“I think Bwoon is inside you.”


    Ginger didn’t know why, but the wording Shan used made him feel a fondling chill grasp his spine. He shivered. It was the last thing he had expected to hear, and perhaps because it caught him in such an awkward situation, he saw himself in the darkness of the chamber in the Beginner’s Den once again.


    But the false vision disappeared just as quickly as it had spawned in.


    “W-what?” the plump dragonling asked.


    Shan continued to search him, the crease on her forehead growing.


    “Bwoon was standing on top of you just now, but then she disappeared,” she said, but then shook her head. “No, it’s more like… she just fed herself into you in the blink of an eye. I thought I’d been see it wrong at first, but…” She stopped.


    She was holding out Ginger’s right arm now and looking just behind it. A tense look was on her face.


    “Don’t move,” she ordered the boy, and he tensed as well, losing the grace to blush.


    “What’s going on? What do you see?” To Ginger, something horrifying was happening to him, judging by Shan’s tone. She might have spotted a crazy lump born of some deadly plague on his arm, or perhaps some huge bite mark made by Bwoon.


    But no, no!


    Shan had just said Bwoon was somehow inside Ginger.


    What was it that made her look so worried?


    Fai rushed over. The moment he saw what Shan was looking at, he emitted an “Oh!”


    That didn’t make Ginger feel any better. He couldn’t hold back his broken voice. What had that demented pony done to him?


    “What is it?!”


    Right then, Vess threw his head (front end) back and laughed.


    Everyone lanced him with a glare.


    He waved his hands while shrugging.


    “What are you laughing about?” hissed Fai.


    “Relax. It’s nothing bad. Or at least I hope,” said the caterpillar, and he approached. He too gazed at what everyone except Ginger could see. “Bwoon has grown a bit since the last time you saw her. Her other traits are starting to kick in. We couldn’t tell what else she was made of before, but now, I think I have a pretty good idea.”


    “You could have led with that!” Fai hissed again and then sighed. “What is her other half?”


    Before Vess could answer, Shan, much to Ginger’s added confusion, made several rapid gestures with her hands. She was Weaving. Mana Essence gathered around her hands and formed a small, borderless mirror. She held it up for the dragonling so that he could see what everyone else saw.


    It was a considerate gesture that Ginger was desperately grateful for, but he didn’t show it immediately. His eyes zoomed in on the reflection.


    There was something indeed, under his jersey and under the shirt he wore beneath it. Something sparked with a faint, golden glow and then vanished for a few seconds. Again, it shone brilliantly, its radiance piercing through the fabrics. It was on Ginger’s skin.


    “Uh… is that…?” the plump boy said nervously, paling, and failed to finish the sentence.


    “Bwoon? I think so,” answered Shan, and then she turned to Vess.


    That was the caterpillar’s cue to respond to Fai’s question. He folded his arms against his ‘chest’ again, a grin on his face.


    “She’s part Bectorial,” he said.


    Fai’s brows rose. It wasn’t immediately clear if there was any negative or positive conclusion under his expression. He gave another, “Oh.”


    Shan, on the other hand, beamed… as much as her stiff face allowed.


    “Bectorial? Are you sure? I didn’t know they could force their hosts to produce young with their genetics, and safely at that,” she said and looked at the gleam behind Ginger’s jersey.


    Vess shrugged.


    “Eh, that complicated stuff with research and all is more your strong suit, Shan. I only know the basics,” he said and met Ginger’s questioning gaze. He answered before the boy could ask. “A Bectorial is a kind of sentient parasitic fungi. They are huge and can move on their own, but their bodies aren’t all the way material. They need hosts, and because of their size and biology, they need large, strong ones. One must have infected a horse – likely because it desired speed rather than strength. And then somehow, Bwoon was born. We never did find her mother.”


    ‘Bectorial?’ Ginger found himself thinking. He knew about fungi, but it was no more a threat to humans than common mushrooms. To think that here on Ravi, it was such a competent threat to the natural order of living things.


    Indeed, it was as Professor Hennigar had said. Ravi was vast.


    “So…” he said, “Bwoon… infected me?” His own wording made his face sink.


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    Fai gave a sigh. He had been silently contemplating the matter.


    “No, no. Don’t worry. It’s not like that,” he said, patting Ginger’s shoulder gently. “I’ll admit, it took me by surprise that Bwoon was a mix of fungi, but it’s not likely to be anything dangerous.” He shook his head and gave a short, sniffy laugh. “I should have noticed. It makes sense now, why she likes running and knocking into things – moreso than the average pony.”


    Shan frowned.


    “What do you mean?”


    Ginger also wanted to know.


    Vess, scoffing, was the one to elaborate before his employer.


    “Bectorials need to accelerate the activity of each of their cells before they can infect a host. Their bodies aren’t wholly material, so to make sure that their physical bits also siphon into their choice of vessel and meld in with their physical qualities, they move erratically for as long as they need to – sometimes even months. They test their readiness by crashing into other organisms and checking the result. They are usually never in danger if an infection goes wrong. Only the host dies in that case.”


    It sounded a little terrifying to Ginger. He remembered Bwoon running about as a golden flash. There was a purpose to that? But she didn’t go about knocking into the other horses or even Vess, Shan, or Fai though.


    “Bwoon is not a pure Bectorial,” said Fai with a calm smile to Ginger. He must have sensed the boy’s apprehension. “She has a body of her own, and she can’t infect others in the same way Bectorials too can. She’s as much of a horse as Silver Stroke and the rest. She craves connections and recognizes her own. She’s been trained too, so she knows what it means to play the role of carrier and steed. But of course…” He laughed. “She despises us all.”


    Ginger sucked in his lips.


