Snow’s claws ticked against the front door before Averik had been away from the breakfast table for a minute.
She had stopped pretending to be patient. The wolf stood with her nose almost touching the wood, ears forward, while Evelyn finished tying back her silver hair. When Evelyn caught him looking, she smiled slightly.
"Should I keep her close until we’re through the busier streets? She was very pleased with herself yesterday."
"Let her walk. She knows where to stay."
"All right. I’ll keep her with me if the streets get crowded~"
Snow’s ears flicked toward them, and her tail gave the floor one heavy sweep. Averik opened the door and she slipped out first.
They left District 2 without hurrying. The lanes were already busy with people carrying baskets, split wood, sacks of grain, and tool rolls toward the inner roads. Cold sat between the houses and silvered the edges of old stone, but it barely registered against Averik’s skin. Snow ranged several paces ahead until a handcart squeezed past, then returned to Evelyn’s side without being called.
District 1 grew noisier as they approached the food yards. The smell reached them before the pens did: hay, feed mash, old manure, warm animal breath. Pipes ran beneath sections of the ground there, keeping enough frost out of the soil and trough lines to make livestock possible. A pair of workers rolled a barrow of chopped roots toward a fenced enclosure while chickens scratched around their boots.
One of the keepers spotted Snow and pointed at the rail. "Ma’am, wolf stays outside. I don’t care how friendly she looks."
Evelyn rested a hand against Snow’s shoulder before the wolf could investigate the nearest sheep. "She won’t bother them. I’ll keep her here."
After another suspicious look at Snow, the keeper went back to dragging a feed tray into place.
Averik stopped beside the fence. A goat stood beyond the inner rail, chewing with the slow, vacant concentration of an animal that had no reason to care about him. He had taken every beast so far from close range. Snow had been beside him. The Rimeburrow had been in his hands. Yesterday’s rat had been twisting between his fingers.
He had done it that way because it was easy. The Talent itself had never required touch. Averik fixed his attention on the goat and pushed Taming toward it without moving closer.
The goat resisted weakly, its ordinary will stiffening against something it didn’t understand. Holding the same pressure across the gap pulled more Essence from Averik than doing it at arm’s reach. Nothing pushed him out of the attempt.
The goat raised its head. Averik pressed again, and the bond locked.
::···:::···:::···::
[Target Successfully Tamed]
::···:::···:::···::
For a beat, the goat held his gaze with its ears angled forward. It returned to the feed tray a moment later.
Evelyn looked from the goat to him. "You didn’t even go inside."
"Didn’t need to." Averik watched the goat settle back over its feed.
Her eyes narrowed slightly in thought. "Did it take more from you?"
"More. Not enough to matter." Averik let the new bond settle. The goat still wanted its food and still disliked Snow’s scent. He left both instincts alone and gave it a simple final command through the bond: keep following the people who fed and handled it, stay inside the enclosure unless people ordered otherwise.
The goat lowered its head deeper into the tray.
The keeper glanced over. "Sir, what did you do?"
"Tamed that." Averik looked at the other animals crowding the enclosure.
The keeper followed his gaze. "You’re taking the rest too?"
"Yes." He didn’t waste Essence proving the same point from the same distance over and over. When an animal stood close enough to the rail, he used the easier route. Sheep shied, goats stared, chickens flapped and kicked up bits of feed when his attention settled on them, but none possessed resistance worth calling difficult. One bond after another took hold while the keeper slowly stopped working and simply watched.
By the time Averik moved away from the fence, every animal in that enclosure belonged to him. A chicken immediately resumed pecking at a cracked grain husk, and one of the sheep shoved another away from the best part of the hay rack. Averik left them at the rails and walked on.
"They’re calmer," the keeper said.
"They’re still yours to feed." The man barked a short laugh. "Yes Sir, was afraid you’d say that."
Evelyn hid a smile as they left the enclosure. Snow waited until the rail was behind them before giving the nearest goat one last suspicious look.
Another test waited above a Unit storage building.
Four pigeons crowded along the edge of a low roof where heat leaking from the structure kept a strip of tile mostly clear. The nearest was farther from Averik than the goat had been, with no clean way to reach it without climbing or driving the birds off first.
He chose one gray bird and repeated the attempt.
His Essence draw climbed again. The pigeon stiffened, shuffled sideways, and nearly took wing before its resistance gave. The bond formed anyway.
Averik watched it settle back onto the roof.
He still couldn’t feel any point where distance itself shut Taming off. It only drew more Essence from him.
He took the other three before they moved on.
Averik took two guard dogs outside a Unit storehouse while their handler was checking a delivery slate. They still watched the doors afterward. The handler whistled once, and both dogs turned their heads exactly as they had before.
"Huh." The man scratched his jaw. "They know you now?"
"They know you too. Keep working them."
"Yes sir."
