PART I - FANTASTIC BEASTS

Callie quietly closed the door behind her and took a deep, cleansing breath. It helped. A little. Logically, she got it. Whatever was going on was just plain messed up, and her house-mates had every reason to try to figure out a plan of action without her being present.

Logically.

It still stung a little bit.

Taking another deep breath, Callie walked the steps to the ground and wandered towards the garden area in the middle of the housing cluster. A dozen different people, all races and genders, were milling around. Some chatting in small groups, a few others sitting in singles under a tree. Several of the trees, maybe eight or so, were huge, easily fifteen meters tall and one in diameter. Others were smaller, all combining to provide welcome shade and a calm feeling. Callie couldn’t tell what kind they were, but from what bark looked like, they were unfamiliar.

A brick-paved pathway, maybe a meter wide, bisected the area, and a second crossed with it in the center. Stone benches surrounded the center, which sported a small fountain with a stream of clear water pouring out in each of the four directions. Off the benches in each of the quadrants were a cleared grassy area, which had people lying down taking in whatever sun filtered down through the leaves.

Callie shuffled along the path, gawking at each of the strange plants and flowers, keeping her head down due to the bright sun, but so loving the warmth beating on her back. She had a momentary worry about possibly getting sunburned here, but it faded away quickly, overpowered by the simple mental noise of the reality of her situation.

“I will not break down yet,” she said to herself as she hoisted herself up on one of the benches. Her feet dangled in the air as she stared at her tiny sandaled feet. A horned beetle of some kind, maybe three centimeters long and sporting a bright-red carapace, carefully walked along the edge of the fountain. Occasionally it would be splashed by a misting of water, but it just kept plodding on. One careful step in front of the other. Exactly what Callie had to do.

With a flash of motion, the little beetle lowered its horn and shot some kind of a projectile towards another insect that resembled a large ant. The ant-thing’s head was cleanly removed by the shot, and the rest of its body just stood there, its legs still attached securely to the fountain stone.

“Slingstone Beetle,” a voice said. Callie looked up, seeing the yellow and black-spotted feline-person she saw earlier sitting on a neighboring bench, also watching the beetle stalk its prey.

“Sorry?” Callie said.

“I said ‘Slingstone Beetle’,” she said again, gesturing to the beetle who was now closing in on its target. “They can shoot a tiny pellet from their horns that will either stun or outright kill their prey. This one is just a baby. The larger ones can get up to ten times that size and have been known to shoot small birds and lizards.”

“I’m not much of an insect person,” Callie said, only mildly interested. A bullet-shooting beetle was actually really interesting, but right now her thoughts were just too scattered and preoccupied to spare the brain power.

“I’m Jesca,” the Catkin said as she moved to Callie’s bench. Was she a Cheetah? Would she be a Cheetahkin then?

”Callie kicked her legs and looked at the ground. “Hi, I’m Callie,” she said.

“You look sad,” Jesca said, bending over to get into Callie’s line-of-sight. “Is something wrong?”

“What?” Callie said. “Sorry, it’s just been a really long day and my mind is a little jumbled.”

“I saw you with the Ogre earlier today; the one that beat up the Dwarf that pushed that Pixie. You’re a little hard to miss with your hair. But I saw you with him. Is he your friend?”

Callie tried to force a weak smile. “I think so. He’s been really nice to me so far. I just met him earlier today and he helped me.”

“What happened?”

“I woke up in the wagon and some Dwarves were being jerks to me. Tazrok stepped in and they backed off.”

“Dwarves are the worst, at least when they are young. All they think about is drinking and sex. Actually, a lot of males are like that.”

Callie gave a light chuckle. “That’s been my experience, too.”

“What about the others you were with?”

“They’re nice. But I think I’m proving to be more of a burden than they thought I might be. I think they are rethinking whether to help me.”

“Help you how?”

Callie paused, getting her head again wrapped around the ruse they had all agreed on. “I woke up in the wagon on the way here. I don’t remember anything from before that. Well, what I do remember is … jumbled. I didn’t even know my class.”

Jesca’s eyes went wide. “Oh no! Do you know how you got into the wagon?”

Callie shook her head. “Nope. I don’t really know anything about anything.”

“That must have been scary, especially if you woke up to a bunch of Dwarves. Did the Scryer determine your class, at least?”

Callie paused again. They hadn’t discussed what to say about her apparent class ‘void’. “It was complicated,” Callie finally said. “But with some help from the Master Trainer, they think I am a Ranger.” That had the benefit of being the truth, at least.

“Really? I’m a Ranger, too! Wow! A Gnome Ranger. I’ve never heard of that.”

“Yeah, neither had Master Trainer Thorn, or anyone else. But that’s what they gave me. At least I know how to shoot a bow.”