    ‘Oh. But if that’s the case…’


    “If she doesn’t like you all… She chose me, then?” he asked and immediately collapsed in on himself with cringe. He didn’t know what had come over him to make such a childish inquiry. Or did he?


    Shan and Fai smiled in the sort of way people holding back laughs did.


    “Not exactly,” said the latter. “Like I said. Bwoon despises every one of us, but that’s not exactly true in your case. She’s only just met you. She must have decided to bond with you for her first try to exercise her powers.”


    The “Oh” that Ginger gave off right then was more spiritless than any of Fai’s.


    Vess snickered.


    Shan turned to him sharply.


    “You said you weren’t the research type, but you described things about Bectorials that even I didn’t know about. You’ve been reading in your spare time, haven’t you?” she accused.


    Vess stuttered.


    “You little…! I’ve done no such thing!”


    Meanwhile, Fai beckoned Ginger to Bwoon’s stall.


    “Let me have a good look at you in there.”


    The two quickly slid away from Vess and Shan who continued to bicker. Once they were inside Bwoon’s empty stall, Ginger took off his jersey and shirt. Fai Weaved and produced a mirror quite like the one Shan had. They were quicker with their Preparation than he was. The mirror-conjuring spell was likely a bit more complicated than Small of the Back, but they didn’t use Incantations.


    Fai held out the mirror for Ginger to see. A spot of gold was shimmering on his skin. Ginger thought it was vaguely shaped like a pony, but that might have been a bias caused by his anxious mind. He couldn’t feel anything from it at all, which suggested that Bwoon did not loosen her tendrils into his flesh, exerting some level of control over him. That was good.


    “Well, there’s nothing much I can say about this, unfortunately. She’s just… there. I had thought that she would jump out – or maybe off – after she was satisfied, but she doesn’t seem to have any intention of leaving your… skin,” Fai said, the slightest wrinkle of concern appearing on his temple. “It could be that she simply hasn’t learned how, but I can’t be sure. We’ll have to wait.”


    “I see.” There was a conflict in Ginger. He had regarded Bwoon as some demented, mystical horse before, but now… he thought differently. Well, maybe his sentiments towards horses – built upon traumas from the Wild – were slowly overtaking him. It was hard to tell.


    “I heard you tell Bwoon off when she was standing on you,” Fai said.


    “Yes. That was when she…” Ginger gave a shrug that completed the sentence.


    “Oh. Interesting.” Fai narrowed his eyes.


    Soon, the two were out of the stall. Shan was back with the horses and Vess was feeding and injecting the many of them still held in their stalls.


    “Have you ridden a horse before, Ginger?” Fai asked.


    “Yes.”


    “Great! Let’s find you a steed. Feel free to choose from the ones inside or the ones outside.”


    Ginger wore a nervous smile.


    He had known it would come to this, and he was quite excited. There were so many choices, it was suffocating.


    Swiftly stepping away from Fai, he started considering his options one by one. The plump dragonling didn’t know what criteria to use for his choice. The horses in Ravi seemed bigger and stronger than the ones from the Wild. In his eyes, they achieved a similar level of bulk and height, giving him the illusion that on that front, they were all the same.


    He switched to considering their colors and their… teeth.


    One blew a raspberry in his face, spit raining on him. Its breath was atrocious.


    It lost a hundred points in Ginger’s consideration.


    Another gave him an ominous look, as though promising him a kick as soon as it got the chance. It was a shame. Ginger had been entranced by its pristine white color.


    Fai and Vess had laughed.


    “Wise choice! Bau’s tried to kill me several times!” the latter shouted as Ginger moved away from the white gelding.


    The dragonling considered six ‘normal’ horses after that, but for some reason, he just couldn’t bring himself to pick any of them. He couldn’t poke at the reason why.


    He had begun to think he should just choose one at random – avoiding Bau, of course – when finally…


    “This one!”


    The plump dragonling chose a strangely reserved-looking horse with a thick coat of black hair and white spots over its eyes. It disregarded his presence when he stood before it, but when he called its name, Zeng, (kindly provided by Vess when he asked) it stepped forward and stood as close to him as it could from inside the stall.


    Ginger beamed. Now this was more like it.


    “Oho. Great choice. Zeng is very obedient and composed. He rarely gets nervous in unfriendly terrain or when danger is afoot. I can think of no horse better for you. Well, at least for the journey we need to make,” said Fai. That reassured Ginger quite a bit.


    Together, they led the horse into the field, with Ginger trying his best to earn Zeng’s favor. He fed the horse a bit of the treats Fai handed him and stroked the dark coat while muttering sweet nothings in the horse’s ear. Honestly, he might have been begging the horse to go easy on him.


    Fai and Shan saddled up the dark horse and gave Ginger a crash course on how all the proper horse-riding equipment worked. The dragonling nodded more times than he had done in the last Stride. In the end, he was convinced he got everything.


    “Alright. He’s ready. Jump on,” Fai told him.


    “Right,” Ginger said and breathed out a sharp fooo. It was a trifle getting on Zeng’s back with a single leap off the ground.


    …But he never managed it.


    Zeng suddenly panicked, stood on his hind legs, and darted ten meters away before turning to the trio and sitting on the ground.


    Ginger dropped from midair, gaping.


    “Uh… Did I do something wrong?” he asked while staring at the black horse. He couldn’t understand. Fai had said Zeng was the most composed horse here. So why…


    Fai laughed, much to Shan and Ginger’s surprise. Vess’ laughter, bold and mocking came from the stables. He had been watching. Quite like the man with the grizzled hair, he knew what was going on.


    “I suspected this was going to be the case. It seems a certain pony doesn’t want you riding other horses,” said Fai.