it barely.

And the instant it appeared, it pressed itself against Kyle with open, uncomplicated affection, nudging its beak and the top of its head against his cheek, making a low pleased sound deep in its chest.

Kyle's sheepish look broke into a grin.

"Surprise," he said.

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