“That’s good. Do you have any skills yet?”

Callie shook her head. “No, just a perk for Advanced Archery.”

“Ahh. All Rangers will have that perk at Iron Rank. It’s needed to really be a decent archer. I actually have two skills, Multi-shot and Sniper-shot. I’m not very good with Sniper, though.”

“What do they do?”

“Well, with Multi-shot, my arrow splits into three while it’s in the air. And with Sniper, it gives you a really long range and does a lot more damage, but costs a lot of mana, too.”

Mana? Where had Callie heard that term before? Another video game thing, maybe? If she remembered what one of her friends went on about, it was like a pool of magic power for your spells. Callie then imagined shooting an arrow and, using magic, it splitting into multiples. “That sounds really cool.”

“Cool? No, neither of those skills have an ice effect. I think we get an ice arrow of some kind at higher tiers, though.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“No, it means … interesting … or fascinating,” Callie said, blinking, her thoughts jerked back to the Cheetah girl.

“Oh! Cool… Cooooool… Coooooool. I like it!” Jesca said, sounding the words out slowly.

Callie couldn't help but to smile. Jesca’s enthusiasm was a little bit infectious. “What bunkhouse are you in?”

“Blue and orange, over there,” Jesca said, vaguely pointing to their left. “I found another Ranger when I arrived so we decided to room together. And then we got assigned with four others, although two of them I haven’t met yet. I guess one is a Bearkin, so I hope he or she isn’t scary. I also hope none of us get territorial." Then she added, “We’re all Beastkins.”

“Is the other Ranger as nice as you are?” Callie asked.

“He’s a little more … gruff maybe? He’s a Gnoll so they tend to be …” Jesca trailed vaguely gesturing, searching for the right word.

“Grumpy?”

“Sure! That works. But he is really nice, just doesn’t have a lot of patience.”

“So, Gnolls are also Beastkin and not … whatever-animal-kin? Wait, for that matter, what’s the right word for you? Sorry if that all came off a little rude,” Callie said with a wince.

“Oh no problem, especially since you don’t remember anything. What do you know about the Beastkin?”

“I really don’t know anything,” Callie said with a shrug.

“Hmm. Let me see if I can give you a quick summary of Beastkin history and naming, then.” Then she added, “I like to tell stories, by the way.”

Jesca pondered for a few moments, thinking through what to say. “Let me know if you remember any of this, but I’m just going to start at the beginning. Way back when, some five-hundred years ago, there was a mad wizard that did all kinds of experiments combining people and animals. Mostly it was with Humans, but a few Elves and Fae too. One day, all the animal-people rose up and killed the Wizard. As they escaped, most chose to remain together and so the Beastkin nation was formed. Even though everyone was a different combination of people and animal, they all unified under that name.”

Callie sat in rapt attention.

“Over time, the nation grew and grew. With few exceptions, the different animal types couldn’t have babies with each other, but still the nation flourished, largely mingled together. So now, all of the animal types are called Beastkin. A few, like the Gnolls, who have a history from hyenas, have their own names for themselves. The Lamia, who are snake-based, are another that have their own name, as do the Naga, who are also descended from snakes. And for the cat-based Beastkin, we will also call ourselves Catkin collectively.”

“So you aren’t a … Cheetah … kin?” Callie asked, drawing out the name.

“That would work too, but just for Cheetahs. There are lots of different cats, so it’s easier to group together under the Catkin name. Lions, Panthers, all the different Tiger colors. There’s even Catkin that came originally from domesticated house cats.”

Callie nodded slowly as she digested the naming conventions. “I think I got it.”

“Don’t worry too much. We know it can get confusing for some people. Mostly, just know that Gnolls, Lamia and Naga are still Beastkin, and Catkin represents all the cats. Oh, and don’t ever call the Lamia or Naga ‘Snakekin’, or even mention they are descended from snakes in any way, they really hate that. I mean really!”

“Got it. I didn’t see any of the … Lamia … here when we were at registration. Are there any, do you know? For that matter, what’s the difference between the two?”

“It mostly comes down to Lamia having two arms, while the Naga have four. They are very similar otherwise. You won’t see many Naga this far north, as they tend to live in the Great Oasis and deserts to the south. None of the recruits are either of those races that I saw, but I am fairly sure I saw one in the forge. Both the Lamia and Naga cultures tend to intermingle, since they are relatively similar, whenever their locations overlap.”

“And then, in the Slave War, the Beastkin joined the Free Folk? My friends gave me a little background on how the Free Folk came to be.”

