By the mysterious means of Chora’s carrying arms, I found myself back in the inn, nestled in the plush security of a bed. Moments later, the two of us were gone.

Just when the village of Outlast began to feel like a neat place to be in, to accumulate mystery, we were leaving—but it didn’t feel right to stay, after all. That wasn’t our home. It was just a cool place to visit. Plus, I’d definitely start to get tired of weaving through and around so many farmers going about their everyday business.

Seriously, how were these streets so full? The tide of people guiding animals in both directions just wasn’t stopping, and it’d been an hour or two since I first started watching them!

If I was on the edge of annoyance, Chora was solidly there. She increasingly muscled her way through the crowd and I gratefully joined her.

Then the really long staircase and ramp were again before us…but this time, everyone and their mother was using it. Of course they were.

But…I squinted at the sight. Where could they possibly be going? I never saw entire wagon trains in the Vencian Wood.

Then my head went higher, to the very top. People weren’t actually going through the tree line, they were…going through it. As in phasing through it, disappearing before they logically should go in. Magical shenanigans.

Chora was standing with me, here in the most tiny and pathetic “alley” I’d ever seen. “People who live here can use these stairs as a gateway to a few other places. Some of them are farms, some are businesses that work with the farms. I think one is just a big grocery store.”

“Mraow?” When she looked my way, I sat upright and stretched out my front limbs like a tape measure.

“…Oh, why’s it so long? Well, I think it was made millennia ago for…some kind of religious-devotional reason. While you go up the five hundred steps, you’re supposed to enter a thankful, meditative state. It’s a beautiful idea…don’t know how many people do it.”

We sidestepped that entirely, hiking up the hillside instead.

As we made our way up, I looked sidelong at the ramp-and-stair procession. Rising up from, coming down to, the spaghetti-tangle village and its humble plots of farmland, squares of light brown and grain yellow that I could see far better in daylight. Still, the world on the horizon and beyond was hardly any clearer. If those were city towers, they all blended together: their shapes, their tones, the dark-blue cast that distance gave all skyscrapers and mountains.

Briefly I wondered where that shepherd was. Just another day’s work ahead, no doubt.

Goodbye, Outlast.

***

Chora didn’t really like it when I stopped to harass goats and mallards, but she just had to accept that she wouldn’t understand.

A bleating quack and a yowling bleat were all they left as they charged away. I had no luck with that pounce, just a faceful of water. But I was getting there, and if I succeeded, I’d get a full energy refund by the time we crossed from Drippy Flats over to the mansion.

EXP: 61% (1372/2250)

HP 98% (346/353) SP 100% (293/293)

As if I needed a refund.

“…Like I was saying…” Chora said. Her teeth may not have been gritted, but the flatness of her delivery somehow said it all. “It’s either that or sneaking in. And I’m not sure I have the skillset for that.”

Naturally, she was sharing her ideas for how to infiltrate the lycanborn mansion. I wasn’t disinterested, I just knew I wouldn’t be able to think straight about it until we arrived. I wished Chora would be quiet about it, but it seemed rude to command her to shush.

I let her talk as I inwardly drifted off. Ponds like paintwork gleamed in my vision.

By the time the east end came in sight, Chora started changing subjects. (She still hadn’t solidified a plan.)

“Not much like time away to make you miss where you are,” she said. “For me, anyway. Just when I was starting to feel boxed in, lose motivation to stay on track, here you are going for a change of pace…looking like you might want help. I guess people call it a happy coincidence.”

That renewed my attention. As we strolled and my fur dried, I looked curiously up at her.

And she looked at me. “You may have gathered already. I don’t know what I’m doing in life. My family is…they’re not evil. They’re just disappointed in me. And I gave them this idea in their heads that I’m going to be some great philosopher-master of martial arts.” She pushed her flatlined mouth to the side. “Then I don’t do anything but read crap and sit alone.”

