Fang woke to the sound of tumbling rocks.
At least that's what it seemed to be. After a quick stretch and a few bleary blinks, his ears swiveled and narrowed down the source of the sound to Charlie's open mouth. As he listened, the sound alternated between slightly-wet-landslide and chainsaw-stuck-in-a-meat-grinder. Rather than wake himself up fully, Fang decided he would go back to sleep. Of course, he couldn't sleep with that racket in such close proximity, so something must be done.
Fang silently rose to his paws and stepped down off of Lillian's chest, prompting her to give an unintelligible grumble and grope around for her warm and fuzzy blanket. Her hand eventually found Angela's blanket and pulled it over herself instead.
Fang made his way to the sleeping form of Charles and stepped up onto his chest. Fang's initial assessment of the blood mage had been entirely correct. He was soft and squishy, an ideal bed for napping and lazing on. Fang was almost distracted into taking a break, but the sound of gargled boulders from another sleeping breath reminded him of his mission. He stepped up over Charlie's neck and onto his face, turning a quick circle before curling up on top of it, his flank smothering the snoring mage's mouth and nose, putting an end to the racket.
Charlie's sleep became restless, his nose twitching on the edge of a sneeze as he struggled for breath. Fang ignored his struggle and quickly dropped off into another contented nap, oblivious to his bed's distress.
Meanwhile, Angela, now exposed to the cold, sleepily reached over and yanked on Alex's blanket, rolling the grumpy enchanter off of his bedroll and onto the cold stone.
Alex reached out in turn, seeking a blanket to grab, but a quick nudge of earth magic put Angela just outside his reach. After a few moments Alex sat up and blearily looked around. He noticed his blanket on Angela, and he was about to lean over and snatch it back when he noticed Lillian wrapped up in Angela's blanket. He grumbled and got up, teetering over and reaching down to yoink the blanket off of the sleeping girl, but hesitated for a moment. Alex sighed, and straightened up, leaving Lillian to her nap and digging the blanket out of her bag instead, before returning to his nap with very cold toes. At least Charlie had stopped snoring, so he didn't need to cover his ears to return to dreamland.
----------------------------------------
Eventually, the party woke up. Charlie was the first to rise, tossing and turning until he attempted to sleepily push Fang off of his face. Fang did not take kindly to that, and he dug in his claws to prevent himself from being dislodged. Charlie sat up with a yelp of pain, and the sudden change in orientation of his seat was finally enough to make Fang relinquish his spot. He retracted his claws and landed on Charlie's bedroll, next to his leg. He glared sleepily up at his bed, fur ruffled and eyes half-lidded. Charlie glared back at Fang, and put a hand to his face, wincing as it came away with little drops of blood.
He rolled over and poked the blanket-cocoon which had replaced Lillian. "Hey. Hey Lillian. Your familiar attacked me while I slept. Can you heal me? I'm getting blood all over my blankets."
Lillian shifted under her blanket and a little bit of brown hair spilled out as a hand emerged, waving around until it found Charlie's face, then clapping over his mouth. A muffled "Shhhhhhhhhhh," emanated from the blanket, and a trickle of positive energy flowed into him, quickly closing the small puncture wounds without a trace. The hand retracted, and Lillian quickly dozed off again.
Charlie gave a quick thumbs up to the blanket before looking over at Fang. He attempted to shoo Fang over back towards Lillian, but his waving hands had no effect on the sleepy cat. Next, he attempted to push the cat, but Fang seemed to flow around or under his hands like a thick and fuzzy liquid. He started rubbing himself against Charlie's attempted pushes, beginning to vibrate and rumble. He called out for help once again, whining, "Lilliannnnnnn. Your familiar is vibrating at me. Is it growling? It doesn't look angry. Is it trying to use some weird skill on me? Or explode? What do I do?"
A pebble fell from the ceiling and smacked Charlie on the head. "Shhhhhhhhhhh." This time it was Angela who propped herself up on an elbow and shushed him, before huddling back down under her stolen blanket.