“That’s right. We joined with the others to defeat the Slavers, and over the two hundred years since, have melded into the rest of society like everyone else. We do tend to group together by animal type, but primarily that is for having babies. I could only get pregnant from another Cheetahkin, for example, so when it’s time I’ll probably have to move to a town or city with a high population of my kind to mate. But if I met a non-Cheetah person I ended up with, then we could really live anywhere, and could adopt orphaned Cheetahkin to have a family.”

“I just love how everyone gets along, even though they are different races. What I can remember from where I came from, people would hate other people just for their skin color alone.”

“Whoa, that is so … sad.”

“Yea,” Callie said, a little of that sadness showing on her face.

“Sometimes the different races have some minor conflicts. Nobody likes the Dwarves, at least the younger ones, because they are so rude. Young Dwarves really become jerks towards everyone else, mostly by just being bullies when they are drunk. But once a Dwarf reaches maybe fifty or so, they aren’t really so bad. I have a friend and her great great grandfather is a Dwarf who was almost two-hundred. He is the sweetest person I know.”

“Two-hundred? How long do Dwarves live?”

“Two-hundred is about average for Dwarves. Elves live longer, maybe to three-hundred.”

“What about Gnomes?”

“You don’t know?”

Callie shrugged.

“About two-hundred years or so as well, unless they blow themselves up, or drown in a vat of something, or fall into some contraption they are making, or get melted by an artifact or something else equally grisly. Gnomes dying in accidents isn’t uncommon. Great Engineers, though, if they live.”

Two-hundred years?! Callies head exploded trying to imagine. Three-hundred for Elves? “Wow!” was all she could manage to say in return.

“I can really amaze you,” Jesca said. “The Fairy can live to be almost four-hundred years old, maybe even five-hundred if they are lucky. And most of the other Fae live a long time, too. Although Sprites and Pixies are much shorter in comparison. I think Pixies are around three-hundred. I heard that Dryads are actually immortal, if they can continue to find the right tree to bond with. I don’t know if that’s true, though.”

“And the Beastkin?”

“Not long in comparison. Around seventy to eighty years for most.”

Callie suddenly had a moment of sadness hearing that number. Only eighty, compared to a Gnome’s two-hundred!

“The Sharks live a bit longer,” Jesca continued, slightly babbling, “and Dragonkin I’m sure are at least as long-lived as the Fae. And the Tortoisekin live a very long time, too.”

“Sharks?” Callie said, surprise all over her face.

“Oh yea. They don’t leave the seashore areas though, so there aren’t any around here. They could come up here, they just don’t like to be away from the open waters for long. They are all in the far south along the ocean.”

“And Dragons? Truly? Dragons are real?”

“Uh-huh. But they are super rare and mostly solitary or in pairs. I’ve never seen one. They all live in the high mountains far to the west. The Dragonkin are equally reclusive. I’ve never seen one of them, either.”

Holy shit! Dragons are a thing!

“If you can’t remember anything, how do you know what a Dragon is?”

“Ummm,” Callie said, scrambling quickly. “I get an image, and I know what it is, but I can’t tell if it’s real or made up. Flashes of ideas.” She quickly added, “It’s very confusing.” Yea, that sounds good…

“Oh. That’s too bad,” Jesca said. “But it hasn’t even been long, so hopefully by tomorrow or the next day your memory will come back.”

“That would be great,” Callie agreed uncomfortably.

In the distance, Callie saw the door to the Ogre house open, and Lena stepped out, looking around for something. “Hey, I think one of my friends is looking for me.”

“Oh, of course!” Jesca said.

“But I’ll see you later for sure.”

“Callie, before you go, when the bell rings, do you want to go to the Ranger tent together?” Jesca asked. “Thucax and I are planning to go together, so we could meet you here by the fountain.”

“Thucax? Is he the other Beastkin Ranger? The … Gnoll, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Sure,” Callie said. “I can meet you here. I’m not really sure where to go, so it will be nice to walk with someone.”

“I will let Thucax know. I think he will be amazed that there is a Gnome Ranger.”

“I think a lot of people are going to be,” Callie said, jumping down from the bench. Oh, and thank you for both cheering me up a little and telling me about Beastkins.”

“Of course. Ask me any other questions you may have.”

“Oh! I do have one! Do you know where we fill our waterskins? Fullo, at the bathhouse said we have to always carry one. She’s a … Tigerkin, right?”

“Right! You’ve got it.” Jesca checked her pockets, realizing she didn’t have her waterskin with her. “As for water, I did ask someone earlier and they said this fountain can be used as drinkable water.”

“Great! That makes it super convenient.”

Callie took a moment to start filling her waterskin. She noticed that the Slingstone Beetle was busy finishing the ant it had killed earlier. Putting the stopper into the end of the waterskin, Callie turned to start the trek back to her new home.