Something warm and wet splashed over Sen’s face, rousing him from unconsciousness. It smelled wrong, almost like metal, but then a noise washed over Sen, freezing him in place. No, he realized, not a noise. It was a roar. His eyes snapped open. He looked up and saw, he didn’t know what he saw. It looked a bit like a boar, but no boar had ever been that big. It was as large as a horse, with tusks nearly as long as a sword. Blood was leaking from a slash across its face. It's injured, Sen thought. What happened? A moment later something blurred through the air and struck the beast. It vanished from Sen’s sight, apparently carried away by the force of whatever had struck it.
The disorientation and fear that had kept Sen rooted in place snapped as he realized that he was in immediate, terrible danger. He shot to his feet and almost collapsed again as his stomach tried to eat its way out from inside him. The headache that he’d forgotten about reasserted itself, like thunder inside his head. Still, he was in danger. He stumbled away from the beast. He didn’t pay attention to where he was going. Anywhere, anywhere that was away was good enough. It was just a blur of greens and browns and the occasional flashes of a sunset-colored sky. He careened off of trees and fell over rocks, leaving bruises and bloody gashes on his body. Yet, he ignored the pain, ignored his stomach, and pushed himself back up. He had to get away.
He didn’t stop moving until a hand seized the back of his robes and brought him up short. His head hurt. His hands hurt. His knees hurt. Sen's stomach hurt so much he could barely think. Yet, that abrupt stop shocked him enough that he looked around. He stood on the edge of a gully. It wasn’t very deep, but deep enough that Sen might have broken his neck falling into it. Sen let out a belated, startled shout and tried to back away from the edge. The hand that had grabbed him kept him in place. It took a moment to calm down enough to look around. Cultivator Feng stood over him, a splash of crimson across his face. Yet, the man looked calm enough.
“I wouldn’t go that way,” said Feng, releasing Sen’s robe.
“No, master. Thank you for stopping me,” said Sen.
He tried to bow to Feng, but it proved too much for the screaming, painful hunger inside him. Sen collapsed, clutching at his stomach.
“Were you injured?” Feng asked.
“No,” Sen gasped. “So hungry.”
Feng was silent for a long moment before he spoke. “Oh. Food. Right.”
Sen only half noticed, so preoccupied was he with his stomach, but it only took Feng a matter of minutes to carry Sen away from the gully, set up camp, and start a fire. With Sen by the fire, Feng made a pile of jerky appear from nowhere and pushed it into the boy’s hands. Sen didn’t say anything, just started eating as fast as he could chew the dried meat and choke it down. When he looked up from the much smaller pile of jerky, Feng was just outside of the camp. He was cutting up the enormous boar. With the howling inside him finally gone and the wretched headache going away, Sen was finally able to appreciate the speed with which the cultivator worked. The man’s hand moved in a pair of blurs. It wasn’t instant, but soon the boar was a pile of discarded parts. What Sen couldn’t work out was where all the meat went.
Then, Feng made a shovel appear and started digging. It was the biggest hole that Sen had ever personally seen, nearly as deep as a man is tall. Feng hopped out of the hole, shoved the remains into the hole, and then covered it up. He rinsed something off with a water skin and dried it on his robes as he walked over to the fire. Once Feng settled on the other side of the fire, he tossed the object over to Sen. Sen caught the object and looked down at it curiously. It was an orb as big as an apple. It was a deep green shot through with lines of dark brown. It felt heavier than Sen thought it should. He looked over at Feng.
“What’s this?” Asked Sen.
Feng looked incredulous for a moment before he burst into laughter. “A keepsake. You should have something to remember this by. It’s your first near-death experience with a spirit beast, I expect.”
Sen shuddered as he imagined what the beast might have done to him. Sen looked down at the rock for a moment before he slipped it into an inner pocket of the robes Feng had given him after bandaging the boy's wounds. While he was busy with that, Feng had set up a makeshift spit. A piece of what Sen assumed was the boar slowly started dripping over the fire. Feng sprinkled herbs and spices over the meat and then settled back, only moving to turn the spit occasionally. Sen finally worked up the nerve to ask a question that had been steadily growing in his mind.
“Where did it all go? The rest of the meat, I mean.”
Feng just held up a hand and gestured at it. Sen looked at the hand briefly before returning his gaze to Feng’s face. His lack of comprehension must have shown on his face because Feng tapped a ring.
Sen frowned. “Is it magic?”
“No, of course, it’s not,” said Feng. Then, he seemed to think it through. “Well, I suppose it is a bit like magic. It’s a storage ring. Easier than carrying a pack everywhere. Keeps things fresh too. You’ve never heard of them before.”
Sen shook his head. “Do you think I could get one someday?”
“It’s possible. Probably not one, though. It can hold quite a lot. They can get expensive. For what this one cost, I could probably buy that town we just left.”
Sen’s eyes went wide. He decided that a storage ring probably wasn’t something he would ever own. He’d just appreciate Master Feng’s ring while he could. While a thousand other questions rolled through his mind, he decided not to test the cultivator’s patience. Grandmother had warned him that cultivators were fickle. So far, this one seemed mostly amused by Sen. He didn’t want to damage that. After a while, the cultivator produced a couple of plates and carved pieces off the meat over the fire. He dropped a peach onto the plate that he handed to Sen. Sen made himself wait to eat this time. He didn’t want to burn himself.
“If you get hungry, you have to tell me. When you get as far along with cultivation as I have, you can go for weeks, months even, without eating. I won’t remember, so you have to remind me to feed you.”
Sen nodded. “Yes, master.”
“Good, now eat. I don’t want you passing out first thing tomorrow.”
Sen ate the meat and peach but did his best to do it with a little dignity, the way Grandmother Lu had taught him. After he ate, Sen felt an odd surge of energy. It seemed to pulse through him in waves. He was sure he imagined that the energy seemed to gather around his hands, knees, and feet. Part of him felt like he could walk for miles, while the rest of him demanded rest. Sen took a final look at the cultivator who was reading a book that had come out of that miraculous storage ring. Sen wrapped himself up in a blanket. He didn’t think he would be able to sleep, but it swooped down on him in moments.