I couldn’t believe what Reed was doing.

First she’d set her weapon, along with a random bag, down beside me. Why? What’d she want me to do, wield it? It was huge. I had no hands. I could shapeshift, but that was a form I had so little experience with. Plus, I’d be wet, nude, and bleeding SP.

Once I got over that burst of panic, I realized it’d be logical for Reed to be leaving her weapon with me as a sign that she was coming to the chapel in peace. Maybe whatever monsters dwelled in here would kill an armed enemy on sight…even if their arms were hidden in an Inventory, or in some invisible void between their shoulder blades.

Even so, I wondered what Reed was actually up to. I’d assumed from my Treasure notification and from the way she and that ranger Donovan and/or possessive condor Murder talked that she was supposed to be searching, yet she didn’t rifle through the chair legs and bits of tablecloth littered around the place. Instead, she walked into the exact center of the room—got underneath the pulsing, disturbing chunk of amber—and raised her hands straight up into the air, palms forward. Her eyes stayed trained on a stained-glass window on the opposite wall. That window, though dimmed by the swirling ochre clouds of the sky above, showed a riot of raging, almost serpentine golden flames. Flames of magic…

Reed was trembling. Her words were measured, though, and steady. I knew it took a great effort to speak at all, in this place, and in this bizarre way. The sound in the chapel was sheltered, even dimly echoing, encased by the rain. Every word came loud and clear.

“Spirit of the beacon, we know your name. We revere your might and the wonders your kind has shown us. But you have wronged us.

“Five days ago you lured Donovan’s neighbor away and claimed her, taking her out of our mortal plane and into your realm of the spirit. Three days ago, you returned her, but you did not return everything.

“We may not be wise, but we are intelligent. We know when the spirits have betrayed a bond of trust. Therefore I know you not by form, but by name, and your name is Traitor.

“The cantrip is wanted. Give it back.”

A ghastly roar from another plane rocked the chapel. A supernatural darkness absorbed everything in the room but the amber beacon. The world went pupil-black, as if all the windows had suddenly been blocked, as if the door had slammed shut.

Yet the door was wide open. I was still standing in the bright-brown daytime, peering into a nightmare world. Nothing had changed except for the magic in the air. That sounds corny, but it was true in the most literal, most eerie way.

Reed sucked in a gasp and darted toward me and the exit. I hopped sideways to let her through. Inside, the roar was still reverberating…

The moment she reached the outside, Reed cupped both hands around her mouth, turned skyward, and yelled her throat out. I stood frozen, still close enough to the door to feel, even while soaked to the skin, something coming. A beast that skittered and crawled, yet was far bigger than any insect I knew.

Woah. The enormity of where I was—a new world with its own rules and customs—only now hit me. Seeing magical parallels of animals was one thing, but dipping a toe into an all-too-clearly real spirituality, or whatever all this was supposed to be, that was different, not just paranormal but existential. I didn’t know a thing about spirits or what they’d taken. I couldn’t decide if Reed honored or hated them. In fact, nothing about this situation was adding up to me. Since I couldn’t ask questions, maybe it never would.

But I did know my savior was two steps away from panic. I knew she was struggling. Depending on me.

And I figured that I knew evil, exorcism-worthy ghosts when I heard them.

I decided that once I got my first look at whatever entity we were up against, I’d activate Swipe, then keep activating it for as long as I had to. My front claws would erupt into a white flame to match the amber.

Reed planted herself between me and the broadsword still lying on the ground. She kneeled with fingers touching the ground beside the hilt—maybe to tell the spirit that while she wouldn’t strike first, she would defend herself at all costs.

Darkness curled like claws around the edges of the door and drooled out from the windows. My gut told me this was a magic exactly opposite my own, opposing the raw white magic I’d seen from many animals so far. My magic was new—this magic was ancient. Mine was shallow and untempered, but this held layers as deep as space. It was getting deeper and denser, and now my sharp eyes couldn’t see inside at all, except for that one glowing piece of amber.

Then an earthquake started from inside the building, only barely rattling the ground we stood on while it nearly shook the chapel stones apart. Reed flinched and whimpered beside me, but she didn’t back down. If Reed was going to stand her ground, then so was I.

Suddenly, it settled. There was a hush on the rainy mountain.

The darkness of the Lighthouse—or the Beacon, rather—didn’t budge. Reed sighed off as much anxiety as possible and stood upright again, weapon still dropped. I watched the doorway for whatever might emerge.