“Meow-w,” I said, with a sympathetic tone. My immediate reaction was where was this even coming from? Surely there was no reason for her to beat herself up like this! She was great! Reed was great! Bayce was great! No amount of studying or not studying, meeting or not meeting new people, would change that.

…I wished I could tell Chora what I knew about hermits and lonely sages from Earth, who, from a certain point of view, did nothing but read scrolls and sit alone. So probably if she just read scrolls, she’d be primo martial artist material. But that would have to wait for another day, when I could really speak.

Until then, I could only look sadly her way.

She continued. “When you don’t talk to anyone, you’re not getting the word out about you. You’re not self-marketing. And if you don’t know a master or a fifth-rank already, then you basically don’t exist. Nobody is interested in me.”

I didn’t like hearing her say “nobody is interested in me” like it was a fact of the universe. Didn’t like it at all. And I didn’t know how to express that well, but I hoped a sharp hiss would do it.

“Yeah!” she said. “It’s unfair, but that’s how the world works.”

Nooo, that isn’t what I meant at all!

***

It wasn’t that the mansion had changed. It looked the same as yesterday, just streaked a little with the remains of last night’s drizzle. No, it was just absolutely smothered in magpies.

Raccoons…magpies…why were animals getting together in these absurdly sized flocks, just to torture me in particular?

Were the birds better, more networked communicators than they seemed at first glance? Had some messenger picked up on our plans—our heartbreakingly obvious plans—in the village? Had they flown back to their friends at the old raggedy stone heap, warned everyone, and gotten their cool obsidian eyes all trained on two hapless youngsters whose power, combined, couldn’t possibly be over Level 40?

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

It almost made me nauseous. Birds in the window grates. Birds on the roof. Birds along the gutter-pipe scraps. Even a couple of birds squirming out from the earth, from the places where the wall, floor, and grass converged. Like, what were they even doing? That was just excessive! Augh…if I could’ve cried, I would’ve cried.

But in a sense, this was what I had wanted.

The prison of my own design.

Chora and I were watching from afar, and even ant-sized magpies twisted my stomach. “Good,” she said, “it’s just another day for them.”

I reacted with terror. “Mah?!”

“Yes, sometimes it’s way worse, and magpies will be flying around like mini stormclouds. It’s funny, unless you’re in the mansion at the time.”

Wow.

But that didn’t explain why today the magpies were looking so vigilant, so dead-set on slaughtering anyone who came their wa—wait, they were literally just hanging out. Now that I studied them more closely, I knew they were cawing, jumping, fluttering around, grooming each other, picking brief fights.

So, alright, maybe the universe did not hate Chora and I specifically.

“Well?” said Chora, her eyes focused straight ahead through the bushes. “You want to try it, or go home?”

The way I saw it, we didn’t really have a choice. We had to see this through.

“You remember what I said about how we can try sneaking around through the back?”

Uh…would she be offended if I said “no”? I decided that nah, she wouldn’t dare be offended. I narrowed my eyes and shook my head.

“Okay, well, that figures…maybe sounded like I was talking to myself…” She set her disappointment aside. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I think charging in full-throttle from the back might be best. What do you think?”

I nodded eagerly. Whatever she thought was best was bound to be fine, honestly.

Then she briefly went over her moves. “Fairly basic martial arts—lyen-chunst, third rank—and the standard wind magic that comes with it. I also have a few healing Spells and speed buffs. And I can do armor-piercing damage if I hit pressure points… If only I knew where a bird’s pressure points were. Anyway, I’m assuming magpies don’t wear armor, and…it’s not like I can break through buffs granted by Skills or Spells. Best thing I’m likely to do is push swarms of magpies a way and give you an opening to—do what you do.”

Nice. She didn’t sound so confident, but I knew that deep down, she was proud of what she could do.

I had my agility, my Defense and Wisdom buffs, random objects to hurl from my Inventory, and…that was about it.

Oh, and, oops, I had a sword of destiny that was probably supposed to help me kill the Blue Princess of the Pond?

