Beastmen: She Tames the Land-Chapter 60: Learning about Beast Continent

Walking with Uri, Visha didn’t say anything.

She used the short walk to clear her mind. She held Uri’s hand. She needed an anchor to make sure she didn’t drift. She wanted her mind to be steady and not think about things she didn’t need to think about.

She was so unguarded around Uri that she didn’t notice him veering away from the place the pack gathered.

He brought her to one of the rooms they had passed before. He placed her on a stone bench and waited.

Not long after sitting down, Xeno showed up.

Both he and Uri waited by the side as Visha, engulfed in her questions, tried to figure them out. It didn’t take long for her to snap out of her stupor, however. She realized not long after Xeno entered the room that she wasn’t with the pack.

"Uri, Xeno, what are we doing here?" Visha asked, looking at the room they were in.

"Sha’mīn, you didn’t even notice when I brought you here. Why don’t you tell us what’s on your mind?" Uri said.

"Don’t hide things from us," Xeno stated.

"I’m not," Visha said calmly, but inside she was still feeling overwhelmed.

Both men, sitting on either side of her, looked at her. Visha kept her head down. No matter how calm she seemed, she couldn’t look them in the eye and pretend she was. She always felt as if they could see through her.

"You aren’t fine, Sha’mīn. Have you forgotten our bond?" Uri asked.

Visha’s heart hammered. She had almost forgotten they shared a bond. She still remembered she could feel intense emotion from them. It would bleed through no matter what she wanted.

But was she that overwhelmed? No, she didn’t think so. They must have just noticed earlier.

Xeno let out a growl of frustration. "Don’t, don’t doubt us," he said, his voice strained

Visha’s head snapped up. She didn’t expect Xeno to know she was doubting whether they could feel what she felt.

Her eyes shifted from Uri to Xeno; her heart felt like it had broken slightly. Her hand flew to her chest.

"You felt it, right? Your doubt hurts us." Xeno whispered.

Visha felt she only half understood.

Uri chimed in, "We have always been able to feel you. Ever since the first night we bonded, we could feel your emotions. Xeno and I can feel each other as well."

Visha looked between the two, bewildered. Can they feel my emotions? Besides the first day, she noticed that she only felt emotions that they conveyed strongly.

Uri continued, "We never told you because we thought it would be easier. It would appear that we made the wrong decision."

Visha was trapped between the two men, unsure of what to say.

When she finally found her voice, she asked, "So you know what I’m feeling now? Then why can I only feel it when it’s an intense emotion?"

This time, Xeno spoke, "We think you can’t feel it completely because you haven’t learned to control your beast. Uri and I talked about it. When we first bonded, your beast took control, so you were able to feel everything. Now, it is as if you and your beast are separate entities. So you still feel us, but not as intensely as we feel you."

Vish thought it through. She didn’t like that it was talked about without her, but she appreciated them trying to figure out the problem.

She didn’t get angry. She was annoyed, but there was no need for her to be angry.

Since it had already come to this, she didn’t need to hold back. She had to reconcile herself with the fact that these two people might be the only two people in life who would know every minute detail about her, even if she doesn’t want them to.

She had to reconcile herself with the fact that they are bound together by, quite literally, their souls.

Closing her eyes, she took a breath. "We’ll talk about the bond later. Since you already know something is bothering me, I won’t pretend. I need to talk to everyone."

She took the bowl from Uri and started eating. Being full is the most important thing. She needed to speak with everyone, and doing that on an empty stomach wasn’t something she wanted to do.

When she was full, she stood up, handed the bowl to Xeno, took both their hands, and walked briskly to where the pack was gathered.

She had Xeno gather everyone together. When everyone sat together in a circle, she started speaking. "I have something I need to talk to you all about. It has to do with where I have been going for the past few days."

She looked around, taking in everyone’s waiting expressions. Their full attention was on her.

"I need to know," she exhaled sharply, "What do you know about the Beast Continent? What kind of stories have you heard about the Beast God?"

A solemn hush blanketed the conversation. Fil shifted slightly, his hand resting on the newly restored leg.

"The elders of the old tribe used to tell us stories. They always told us that the Beast God is the one responsible for giving us the chance to be like we are now. If it weren’t for him, we would be no different than the animals we hunt. There were stories of ancient warriors who could kill an Amster (woolly mammoth-like creature) with one swipe of their paw," he spoke, his voice low. "The Beast God, we still worship. The rest has always been stories you tell to cubs."

Willa nodded in agreement. "There is a story of warriors who fought and lost a great war. A Beast King who could slay thousands with roars. But he fell during the war. We have been told these stories ever since we were young."

Uri spoke, "For my people, there is a story called the ’Great Sadness’. It referred to the world being born incomplete. That the world itself was searching for what it had lost, and in its search, it created things that should not exist. The world was fighting its own imbalance and was losing."

Visha listened to what they had to say. Her mind turned over everything they said and compared it to what she read.

It was just as she expected. Countless stories all pointing to the same origin. Every tribe has its own version of what happened.

Visha’s eyes scanned everyone, briefly stopping on Chi and Krag. She didn’t ask them about the stories they heard. If they were able to give her the scroll, they might have the most complete version of what happened.

They didn’t give her the information outright, which meant there was more to the story than meets the eye. Because even with what her pack members told her, she could still see there was something missing.

The wall didn’t mention a great war, but the Tiger tribe had stories about a great war. Why were they fighting? Who were they fighting?

Visha shook her head. She wouldn’t get answers by spiraling. She wasn’t even sure why this was so important to her. She only knew she needed to know.

Even if she couldn’t get all the answers.

"So no one had a complete story," she summarized. "And everything was passed down by word of mouth."

She turned to Willa, Fil, and Cato, "I need to know. Why do you pass on things by word of mouth? Why do you not have a writing system?"

"Writing?" Fil asked. "We’ve always used word of mouth to pass on the rituals and knowledge of our tribe."

Willa nodded in agreement.

"No, we didn’t," Cato said softly.

Heads snapped towards him. Cato was the oldest person in their tribe. While young by some standards, he was more than ten years older than Willa and Fil.

He was already in his eighties.

"We didn’t always use oral traditions. We used to write things down. I’ve never actually seen it. I know because I overheard the tribe leader and priest talking about it." He scratched his head, slightly embarrassed at how he found out.

"At the time, I was trying to court Vegra. She told me she wanted the flower the priest picks but never gives to the tribe. She thought it was beautiful. So being stupid, I snuck into the priest’s hut to get one. I couldn’t find it and almost ended up caught by the priest and the tribe leader. While I hid, I overheard their conversation about the priest trying to figure out how to read the stone tablet left by our ancestors."

Visha was excited to hear this. It wasn’t that there were no writings. She understood that the art form might have been lost with the generations.

So, can someone definitely read what I saw in the tower? Is that where the stories from the different tribes come from? Someone read it, and decades or centuries later, only word of mouth remains?

"Did you ever get to see the stone?" Visha asked.

Cato shook his head. "I left because I didn’t want to be caught."

Visha thought about the chamber and asked, "Would you like to see the writing? I can’t guarantee it is the same as what the priest mentioned, but you can still take a look."

"I want to see!" Nimo shouted, clutching Cato’s arm.

He and Kit had been listening to everything. Whether they understood or not, Visha didn’t know. However, she didn’t shy away from letting them in on pack matters.

"Okay," Visha laughed. "Serious pack matters first, then we can all go look."

Nimo’s eyes shone when he heard he could take a look.

"Do you know the forbidden areas of the Beast Continent?"