Now the darkness gathered in a different way. It slipped from the walls and pooled into a rising tower—no, a massive, humanoid silhouette, even taller and broader than the door of the place that summoned it. Instead of an outline, the figure gave off constant traces of mist and smoke. While it reminded me of a human in a cloak, it was unspecific, indistinct, nothing but shadow. An amber flicker in its chest—their chest? or his?—came and went.

A frail, utterly monotone voice croaked directly from their chest. The trickle of sound somehow reached my ears. Magic words. “You distrusted us,” they said.

“Yes,” Reed said, with bite. “We have to. We’re weak.”

“And I suppose that is yours too.”

Though the darkness hadn’t made a single gesture, some subtle shift in the smoke they gave off made Reed and I turn our heads.

The shape of a condor named Murder circled the sky above our heads, not so far away. I focused harder on the shape and realized it was fuzzy—and steaming. Murder was a creature of black magic too.

Reed turned back—so did I. She said, “Yes.”

“You want the cantrip,” they said. There was that new word again, “cantrip.” Reed had said it at least once in the campsite, and I hadn’t parsed it right at all. While I had no clue what it meant, from the thin lips of the darkness, it sounded so distinct. Then the spirit asked a blunt question: “Why.”

“It’s important,” said Reed.

“Not irreplaceable, and neither is the girl.”

Reed switched modes. She returned to the booming voice and conviction she’d used when she was talking to the chunk of amber. It sounded almost rehearsed. Considering the holy or unholy nature of everything going on, I now realized much of it probably was.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“To mortals, all life is sacred,” she said. “All memories are treasures. It’s not your place to talk about replacements. Layla’s cantrip has been forged out of common Vencian material, and therefore it is replaceable. It cannot possibly be more valuable to you than it is to her, for it is rich with memories and already it lives within her soul. Layla’s cantrip is her own. If she says it can never be replaced, then she is the decider. Let it be so.”

“Then it may be so,” the spirit said in an instant.

“You agree? Then will you return them?” Reed said. She was sliding back into her own voice and a tear-fighting tremor. “W-why did you take it?”

The darkness didn’t respond.

I was on pins and needles waiting for the right time to Swipe. convinced that this negotiation would end in a brawl one way or another. This pause could have been the calm before that storm.

“What do you feed on? Is it the memories?”

“The blood.” This time the reply was instant.

Reed began to shiver in the stifling rain, and I felt helpless by her side.

Her shoulders sagged with a heavy sigh. Then she reached for one arm and yanked up the sleeve. “It can’t have more blood than this.”

Oh no, Reed. “Blood magic” was what vampires used. My gut told me that couldn’t be a good thing, not even in this universe. I knew I was an interloper here, not acclimated to the rules of this world, but…I was getting frightened. I’d have to start a panic if this was going to be anything more than a nick on the wrist. Considering the blade at her feet, that was probably not the case here.

The condor above us screeched.

A bark of laughter shook the brown light in the shadow’s chest. I nearly fainted. The peal went wide, reaching all the way to the bird. Then the shadow said, sedately again, “No, not that kind of blood.”

I squinted at the shadow’s idea of a joke, but Reed seemed to get it, picking up her sword and backing into a fighting stance. “You, you…jerk,” she sighed. “You were playing coy all along.”

“A battle. Yes,” the spirit said.

“Why? Why us? We’re not special, we’ve never—”

The spirit interrupted her, a thin brown smile cutting across its chest. “I was invited. This world is fun.”

Agh! They said “battle”! Here it was! And despite the Swipe I’d just now activated, I was only barely ready!

I would’ve Leaped right away onto the silhouette’s chest area if Reed hadn’t already reached it—and begun to stab. She took one sturdy step forward, aiming to plunge the sword into its amber chest.

And the condor Murder was flying in just as fast. I didn’t have to look this time to feel that he was coming, emanating that same eerie energy I felt from the chapel and its monster.

Instead I did what a rock had done to me earlier: aimed for the feet. (Assuming the darkness even had feet.) Instead of focusing on what we all were doing, I put myself in momentary tunnel vision. Adding a Leap, I sprang into the base of the shadows, claws ready.

I tumbled and Swiped straight through. Physically, it was like rolling through pure misty clouds—psychologically, it flooded me with a fear I could hardly even place, a lonely fear.

In a burst, I was out on the other side, my deepest fear swept away. Had I even done anything, or had I just swatted through scary clouds?

