Thunder spooked me off of Sierra’s torso and back-first onto a rickety floor. It was too short a distance for me to land at all gracefully—at least, that was my excuse when she shoved herself upright, leaning back on her palms.

Was this where she lived? Where she worked? Both? It could’ve been both. My reactivated senses told me that this had to be the cabin of a great rocking ship, everything creaking in the middle of a torrential storm. I saw Sierra’s bed, obviously, a short and sloppy heap of brown blankets on brown basket-weaving. But around it were mixed messages: a bedside table, but also a library’s worth of books on crowded shelves, and then also a principal-worthy desk with a desk lamp, with visitor-worthy couch chairs near a closed exit door. There was also a telescope beside the tiny window, just to confuse me further.

I had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Just standing under Sierra’s glare as a long, strange moment of recognition passed.

She fluffed her hair back into place (more or less), then looked at me with a huff.

“Knew something like this would happen,” she grumbled, seemingly to herself. She got up, revealing sloppy, slouchy clothes, and I realized that instead of having a single tail, she had five. Wait, had that been true in the flashback-world too, or was that a new thing? I couldn’t even remember…I wasn’t good at paying attention to details like that when I had bigger, death-related things to worry about.

Nonetheless, she strode over to the bookshelf and, with a single confident movement, slipped out five books at once. Then she squatted and handed them over to me.

“A death’s gotta hurt, but it should also be worth something,” she muttered, not even looking me in the eye. “Here, have this.”

Thoomp. Five books, one of enormous size, plopped onto the floor and threatened to tear a hole in it.

“Mraow,” I said. Translation: I don’t have access to my arms, you jerk. Also, I can’t read!

She got behind the desk, took a seat, and flipped her hair back. “I know,” she said.

—She could read my thoughts.

Or, rather, she could still read them, even while she was in non-box communication with me. Should it really have surprised me?

I looked away bitterly. This is going to be…annoying.

“Come on,” Sierra said with a lazy smile. “You have to have gathered by now that I never make you feel mad for mad’s own sake. I love you like my own child!”

That just made me cringe.

“…Okay, I do it for my own personal gain.” She started picking at her ear with her finger. Her pointer finger. Eugh…I didn’t like that at all. Her cat ears were so big in proportion to her cranium that it almost seemed like she could plunge a hand in wrist-deep. That hand was a spelunker. Keep in mind that this was the backdrop for her next statements:

“I’m out to make the smartest beings in the universe. Across every universe, really. People with the craftiness of humans and the savvy of felines. So I hope you consider it an honor. And”—she coughed—“the truly intelligent would look past the, uh, dingy surroundings.”

Outside, a wave walloped the side of the room.

“The least you could do is accept my gift!” she said, gesturing at the books.

…I nosed the pile apart. An enormous book whose cover design and weight made it resemble a huge hunk of marble. The two paperback books I’d already seen—the green-haired girl’s mystery novel and the blue-haired girl’s cheap illegible magic book. Then some kind of illustrated children’s book, and a book whose cover was just grey stitching.

“Maow,” I said. Translation: Horrible. It means something I’m not supposed to know yet, doesn’t it.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

But then an unexpected feeling rose into my throat.

Until now, I’d had disparate, piecemeal frustrations. Why wouldn’t she speak to me when I wanted her to, and why had she given me such confusing powers? Why had she let me die, come back, and die again? But now those were all building up into a single black ball.

It made me want to tear up. It was bile. My frustration at Sierra was building up, and now, volcanic, it was trying to blow.

I didn’t even care about the problem of evil, or any of the issues she’d been discussing with her fellow Arkmagus friends in the vision I’d seen. I cared about the issues that affected me, my puny little mortal soul, on the ground.

I cared about my people, and about what Sierra had tacitly promised me I could have with my people.

Sierra wasn’t the only smart one here, was she? I could reason. And I could see all the books taunting me with whatever sort of high galactic reputation she had.

I remembered a message that had bothered me since the first time I saw it, though I’d tried not to probe too deep at the time. It was the message that had come with my latest language Human Language advancement:

Now you have everything you need to communicate on Vencia!

It just wasn’t true.

She had the gall to mash me together with human beings and expect us to be friends, despite the fact that I could never reach a high enough threshold to even talk to them.

My attempts to nudge myself there, by speaking slowly and studying words until my eyeballs shriveled up, had been fruitless.

“Yeah, you’re reading it right,” Sierra said lackadaisically. “Stage 2 is the highest that thing goes.”

I stared at her in utter disbelief.

She couldn’t even give me a “sorry.”

All the times I’d been angry at her in the past, they paled in comparison to this. Yanking my chain with bonds that couldn’t exist, that could never be deep. Playing with my Traits like it was a practical joke!

Surrounding me with books I could never read.

“You’ll read them,” she said with the utmost calm.

I jumped onto the desk with a wild hiss. I had no Skills, but I did have guts—so I clawed at her with both front paws.

She caught both in a single hand, lightly clasped.

I struggled against it, growling all the while. But as the minutes passed, the fire within me petered out, and Sierra shot me a look of deep disapproval.

Beyond that careless smile, was the goddess angry?

…Darn, I hoped not.

“I told you, you’ll read them. You’ll read all of them,” she continued, speaking deliberately. “Every book in this room, every classic ever written, you’ll be able to read them all.”

Suddenly she dropped my claws and ducked under the desk. I let my claws fall, stepped back. Sierra came back up with a slim clamshell case in her hand.

“Don’t you ever pick up on context clues?” she groaned. Popping open the case, she revealed a pair of glasses.

Then she slid them over her eyes. Her irises went clear-white for an instant before resolving again into the silver color of moonlight.

“Of course there’s crap like magic glasses!” she snapped. “Werewolves exist! Magic exists! You’ve figured that much out, now use your brain and go!”

With that word came a lightning strike, so much closer and louder than the first—I feared the window would shatter. I screeched and clutched my ears as the echoes themselves seemed to take me away. The whole room was receding! I was whizzing backward, but this time I wasn’t weightless. The door smashed apart against my back, and a whole wooden boat yawned around me.

Was I going to smash through its whole interior? For that matter, how long until my body just gave out and I splattered apart?!

Just as that thought grazed my mind, the hurtling stopped. And the melting began.

Was I going to float in a void again? That lying two-timing goddess, I hoped she died in that weird lightning blast—served her right for killing me, putting me in a new world without…

I woke up with the whistling of the forest wind in my ears.

Checkpoint Selected! Location: Reed’s Cabin

You have died and Respawned. A Respawn varies from a Rebirth in that while your current body (including Evolution) has not been affected, your Stats and Inventory may be depleted or otherwise altered.

Wait. Who selected what now?

Ah, whatever. I was mentally exhausted and woozy on my feet. Home sweet home, I figured.