I hate camping. Sleeping outside? Not for me. Campfire food that is both soggy and burnt at the same time? Not for me. Bug bites, lumpy ground, cold nights, damp misery? Not for me.

Yet here I am with a pack of magic school cub scouts who couldn't even coordinate a cooking pot.

This is one of those moments I am so very glad I have a permanent fur coat. I'm less glad that I can't tell these chuckleheads how to plan shit. Damn, but they need guidance. And as much as I'd like to say 'Not my problem', Gandalf there is giving away my dinner, which absolutely is 'my problem'. Dammit.

The guardhouse is the best bet for comfortable camping. It's rustic, but a decent building. As far as housing goes, this building ranks higher than 'wooden tent', but below 'log cabin'.

Seth gave me a look and sent me outside. I knew what he wanted. I'm to find the highest concentration of mana in the area.

I'm game, of course. If nothing else, I'll get a gorgeous view of the city, and let me make a good mental map of the nearby areas.

While Seth was doing his thing, I went off to do mine. Without the kids it was a fast and easy hop up to the peak. I must say having a cat body is really convenient at times. Moving near vertically was a breeze and I could take the short way.

I wanted a look at this mana well. Which turned out to not be a well at all. It was a fortress. In ruins.

There was a battle here, and there were hints of the fight all over. The scars of ash and fire had been eroded by time, but blackened stones and bits of rubble still poked out of the weeds. The stone walls of the fortress weren't blown up, they had been ripped down. I couldn't imagine what they had used as a wrecking ball, or what kind of siege engine they could tote up here. That shit was just too crazy to think about. But! I forgot! Magic.

My whiskers weren't triggered by anything nearby and I wasn't interested in exploring the ruin just yet so I hopped down to a ridge that overlooked the city. Rosia, the blue rose of the mountains. And it deserved its name.

From this distance the walls formed blue petals as they separated the different city districts. The blue thatch on the roofs filled in each petal with glorious color. The deep lake in the center of the valley made the rose look a little lopsided, but only added to the organic shape of the city. The Magic Academy and the Palace were clearly older than the rest of the city, and had been fortresses in their own right. The Magic District grew around the Academy, and another school, the Combat Academy most likely, grew around the Palace. Spacious noble estates made up the west part of the city, and then there was the very crowded, and very poor, East Side. This mountain, with the busted mana well, was lined up with the East Side. There were five mountains total, each with a fortress on the peak. The largest fortress was the one above the Palace.

That mountain had more than a mana well on it. There were stone structures going all the way up, and a waterfall shot out of the mountain and into the lake. Magic bullshit, for sure. All that water couldn't be coming off that mountain naturally.

I had been sitting enjoying the view for probably a lot longer than I should have. Until a tiny tremor in my whiskers had me glancing beside me. A white chicken had joined me in my contemplations of the city. A magic chicken, apparently.

"Lovely view," I said. Well, I meowed. What can I say? I was feeling conversational, even if it was just a stupid chicken, and I was a stupid cat who could only stupidly meow.

"Lovely?" the chicken replied. "Perhaps it is."

I think I lost one of my nine lives when the bird talked back. Not only could the damn thing talk, but it understood my meows!

"I beg your pardon. Did you not realize I was here? I thought you were speaking to me." The hen was weirdly formal. At least, I think she's a hen. The translated voice in my head is definitely female, though the chicken was clucking at me, not actually speaking words. I thought large combs on a chicken meant rooster? Eh, what do I know. Nothing about chickens, apparently.

"I– uh, yes. I was speaking to you, but I was surprised you could answer," I explained.

The hen nodded sagely. "You are newly awakened?"

"Sure?" Let's go with that.

"A magic beast can speak and be understood by all magic beasts, not just their own kind. Part of the magic that empowers us grants us understanding. Surely you've noticed you can understand the humans you've arrived with?"

I had noticed that. I could understand the humans even though they didn't speak English. "I thought humans were different?" I mean, humans thought they were the only ones with souls. Or was this a sentience vs sapience thing?

The chicken cocked her head. "Humans use magic. That makes them magic beasts too."

"But they don't understand us?"

"They do. They just pretend not to. They don't like feeling bad about killing and eating beasts that can talk, so they pretend not to hear."

I knew that wasn't true. Seth wouldn't have ignored me. Humans were different in some way.

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I decided I didn't want to get into a philosophical discussion with a chicken on the nature of humanity. Especially since I wasn't human myself anymore. "How did you become a magic beast? I don't think I've met a magic chicken before."

The chicken shivered and plumped out her feathers. "It is dangerous what we do. Not all who try gain magic, even if they return. Many never return."

"But you did and succeeded." Maybe the kids' plan to help Blaise has a shot. "Is it dangerous to everyone? The humans I'm here with are searching for a way to fix the magic in their friend. Will they find this, and will it be dangerous to them?"

At that moment Duvessa started calling out, "Here, chicky chicky chicky!" The hen jumped and skittered back, more skittish and startled than I thought normal.

"I will take you to First Hen. She will know best what to do."

"First Hen? Is that her name or rank?" I asked.

"They are the same, obviously. I am Second Hen."

Obviously. It's going to be a challenge not to roll my eyes at these bird brains. "I'm Mau."

