They didn't argue at first. The disagreement started with two different solutions to the same problem. Ideologies that sparked unspoken conflicts.
Pluto avoided it as long as he could, staring into the forest that he couldn't see. Mist had swallowed definition again, tweaking the settings on sound and sight. Perception became a mirage that he could only take with a grain of salt. Sound played the listener, amping and reducing the pitch anytime it deemed fit.
Pluto gritted his teeth under his breath, breaking the silence for the first time. "We can't stay at this level."
Mira didn't respond, but she agreed with that. The opposition was scaling. The duo, Saul, beasts that had adapted faster than expected. The owl. None of it suggested that staying still would be rewarded, and neither would moral integrity. But Mira didn't want to believe that.
"We kill beasts," she said sternly, already angry at what Pluto hadn't said yet. " They give less, but they're easier to kill. Less literate equals less risk."
"They give less," Pluto repeated.
Mira frowned. "Being alive is better than being ambitious, Pluto."
He shook his head. It wasn't. He'd rather die than cower in fear at every snap of a branch. Others would too. And if he tried to appease Mira, he would fall behind.
"We need growth, not a steady one, instantaneous," he finally replied. "And only humans can give that."
Mira stopped walking. "And to when we find them, we'll go back to the owl to find more, then feed it more seeds and it grows more powerful, and eventually, we'll create our worst nightmare."
"We don't need to visit it again, we already know how battle seeds work," Pluto said quietly.
Her jaw tightened. "That path entirely ends at the owl's domain, there's no alternative."
Pluto stepped closer to her, almost enough to feel her breath. "We can't outrun people like Saul by farming animals forever."
"Neither can we outrun the consequences by continuing to kill our kind."
Pluto exhaled. "What consequences?"
"Karma."
"That's speculation."
"Is it?"
Pluto's words hung halfway. He wasn't out of points on why his path was better, he was just too baffled at the kind of argument Mira was putting up. The forest rustles as If amused. It nodded in satisfaction through the mist that clung to everything tangible.
They weren't going to separate, at least not physically. In philosophy.
Mira chose beasts – easy to find, less risky, more abundant. It was stabile growth.
Pluto chose people – high-risk encounters, boom in power spikes. Direct escalation.
But there was one rule: proximity. They agreed to stay within reachable distance, to be able to assist one another if anything went wrong.
But other than that, they hunted alone.
***
Pluto left first while Mira was still grappling with the reality of his decision. She stood still and stared at the ground, seemingly counting her toes. He could still see her through her heat patterns.
He focused on the forest that mist couldn't mask, on the veined heat that flowed in everything from swamps to trees, like the forest itself had a pulse.
He wasn't looking for prey. He was looking for presence. Given they could be the same thing, but it ultimately came down to the sentience of it.
Entrants moved differently from predators. They weren't as leisurely as beasts were in strolling through the forest. There was hesitation in their steps. Awareness that transcended bloodlust.
It took less than an hour. And strangely so.
He felt absence before he felt the man, and that alone should have been enough to make him back down.
No insects humming, no creaking of bark, no wind breathing in space. Even his steps no longer registered with the ground.
He stopped.
Across a clearing stood another entrant. He looked normal. No weapon Pluto could see, no cadence in his stance.
Pluto frowned for a second stretched out too long. He spoke.
But nothing came out.
He realised immediately, sound was gone. Totally.
The man smiles crookedly, tilting his head in a taunt. He didn't communicate intent, it was well known already.
He stepped forward and lunged. The first strike was awkward, far below what Pluto expected from someone who seemed so confident.
There was no refinement or skill in his stride, just a plain dash meant to close the distance.
Pluto pivoted, his movements strained from his earlier use of his fighting ability. Their shoulders collided but the impact doesn't echo. It should have.
It was disorienting. Pain without noise was lacking. His brain struggled to register it with the same efficiency.
Pluto shrugged it off faster than his opponent could, countering with a short hook towards his ribs. The man gags– silently – and retaliates with a knee to Pluto's thigh.
They separate briefly and advance for each other again. There was no words, no taunts, no heavy breathing. Just a scowl and confusion, on the man and Pluto's face respectively.
They clash again, throwing blows that had no purpose but revenge. When Pluto took one to the jaw, he gave it back to the groin. When the man blocked, he smiled in celebration at Pluto's missed chance.
It was messy. Neither of them had the slightest idea about how to fight. They just threw hands and hoped for the best. Misjudgement was the preceding officer that governed their movements.
Pluto was failing. He could not hear the rasp in his breath to regulate it. He could not feel pain correctly to grimace properly.
The man, however, seemed use to it. He fought comfortably without an audio track to his actions.
The man ducked under Pluto's blow, resurfacing with a ramming shoulder, pushing him backwards into a tree.
The bark splinters bite into Pluto's skin, drawing blood silently. The impact rattled through Pluto's teeth. But he doesn't give it a moment to sink in. He shoved off and swung fiercely at the opponent before he regained stability.
Strike after strike, time began to stretch. Without sound, duration felt infinite. Attacks felt slower and faster all together.
Pluto stepped back to avoid the thrust, but he mistimed his steps and tripped over a root. He fell and a fist connected with his cheekbone, rough and dirty.
Pluto dragged the man down, twisting and turned his limbs in an attempt to choke him. A pitiful attempt it was. The man broke his hold with a headbutt. Stars bloomed behind Pluto's vision.