Near a warm drain farther along, Snow’s nose found movement under a crust of dirty snow. Four voles broke from separate holes when she shoved her muzzle too close. Averik caught their small bodies with his eyes, pressed through the little resistance they offered, and had all four bonded before they vanished under the stones. He left them in the drainage strip with orders to stay out of ration stores and occupied rooms.
Snow watched the last tail disappear between two rocks.
"No," Averik said.
Her teeth met on nothing. She looked at him, then at the hole.
A quiet laugh escaped Evelyn. "She was only checking."
"She was deciding which one tasted best." Snow huffed hard enough to puff loose powder from the stones.
"Maybe a little," Evelyn admitted, smoothing a hand over the wolf’s neck. "Please don’t look so offended, sweetheart."
They reached the Unit 1 complex near noon.
Inside the compound, the weapon workshop stood close enough to the training yard. Averik didn’t stop. There was nothing he needed repaired today.
Beyond it, the training yard held a loose spread of people rather than a formal formation. Bram stood near one side talking with Tovan while several younger Awakened worked through drills across the packed ground. Snow drew a few looks as she entered with Averik and Evelyn.
One of the younger men stared longer than the others.
Averik knew the face. He had seen it under the lights of the Awakening hall less than two weeks ago, one of the others who had awakened the same night and laughed when the reader named Tamer.
The man stepped away from the group. "Averik, right? Come on. One round."
Averik kept walking until the man moved into his path. "Find someone else."
A couple of trainees glanced over. The young man’s mouth tightened. "Seriously? You walk around with a giant wolf and suddenly you’re too important to spar?"
Averik looked at him properly now. Newly awakened, eager for an audience, with no stance worth respecting and nothing Averik needed from him. "I said no." He stepped around the man.
Evelyn followed at his left shoulder, Snow just outside her. They had gone only a few paces when the scrape of leather came from behind them.
Averik heard it. His perception caught the young man’s right hand closing around the knife before the blade had cleared its sheath.
Bram saw it too. His voice cut across the yard. "I wouldn’t do that if I were you."
Ignoring Bram, the young man threw. The knife left his right hand with the violent speed of an Awakened body behind it, a silver blur aimed into Averik’s upper back. Averik had time to turn. He didn’t.
CLACK!
A handspan from Averik’s coat, the blade struck the protection Evelyn already kept on him and kicked sideways as though it had hit an angled wall. It spun away and bit into the packed ground several paces off. Evelyn was already turning.
Evelyn’s usual softness toward him vanished from her face.
"What the hell are you doing?" she snapped. "Do you want me to beat you into the ground, or would you rather end up as Snow’s food?"
Snow’s head came up. A low sound gathered in her chest, but she didn’t move from Evelyn’s side.
Tovan had shifted his weight toward the young man. Bram’s expression had gone flat.
Heat climbed into the young man’s face when he looked from the fallen knife to Evelyn. Instead of backing down, he turned half away and lifted his left hand, palm open in a dismissive wave. "I’d like to see you try."
Averik stopped. Frost formed in his right hand before the raised palm had finished rising. He kept the spear narrow, a hard white-blue line, and threaded Soul through the ice. He released it.
CRACK!
Averik’s spear punched through the center of the raised left palm. He arrested it the instant the point cleared the back of the hand, leaving the shaft fixed through flesh while Soul bit deeper than the physical wound.
"Argghh!!!...Shit!...Fuck!" A scream tore out of the young man a fraction later as the injury reached deeper than flesh. He folded around his arm, but the Frost spear held with him. Blood ran over the ice. His body had already begun trying to close what it could around the wound, only for the deeper pain to seize him again and turn the breath in his throat ragged.
Averik turned away and started walking. "That was only a warning."
Evelyn fell back into place beside him. Her anger hadn’t left, but she didn’t look toward the wounded man again. Snow paced with them, ears still angled backward at the yard.
After several steps, Averik stopped and glanced over his shoulder. The young man was on one knee now, teeth clenched, his left hand held rigid around the spear. Tovan was close enough to catch him if he toppled. Bram crossed to the thrown knife and pulled it from the ground.
"One more thing," Averik said. "That spear wounded your soul too. Closing the hole in your hand won’t be fast enough. Your soul has to recover with that as well, and that takes time. If your control is good enough, manage it will be easy and your regeneration will be faster. If it isn’t, find a Restorer and ask for help for faster regeneration. Take it as a lesson."
He turned away again. A snap of his fingers dissolved the Frost spear.
Once the spear vanished, the young man’s left hand dropped free. The pain didn’t leave with the ice. His breath broke again as Tovan gripped his shoulder and steadied him.
Averik didn’t slow down to watch.
Behind him, Bram said something low to the trainee while holding the knife out of reach. Tovan answered in the clipped tone he used when there was work to do. Averik left them to it.
Evelyn stayed close enough that the sleeve of her coat brushed his arm once as they reached the path out.
"Averik." Garran’s voice came from ahead this time. He was crossing from the Unit buildings toward the edge of the training yard. His attention went briefly past them to the commotion behind, then returned to Averik.
"Before you go. I need a word." Averik turned toward him.