On the fourth morning, a pack of bone jackals found us. They were bigger than wolves, with skull-white faces and mouths full of needle teeth. I knew those things. Even the foxes avoided them. A bone jackal did not just kill you. It laughed while taking turns. I tried to crawl away, but Owen stayed seated. The first jackal lunged at him.
Owen did not move. I moved. I do not know why. Maybe I was angry that the jackal thought it could kill my mirage before I could. Maybe I was still half inside that dream. Maybe some part of me had finally gotten tired of running. I reached into my chest. That is the only way I can describe it.
My hands sank through my own skin, not into blood, but into cold moonlight. My fingers closed around a handle that was not there, and the world became heavy. The spirit blade came out of me. It did not slide out like a normal sword. It erupted. A massive black and silver blade burst from the air above my hand, tearing a line through the sky.
The tip crashed into the sand half a field away. The jackals stopped so hard they tumbled over each other. I tried to lift it. Nothing happened. The blade was too huge, too heavy, too ridiculous. My arms shook. My knees sank. The jackals stared. Owen smiled. Then the lead jackal recovered and charged. I screamed, planted both feet, twisted my whole body, and began to swing.
The swing took so long that the jackal ran toward me, slowed down, looked confused, and almost had time to regret its career choices. Almost. When the blade finally moved, it did not cut the jackal. It erased the space where the jackal had been. The sand exploded into a crescent wave. The other jackals flew backward like kicked bones. The sky rang like a bell.
When the dust cleared, there was a trench in front of me so deep I could not see the bottom, and the lead jackal was gone. Not dead in a normal way. Gone. My blade vanished right after the swing, folding back into my chest like a sleeping monster. I fell on my back, laughing and crying and coughing blood.
Owen looked down at me and said my technique was embarrassing, but the result was acceptable. That was the first compliment I ever received from a human. It made me want to bite him again. For the next month, Owen taught me words. Not many. He said language was useful because screaming was limited. I learned my own name from the sound he gave me. Dylan.
He said it meant I needed something to answer to besides hunger. I did not like it at first. Names felt like collars. But the first time he called Dylan and I turned without thinking, I understood the secret. A name was not a collar. A name was a handle. Something to grip when the world tried to drag you away.
He taught me how to breathe without wasting strength, how to hear the difference between fear and instinct, how to summon the blade without ripping my spirit raw. He also taught me the worst truth of my life. My blade was slow. Not normal slow. Not beginner slow. Monumentally, insultingly, funeral-procession slow. If a normal swordsman could slash three times in one breath, I could begin thinking about maybe lifting my weapon while he killed me, buried me, and walked home.
But Owen said power always came with a joke hidden inside it. My joke was this. I had a sword big enough to split a hill, but I swung it like an old man opening a stuck door. At first I hated that. I wanted speed. I wanted to move like a hawk. I wanted to flash across the sand and leave enemies falling behind me.
Owen shook his head and told me speed was for people who needed many chances. I only needed one. That sounded cool until he made me practice. He stood a hundred steps away and told me to hit him. I summoned the spirit blade, dragged it up, and began my swing. He yawned, walked around behind me, sat down, and made tea before the blade landed.
The impact split a boulder. Owen clapped politely. Then he told me I had killed the wrong direction. I trained anyway. I swung at rocks. I swung at shadows. I swung at the moonlight. I learned to start before the enemy knew there was a fight. I learned to make my weakness look like bait. I learned to use the enormous blade as a wall, a roof, a bridge, a shovel, a shield, a doorstop for monsters too stupid to go around it, and once as a cooking plate when lightning struck it and roasted a lizard perfectly.
Owen said a foolish warrior asks how to remove his flaw. A clever warrior asks how to make the enemy trip over it. Then one dawn he was gone. No farewell, no lesson, no footprints. Just a circle in the sand where he had been sitting, and one sentence carved into a flat stone.
Go where people can disappoint you properly.
I stared at the words for a long time. Then I looked toward the horizon where the desert softened into distant green. Civilization. I had heard the word from Owen. He described it as many humans living together while pretending they were not animals. It sounded terrible. It sounded interesting. It sounded like the next thing I needed to bite.