I dwelled on that thought for a moment longer. If I used the Debug Blade here and I just went brain-dead, it wouldn’t be so bad. Because Chora was right next to me! So she could get it out of my hand and snap me out of it! If not, I’d at least be in a coma, feeling nothing.

Huh…if nothing else, I could test the thing.

With a hop back, I unveiled the blade. Steam exploded and the blade was decoded. It fell, fortunately hitting soft and quiet ground. Chora, taken aback, snapped a finger and unleashed just enough wind to dissipate the steam.

“Why did you—”

I slapped my paws onto the sword hilt, struggling to find just enough of a grip that this would count as “equipped.”

“Oh…but how is that even going to work?” Chora shook her head. “But you would know, spirit.”

I continued trying and failing to grab the blade.

“…You do know, don’t you?”

I shook my head.

Right then, the feeling hit.

One paw wrapped around one end, the second shakingly pushed against the other, and a lightning bolt of Stat changes shot through me. Unsure whether my own body was frozen or shaking, I checked my Stats and nearly passed out on the spot.

Stats

Taipha Ash Heather Lv. 15 EXP: 61% (1372/2250)

HP 98% (346/353) SP -14% (-293/-2051)

ATK 168 (x3)

INT 0 (x0)

DEF 41

WIS -58 (x-2)

SPD 49

Woah…with that ATK, I was an absolute beast—

Ohh, agh…my head was reeling…

WARNING: Stats at or below 0 may not function properly and may be a sign of an impending Fatal System Error.

Recommended: Initiate Emergency System Repair now.

This was not good, not good at all. Were Stats just Stats, or were they also internal organs, parts of me currently screaming for me to let go of the blade, making me rock on my feet and teeter on the brink of consciousness?

A wave of fatigue and stomach-churning nausea had come over me. I staggered, and my vision got…trippy. If you’ve ever pressed down on your eyes and the sides of your head and it made lava-lampy images sprout all over your mind’s eye, that times a thousand. Or times seven, more likely.

“Spirit!” Chora hissed as I wobbled backward and swayed forward. She reached around me and yanked me far away from the blade—

Ending the dizzy spell.

While also, as a side effect, giving me a pang of withdrawal.

I just had ultimate power in my Level 15 clutches, and this loser who didn’t get any buffs when she held the same sword, who doesn’t even know what real power is, cruelly took it away!

I wanted to scream and snatch it back…until my Wisdom and Intelligence recovered in full.

“No,” said Chora. “That’s where I draw the line. You’re not hurting yourself with a sword we barely understand.”

A lingering feeling of resentment stayed in me. “Maow!”

“I can tell you don’t understand it! You’ve barely had it a week, haven’t you?”

Even less than that, actually…

“Mrrr…” I lowered my head in defeat. The part of me that felt wronged and sulky, that was immature, shrank into nothing.

“I hate to act against your will, but it’s for your own good,” she said as she set me down and picked the sword up. “You can have this back later.” She then proceeded to slice her own foot—I mean, slide it in her own foot-based Inventory.

We took about a minute to calm down after that.

Then Chora pointed with her thumb, hooking it around toward the back of the mansion. And we crept through the bushes, keeping our distance from the place.

This was a new angle for me. From here, the mansion looked even more fallen, misshapen by the centuries of neglect, and positively overrun by vines and dirt. And some of those vines were downright girthy. We stood a slim chance of being able to get inside the mansion smoothly from here, but on the plus side, there were fewer magpies.

With a hint of regret, though, I realized that the cherubic statue was hanging out in the front. Would I ever get to see it up close?

Well, not within the next several seconds I wouldn’t. Metaphorically rolling up my cat-sleeves, I turned to Chora and gave her a stiff nod. She nodded back, then rose into a standing position, did a few stretches.

Meditate. Guard.

My body and mind prepared themselves. Then we sprang together, rushing toward the mansion’s remains.