Alex was a bit less sleepy since he'd never quite dropped back off to sleep after his chilly-toed foray, so he sat up and tried to help. He traced out a spell in the air and soothingly intoned, "Calm down little guy. We're trying to rest. Just take a little nap, and we'll be ready to go again when you wake up. For now, just sleep." The spell completed, and Alex sat back, waiting for it to take effect.
And take effect it did. Fang stood stock still. He was no longer rumbling, to Charlie's relief, but he was vibrating. Fang's fur puffed out and his pupils dilated as he suddenly noticed EVERYTHING. There were dust motes floating around, the humans were all breathing at different speeds, the annoying one was looking smug, his heart was drumming like it was auditioning for a death metal band, that bundle of blankets just moved, there's something in there for him to kill! He dashed towards the disturbance, then got distracted again by A SNAKE ATTACKING LILLIAN'S HEAD MUST KI- oh it's just a strand of her hair moving, must kill anyway! Fang pounced and landed with the force of a small punch right on her chest, pinning the offending strand of hair with extreme prejudice and eliciting a loud yelp from the startled and sleepy girl. He was promptly thrown off, along with her (stolen) blanket, but was too busy assaulting the fluttering cloth to worry about the insult. By the time he landed, Angela had shifted at the commotion, and the over-caffeinated cat launched himself at the foot taunting him from under the girl's sheets.
----------------------------------------
The hyperactive kitty terrorized the squad for a full hour before the spell wore off. By the end, they had begun to manage his frenzy by wiggling things at him from different angles to attack and encouraging him to spend as much time running between them as possible, rather than attacking them. Once the spell wore off, the group actually did not notice immediately. Fang was still darting from one wiggly, tempting target to another, but after a couple of target switches he slowed down a bit, and then dedicated himself solely to chasing Angela's extra bootlace, even when she tried to hide it from him.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
The human eventually made the correct decision of surrendering Fang's prey to the almighty hunter. Fang trotted around the room with it in his mouth, dragging it along the ground to show everyone the result of his hunting prowess. Then he curled up, pinned it under a paw, and dropped straight into a nap.
The rest of the squad gave a collective sigh of relief and took a few minutes to rest themselves. Each took out their rune-inscribed weapons and meditated with them, drawing in and purifying the plentiful dungeon mana in order to restore their reserves, depleted as they were from the fight against the horde.
As after rolling up their blankets and bedrolls the party had a light meal (light being a highly relative term in Charlie's case) and set out into the tunnels once more. Fang was not quite finished napping, so he elected to rest on top of Charlie's oversized backpack as the party carried on rather than exploring further on his own. He had already gathered enough prey for his humans, they could hunt down more on their own if they wanted. Charlie was initially alarmed when he started kneading the backpack to soften it up, but once it became apparent Fang wasn't after his food, he relaxed and took to his new role as palanquin-bearer quite well.
For quite a while the party proceeded cautiously, but they encountered nothing moving, not even the tiny insects and shadow-dwelling rodents which were normally ubiquitous in dungeons. Eventually, Alex's miraculous inability to keep silent prompted him to complain once again. "Why is it so empty? There should be rats and zombies all over the place, hell, even a fly would probably give me enough for my next level. So where are they all?"
For once Charlie didn't have a readied textbook response, and the party stood in silence for a moment before Lillian spoke up, "I think it might be because of the negative energy in the air. It's all over the place, and it's probably killing anything small that stays in here too long. I don't know why it's there though, the ambient mana from zombies shouldn't be this strong."
Angela nodded, thoughtfully putting a hand on her chin. "Come to think of it, those zombies were in unusually good condition. Some were a bit wounded or dried out, but they didn't look nearly as bad as corpses usually get after a week or two, and this dungeon has been around a lot longer than that if it can generate a swarm. It would make sense if there was nothing to eat the corpses though."
