Weakest Beast Tamer Gets All SSS Dragons

The crystal had lived in the shadows of her chest since the day of the ceremony.

That was where it had ended up naturally when everything resolved, and where it had stayed, because Luna’s body didn’t want to stop hugging it and had decided it belonged there with the same instinct that made hands move toward something before the mind had finished deciding to reach. She felt it constantly, not intrusively, not as a weight or an active reminder, but the way you felt things that had become part of you without requiring thought. She was fiercely protective of it. Protectiveness that was less a decision than a posture, a defensive closing around something before any threat had even been named.

But when Ren asked, she didn’t feel the resistance she would have expected.

She took it out without hesitating.

She stretched her own hands out in front of her, still holding it as Ren had specified, so he wasn’t removing it from her. She held it between her palms while he placed his around without making contact. Not touching the crystal itself, only the space immediately surrounding it. Reading only, not disturbing what he was reading by the act of reading it.

Luna watched the crystal while Ren read it.

Still cracked. Still nearly dark compared to what she remembered from before, when the light inside it had been enough to illuminate a large dark room completely. The energy remaining was perceptible to her because she was Luna and because you always perceived the things you had missed that much, but it was a fraction of what it had been.

“It’s what I thought,” said Ren. “The energy is around Platinum rank. Not far from Selphira and Victor, but one tier above.” A short exhale. “I’m not ready to work with statues at that level yet. Sirius is probably in a similar range if he was trapped by a similar door, so he would have to wait too.”

Luna nodded slowly. It was what she had expected. They didn’t even know for certain if the people inside complete statues were still alive, or whether reversing the process would return something functional.

“Complete statues probably need to be worked uniformly, everything simultaneously for it to come back with no damage…” Ren continued, and Luna noticed something in his voice that wasn’t doubt but was close to it. The concern of someone whose responsibility now extended further than he had expected it to extend when he started. “And the ones who received the rebound from King Dragarion are at Diamond. Han and who is probably his sister, will have to wait longer.”

Ren had moved his eyes down while explaining and thinking, then he looked up again directly at Luna’s eyes.

“But there’s something I can do right now.”

The crystal in Luna’s hands began to change.

Slowly, from the center outward, like something nearly extinguished finding a source of energy it recognized. The warmth built gradually and then was simply bigger, the same warmth Luna associated with early childhood, with her mother’s hand on her forehead during fever when the fever was still high and then, suddenly, wasn’t. The warmth that had always meant you were going to be fine.

Luna’s eyes opened wider.

“Your mother’s crystal has the Celestial Tiger’s system form very clearly ingrained,” said Ren. The effort was audible in his words, but it wasn’t too much yet. “Relatively simple compared to what I had to work through with Selphira and Victor. I don’t need to reverse anything here, I just need to understand the structure and use neutral mana to fill the gaps. The damage from when the energy was spent can be repaired and the energy refilled that way.”

The most visible crack in the crystal closed halfway.

The light went up one degree.

Only one degree. But it was a degree that hadn’t been there thirty seconds ago.

Ren released the space around it, lowering his hands. He was sweating slightly, his breathing carrying the weight of someone who has done something that looks small but isn’t small in any way.

“I can finish it slowly,” he said, “a few sessions, so I don’t pass out and keep delaying our ‘date’.” He looked at her. “Or I can fuse now and finish it in a little while.” A beat to breathe deeply. “Your choice. But I want you to feel at ease, you can sense the aura is the same. I didn’t alter it. It’s exactly what it was.”

Luna put the crystal away.

Back into the shadows of her chest in the same instinctive motion as before, quick and without deliberation, her body deciding the crystal belonged there before the mind caught up. The warmth settled exactly as she remembered it, but stronger. More present.

Then Luna threw herself forward.

The embrace arrived before Ren finished processing that it was coming, and that was the situation he ended up in: Luna with her face against his chest and her arms around him with the weight of someone who has been holding something for a long time and has finally put it down. He took a moment to respond. Then he put a hand on her back with the awkwardness of someone who is embarrassed but knows the gesture is correct yet finds the execution the harder part.

“Thank you,” said Luna, very quietly. More than once. The repetition of someone saying something because it needs to be said more than once for the full weight of what it means to arrive. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Ren exhaled and didn’t answer immediately.

“Do it slowly,” Luna said before he could. The urgency from before had settled into something quieter but no less firm. “You don’t have to push yourself any more. You don’t have to hurt yourself or pass out again… We have time.”

Ren smiled.

Not visibly, not from the angle Luna was at. But it was there.

“So what do you want to do?” he said, after enough time had passed for the moment to have the space it deserved. The awkwardness in his voice was genuine and he wasn’t trying to hide it, because hiding it would have cost energy he preferred to use on other things. “We could walk through the city, or find somewhere quieter, or…”

He went red remembering what somewhere quieter had implied the last time.

Luna pulled back just enough to look at him.

She nodded.

Ren didn’t finish the sentence. Didn’t get anywhere near finishing it before Luna wrapped the shadows around both of them and the shadow step took them to wherever she had decided they were going.

♢♢♢♢

It wasn’t the same lake.

Larger than the one at the school, this one was part of the castle grounds, surrounded by the same species of plants with their particular capacity to release water into the air and produced small bubbles rising through their stems. The light that came through the mist in the late afternoon hit at angles that gave everything a brightness slightly different from ordinary brightness.

Ren landed on the ground.

Specifically, he landed on the ground from the position he had been in on the bed, because Luna had taken him from there and brought him like that, and Luna had landed on top of him with the ease of someone who managed the shadow step with enough naturalness that the landing was exactly as soft as she wanted it to be.

Ren looked up.

Luna looked down at him.

The bubbles rose slowly around them. The rain came down from the tops of the plants with the gentle persistence of something that didn’t soak but settled, and the afternoon light moved through it.

Luna leaned down slowly toward his lips.