He crawls to gain space, but a kick connected with his abdomen before he could stand upright.
The fight drags with them both unwilling to learn from their mistakes. Punch, counter, block, separate. The rhythm was adhered to so much it almost became like playing a record over and over again.
Their breaths grew harsher, but the silence that followed was more exhausting. Frustration built, but not only in Pluto. The man had expected this to be over sooner. But it wasn't, and his teeth was bleeding.
The man's power didn't make anyone stronger or weaker, it removed all advantage. There was no rhythm to follow, no sound to orient by, no taunts that made conflict feel human. It had become a mime show, and the broadcaster was starting to get tried of watching.
They engaged again, sticking to the script that they had written for themselves. Pluto swung wider, tilting his mass forward to increase reach. The man delays his advancement by a second, allowing Pluto's arm to swing by.
He lands a blow to Pluto's ribs. Pluto absorbed it too poorly to counter. He stumbled and crashed into shrubbery. He couldn't win by hoping on the incompetence of his opponent. He needed something else.
Something internal.
Just then, the eel shifted beneath his sleeves, aligning itself with Pluto's senses. It had been there since the seeds, it had been waiting while Pluto used flashy abilities that hurt him more than he hurt others.
It didn't speak, it acted. And that was louder than words. The sensation was faint, but Pluto felt it.
It tugged left and Pluto followed, just fast enough for the punch to graze instead of connect. He didn't understand how it knew.
But the time to dwell on it didn't exist. Another nudge on his aching ribs came before he had completed the last one. It was a call to pivot.
He rotated before the kick landed fully. The guidance wasn't minimal, his reaction time was. It was barely above cutoff. But consistent.
Push, pull, tighten, release. The pattern wasn't regular like their rules of engagement had been. It didn't increase his strength, it didn't boost his speed. It just polished on his movements by fractions that changed outcomes.
For the first time, the man's confidence dulled. He didn't see the disorientation as bluntly anymore. Pluto was no longer waiting to counter, he was taking the initiative to strike. And if he listened well enough to his silent partner, those strikes landed. Not with crippling force or blurring speed, but with crude consistency.
The man strikes harder, hoping power would overcome precision. Pluto slipped to the side, not gracefully, for enough to dodge. He tightens his fist and punched across the under of his arm. The attack landed cleaner than any before, causing the man to stagger in agony that reached his ears even when sound didn't.
They reset. But this time no one was smiling.
The man lunged again with committment and desperation clouding his other unadulterated senses. He saw only Pluto's jaw, and didn't see the hand below it, the hand heading for his chest.
He shook back, managing to retain his footing, but not for long. Pluto felt the eel coil around his torso more aggressively than before. Not physically, in sensation only.
The message was clear. This was a deciding chance.
Pluto feinted to the left then forward, hooking his leg behind the man's knee just as the eel tugged again.
Lower.
The man lost his balance when Pluto drew back and fell. Pluto followed, but by decision and not cohesion.
He drove a final strike downwards, nailing the throat and filling something bubble inside.
The contact was dull and silent. Just then, the field flickered.
Then again.
Then sound came back, not at once, but gradually, in a way that Pluto almost didn't realize that it was gone before.
Wind, leaves, the calming creaking of bark. His own ragged breath.
The man died expressionless, just with a bleeding nose and sunken ribs.
Pluto waits for a moment. Nothing. The forest resumes in the background like nothing happened. The kill was done, and it had been confirmed.
He didn't feel happy to win, he felt happy that it had ended. Mira was right about the risk, but owl had also been right about the power surge.
Pluto closed his fingers around the blood wet battle seed and felt the shift. Not in the forest as usual, but in himself. In the slight strengthening of his sore limbs. It was marginal, but it was increase.
Enough to notice, not enough to dominate. The eel relaxed again once the pressure in the seed dispersed throughout his body. It receded to the background again, waiting faithfully to be called upon again.
Pluto gripped his skin, it hurt more. A bit firmer. A bit more stable.
That was the reward of killing, the reward of moral compromise.
He exhales, relieved to hear it whistle through the air. The victory was earned but it wasn't empowering.
He had realised something uncomfortable. The fight had lasted because neither of them were skilled. Saul would have ended it in a single strike, and would have most definitely gotten the same increase he now gloated over as a side hustle achievement. He needed to up his pace of murder.
And even still, killing people didn't give overwhelming response. Growth was slow regardless of what he killed.
Maybe going down the third road –the road of knowledge – would give better results. The owl could accelerate his power no doubt, but just for the right price. The thought lingered too uncomfortably. If he did so, he would have proved Mira right. Right about creating his worse nightmare by ignorance and stupidity.
In the distance, he felt her. Her cautious movements identified her well enough.
She had stayed within range, but she hadn't heard him fighting. She had seen his good, she had seen the bad, but she hadn't seen the ugly. And he hoped that she wouldn't get to.
He wiped the sweat of his brow and pulled the splinters out of his back. He had to look better than the worst. At least to validate his choice.
They met shortly after, but she says nothing about her activities. She just asked.
"Was it worth it?"
He couldn't answer. It barely was, but that wasn't enough to justify the life he had taken. Not enough the justify the pain he had inflicted on himself.
" I don't know," he said solemnly.
She nodded once. Her path may have been slower, but it was steadier.
And it would all come down to that. Whether being steady was better than being ambitious. But who was to judge, apart from the lives that would be lost to the cause.