I followed the hen down a craggy cliff. I wouldn't call it a path, since I doubted the kids would be able to follow. The hen jumped and flapped her way down while I jumped from boulder to ledge to boulder and stopped when I could see to a grassy outcropping loaded with wildflowers. This was the nesting place of the flock. It being fall, there were no new chicks, but I did notice skinnier chickens that had the gangly look of juveniles. The chickens weren't competent nest builders either. The 'nests' were mostly just holes in the dirt.

A cacophony of bachs and clucks greeted us. There was a mess of chickens here and they all gathered together below me. I lost sight of Second Hen almost immediately since she was smaller than a lot of the other chickens.

It occurred to me I might need to fight these birds. The last time I needed to fight someone I was bothered by the violence. I needed to get my head clear on what I'd be willing to do beforehand, so I could take appropriate action in the moment.

My aversion to violence felt like a cultural thing to me. Similar to the idea of bathing with the children. If that's the case, I'd need to let that go. This world was clearly more violent than my last one. Was I willing to kill these chickens?

I'd rather not. They were just chickens, and I didn't see them as being all that dangerous. But if it came to it, then yes. I would kill the ones I needed to.

With that clear in my head, I jumped down next to the flock and they immediately mobbed me. I kept my butt on the ground as I stared down the mob. I couldn't stop my ears from flattening either. I wasn't scared, not really. But having a horde of flappy magic birds as big as I was surrounding me was a teensy bit disconcerting. I growled a little when a couple got too close for my liking, and thankfully they backed off.

Their clucks were a mix of gossip and just clucks. I paid attention to it and realized a bunch of these chickens were not magic beasts. They were regular chickens. The ones closest to me, however, were all magic chickens.

Abruptly the flock parted like a sea and a large chicken, buff orange in color, strode forward. This had to be the First Hen. She regarded me calmly, in direct contrast to the skittering clucks of the other chickens. Finally she nodded.

"You have strong magic," the First Hen said. "Second Hen tells me you are looking for magic?"

"Yes, First Hen. My humans would like to help their friend who is having difficulties with her magic. We are looking for a place high in mana. I'm told this used to be a mana well. Do you know of a place here that is still mana rich?"

"There is a place high in mana, and good for magic." The First Hen continued towards me and started to circle. I was fine with that, since the other clucky hens made space. A chicken trying to be menacing was hilarious.

"Could you show me where this place is?" I was relieved my ears weren't dropping anymore. It felt rude and I couldn't stop it before. It also made me feel like I was on the back foot and I have no reason to feel that way. I'm confident this pack of birds can't do anything to me, even if their leader is bigger than me.

"But it is dangerous to chickens without our magic power," First Hen said. "It would be dangerous to you too, unless you have a magic power too?"

"What kind of power do I need?" So these chickens had talents, like the kids did? Why didn't I have a talent then? "And what is this danger?"

"Oh, no, you can't, First Hen!" a brown chicken exclaimed. "Those are ours! You can't give them away!"

"I don't want to share either! Ours!" an orangey-brown chicken squawked.

"Enough, ladies," the First Hen said. "Ninth, go entertain the humans. Twelfth, go with her."

"Twelfth?" a black and white chicken said. "What did I do?"

The orangey-brown chicken cackled. "I'm Eleventh now!"

"Oh, honey, don't be so disrespectful," another mostly black chicken scolded. The squawking and bickering got worse for a moment as more chickens piled on the scoldings.

"Enough, Ladies!" First Hen said again. "Ninth and Eleventh, go entertain the humans. If you don't then Twelfth, you'll be Tenth in a moment."

The two chickens scooted off right away. First Hen glared around at the flock until they were all staring at the ground, suitably chastised. Second Hen stayed behind First Hen, calm and a little smug. Well, maybe smug. I'm kinda shit at reading a chicken's expression.

First Hen turned back to me. "You want to go where the magic is, yes?"

"It's what I'm here for."

"Then show me what your magic power is. I would not wish to send you to certain death." First Hen had completely circled me and now stood directly in front of me.

"I'm not sure what kind of power you mean. Why don't you show me yours?"

First Hen bobbed. "Yes. I can show you. Then you show me what you can do. It is my hope you can remove the danger for us. Are your claws sharp? Are you a good hunter?"

"My claws are plenty sharp. And you still haven't told me what this danger is." If they want me to hunt this danger it must be some kind of animal or monster. There being a monster guarding the mana spot was a bit alarming. Memories of table sized spiders danced through my head. But these were chickens and they seemed to think I could hunt whatever it was. Foxes and weasels were lethal threats and would likely be considered very dangerous. I think I could hunt a fox. And if it's a magic fox, I bet I could just talk to it.

"I will demonstrate my power. All you need to do is try to catch me," First Hen said. "If I scare you, you can try to catch someone else instead."

"I'm not scared," I scoffed. Of a fucking chicken? I don't think so. Before getting into it with the chicken I took a second to check the link with Seth. He was calm and above me, so probably just looking around still. I looked up towards the peak where he was, but didn't see any of the kids.

I sensed the movement of all the chickens around me and snapped my attention back to First Hen.

And got kicked in the face hard enough to fling me through the air.