When I landed, the first thing I did was turn, which confirmed that I did change something. I’d torn an odd hole in the shadows.

Also, Reed had driven her sword through the chest.

At that instant Murder landed behind her, profoundly large, his height almost Reed’s, his wingspan now three meters wide, large enough to blot the sky. That didn’t remove all of my concerns—in fact, his sudden bigness added new ones—but he was our ally, so I guessed it was good.

I was in full-on high-energy high-disorientation mode. So my one attack had evidently failed. What could I do now?!

Think, Taipha! Just wait and observe a little longer!

Keeping a bit of distance, I took stock of what Reed was doing. Yes, she had a sword squarely through the spirit’s chest, but she was struggling to push it in further. A sound of cracking crystal was coming from the chest—that might’ve been a crystal inside, struggling to hold. Murder wasn’t moving, he seemed to be studying the situation as hard as I was, but wow was he huge and hard not to fearfully stare at.

When I darted closer, near the side of the shadows, I saw something chilling: the dark magic was crawling up Reed’s sword, trying to break her just as surely as she was trying to break it.

Nnngh! There had to be something useful and impressive I could do!

Swipe’s time had run out earlier, so I used another—the last Swipe I had in me—and, with a long involuntary whimper, started wildly swatting the base of the shadow. Maybe if I did this long enough, it’d fall like a Jenga tower and splatter everywhere!

A final grunt came from Reed and her sword. A decisive fracture cricked from the amber core. Murder kept staring. I kept swatting.

The shadow being collapsed into rolling clouds of dustless ruin. I kept swatting.

A wave of existential unease passed through my body, then dissipated, leaving me feeling…refreshed. Heedless of this, I kept swatting.

The rain got a little heavier and that got me to pause and reconsider.

I blinked as a pile of rocks hit the ground. Most of them were rough chunks of amber, ranging from pebble-sized to powder. The other one was a flat, palm-sized, polished rock. Not a gemstone, just a rock, only it was really smooth, with only the most delicate and shallow patterns carved into its face. It all seemed to have been dropped by the darkness itself. I wasn’t a total foolish loser, so I figured the other one had to be the cantrip faithfully returned.

Reed bent down and collected the cantrip, leaving the amber in its pile. Actually, the wind, coming in a random gust, was taking care of that part. Reed turned to Murder, bowed, and said, “Thank you for your protection and your aid.”

A beat of his wings sent the gust swirling and a good amount of the amber inside of the dark chapel. Maybe not a random gust, then.

Below torn sleeves, Reed had disturbing marks on her arms from the fight, which looked like deep-gray, foggy bruises. But even as I watched them, they were fading.

“…Uh,” Reed said, her voice so quickly going back to normal, “I noticed that you don’t like each other, so I hope this has all been okay.”

“Caw,” Murder said.

“Meow?” Taipha said (that’s me).

“Oh! You probably don’t even know what Murder was doing here, do you? Eheh…sorry. He’s a sort of guardian spirit. He makes sure that the incoming wicked spirits and monsters and entities of that nature can’t escape to the wider world. He was suspicious of you at first, but…now things seem alright?”

“Caw,” Murder said, seemingly in the affirmative?

Okay. I’d accept it. “Meow,” I said with a thankful nod to Murder.

Knowing that he dealt with some of the wicked spirits flowing into Vencia cast him in a new light. And Reed, given her knowledge of some kind of anti-spirit library of chants and declarations. Should I have been scared?

No, I decided. Just don’t be wicked and you’ll be fine.

Mere moments ago, thick black magic had been bristling off of Murder’s enormous wingspan. Now, though, not only was there no visible magic, but the bird himself was shrinking.

Reed darted back from the chapel door as he strode forward, pecked briefly at the brown crystal dust that remained, and then gazed inward, into the scattered devastation. It seemed he was studying the larger chunk of amber, which had stopped its pulsing and spirit-summoning. Clearly Murder didn’t like it. Y’know…I could appreciate that.

Complete!

Quest: Solve a Mystery—The Ranger and the Condor on Reed’s Mountain Rewards:

+Bonus EXP!

+5000 Gold!

A text box burst into my face with some extremely satisfying information! Though some of it was weird…what did I even have gold for? Wouldn’t that take up one of my three valuable rabbit-flesh-holding slots? Where was the Meat Locker?

Level Up!

Lv. 6 → Lv. 10

Oh.

Oh.