Chapter 25 - 25: My face hurts and getting aethered sounds painful

After the impact, I felt my bond with Rakka suddenly cut off and had a bit of a headache. It felt like my face got hit with a tree branch. Staring at Rakka's crumpled form, I watched as he slowly turned into a shower of light and flow back into my drajule-embedded knife. "What just happened?", I wondered aloud.

"Well dear, you just lost your first fight and had your monster turn back into aether, or 'aethered' for short", my mother explained. As she walked over to explain what happened and see how I was, her Karatsune shrunk down to her little size and jumped up to her shoulder.

"Is he...okay?", I asked with worry in my voice and my knife drajule in hand. I never fought with a monster before and I never saw what happened when they were defeated. I've seen binder duels before in town, but I never stuck around long enough to see how it ended. I was really worried that this meant I could never be a binder now that Rakka was aethered.

Seeing my worry, my mother placed a hand upon head and rubbed it. "He'll be fine. Just give him six hours or so to heal up", my mother said with a smile, "Bonded monsters like him don't return to the aether when they're defeated like wild monsters. When they get defeated they do turn back into aether, but they go back into their drajules instead. The drajule helps to anchor their existence and heal their wounds. He'll back to normal in no time".

I let out a sigh of relief at my mother's words, relieved that Rakka was fine and that I hadn't killed him due to my inability to command. I took a deep breath of the cold afternoon air to calm my nerves and looked around the area that was disturbed by our battle.

The snow and dirt was clearly disturbed by the techniques of our monsters, with Aura's earth abilities tearing up the ground and leaving claw marks, while Rakka's ice technique caused icicles to form and poke out of the snow. It was an impressive sight to behold, but one sight in particular threw me for a loop.

Earlier, Aura threw Rakka straight towards a tree, defeating him in that instance. What I had failed to realize earlier was that the tree she tossed him towards was one directly behind me. By all accounts, I should've been smacked with the full force of an overgrown elk. "How come I didn't get hit?", I wondered aloud.

My mother chuckled at my words. With a knowing grin, she wordlessly pointed towards the ground near my feet. I followed her pointing and noticed footprints, my footprints, marking the snow. The footprints revealed that I had somehow managed to perceive the sudden elk toss and avoid it without so much as a scratch.

That didn't really explain anything to me, but my mother just chuckles again. "That Silvia", my mother began to explain, "is the second benefit of the battle bond. When majimonsters battle one another, the damage can get surprisingly brutal to the environment, but the binders who control the monsters always come out unscathed".

"How come?", I asked.

My mother smiled at my question, a smile I recognized as being one of her "lesson time" smiles. "Since we have some time before Rakka heals up, I might as well explain".