Lillian opened her mouth to ask how Angela knew so much about corpses in varying states of decay, then closed it as she remembered the elaborate web of lies she had been spun the last time she'd asked about the girl's past. Depending on who you asked, Angela could be a princess in hiding from familicidal relatives across the Dead River, the favored disciple of an ancient sage, a daughter of an up and coming merchant preparing to take over the family business, or even a shapeshifted unicorn living among mortals to build empathy. Each of them would swear up and down that the story she'd told them was beyond doubt. F Squad had long since learned to take anything Angela said with a good-sized boulder of salt, and completely disregard anything she said on certain topics.
After a moment, Charlie brought her back to the topic at hand, theorizing, "Maybe it's the dungeon core. Sometimes cores with a particularly strong theme will start processing mana. I didn't know it could happen with negative energy though, that would explain why the school told us to cull it instead of just clearing."
The party nodded solemnly, and then Alex piped up, "Wait, isn't that really dangerous? We've just spent hours breathing in negative energy? Why didn't you say something sooner?"
Lillian rolled her eyes and sighed. "It's questionable whether it's even enough to harm a rat, do you have the lifeforce of a rat? Quit being a baby, you'd need to stay in here for weeks to even notice it. Besides, any buildup will get negated the first time I heal you. I mean… do you need healing? I thought I got everyone healed after the fight but I might have missed something, I was tired. Sorry for snapping at you all..." Lillian trailed off as she seemed to finally hear the words coming out of her own mouth.
At this point, Fang cracked an eye. However, it wasn't due to his familiar's sudden growth and loss of a spine. The strange actions of his human were far too confusing for him to bother figuring out. Getting angry at the flashy one was one thing, he was sure there were no end of sensible reasons for that. But then she went and did something utterly incomprehensible, like apologizing. Trying to figure that out was worse than figuring out the strange numbers on his character sheet. No, the thing that had woken Fang from his nap was not some petty banter among his pets. He had been woken up by a strong waft of sunlight tickling his whiskers.
He looked around, but there was no sun down in the caverns. This sunlight was not like the normal mana filling the cave, which felt so unpleasant when absorbed and did not expand his pool. It felt good. Not quite as good as the sunlight which came from above, but good nonetheless, similar to the feeling he got from his tanning rock or marble. He stood up on Charlie's pack, his light step and smooth movements not alerting his bed to his activity.
He sniffed around, trying to pinpoint the source of the pleasant tingle of warmth. A little bit was coming from the direction the party was traveling, but the density of energy that had woken him was coming from near the floor, in a small hole. The gap in the stone seemed just large enough for a large mouse or small rat, but it widened up a little after the disguised opening. Fang licked his chops, drooling at the thought of a mouse which gave off this much sunlight.
He lightly leapt down from Charlie's backpack, causing his bed to look back, but by the time his eyes landed on Fang's dark form among the darkness and shadows, the cat was already sniffing at the hole. There was a faint scent of something like a rat, but similar to Red, it smelled like an old kill. The warmth trickling into his whiskers was even stronger as he sniffed at the hole though, so before Charlie or his familiar could call out to him, he stuck his head through the hole, and contorted the rest of his body along after it, stuffing himself through the small hole.
Charlie caught sight of him doing so, and he watched in befuddled surprise as the feline vanished into the mouse hole like a genie into a lamp. "Uh… Did you guys see that just now?" The rest of the squad looked around and at him in confusion, except Lillian, who looked at the wall as she sensed the direction her new bond was pointing. Charlie pointed at the small hole in the wall and said, "I think your familiar might have a size-changing skill or something. He just somehow got sucked through that tiny little mana vent."
The party faffed about in confusion at Fang's point of disappearance for a minute, but Lillian wasn't getting any feelings of distress over her bond with the vanished cat, so the party eventually continued on through the labyrinthine tunnels.
After all, they were moving towards the same goal.