I decided to wait patiently not far from the mansion while Chora made a trip to town and back. Nursing a headache meant I didn’t fancy the chance to beat up more wild animals. And meanwhile, going all the way back to Outlast just to watch Chora hand off an umbrella…that didn’t sound thrilling.

Sitting here in the trees, watching the sunlight grow late-afternoon yellow, also gave me a chance to interrogate Sierra, or try to.

…Hey, didn’t you give me a Quest earlier? Wasn’t I supposed to get an exotic vase for this?

Message from Sierra, the Goddess of Nekomata No! Come on, be reasonable. You never found a “treasure cache,” you just found random stuff! In fact, I don’t think you’re ever gonna find one, so…

Failed!

Quest—Find the Magpies’ Treasure Cache All rewards null and void!

But I was unfazed by this news, and persistent!

Ha! I thought. Now I have you on the line! Don’t shut your ears (or…eyes) and pretend we’re disconnected! Tell me what was up with those statues and with that dog girl, and also what about that dragon guy who according to legend is an alcoholic riddled with regret (possibly because you never visit)?!

Uh…

Shoot, that’s the problem with deities having a direct connection to their followers, isn’t it? Kinda sucks the mystery out of some of the mysteries I’m trying to let unfold before you.

Good thing you can’t hear the tone of my voice, or I would be screwed!

But, um, yeah. Teague is my girlfriend, and she seems to make the universe happier by her very existence. That’s a talent I never had. I guess you can only be oh-so-clever or oh-so-nice in this world, not both at once.

When I was right about to finish reading that, a new notification showed up, erasing the old:

Sierra, the Goddess of Nekomata has disconnected.

***

That night, the cabin welcomed us with faint light and a fresh drizzle. The drizzle didn’t matter—all the better to disguise Chora’s metric tons of sweat after a long run. And all the better for me to…be drenched so I suffer even more for no reason, since cats don’t sweat anyway.

We had just run a marathon. That’s what it felt like: galloping through the hilly, almost parkoury path from the Lycanborn Mansion to Reed’s Cabin, slipping and tripping over the occasional mud patch. Early on, I gained the lead, and at the time I’d felt especially good about that because a mere five minutes into the run, Chora had slowed down dramatically and was glugging out of her water bottle.

The race was definitely unfair. Leaving aside whatever Stat advantages I’d just received from Leveling Up the same day, I was fresh, whereas Chora had just crossed loads of wilderness. Nonetheless, when I gestured for a race and made my request clear, she agreed—and could no longer complain! Just kidding. I wouldn’t have blamed her for barking at me for that.

When she slowed down mid-run, I thought she was giving up. She was not, and this was only part of her strategy of rigorously scheduled breaks in between all-out sprinting. And this time, she had heel-bursts of wind that were far more concentrated and impactful, to the point where I wondered if she’d been practicing as she toted the umbrella. I took no breaks at all, and I would’ve lost if I hadn’t full-tilt Leaped at the very final stretch.

Despite that, my lead on Chora wasn’t that impressive. She’d come jogging into the clearing a mere minute later, her face virtually unchanged save for the waterfall of sweat. And now we stood before the cabin’s front door, breathing heavily under the rain.

A hollow victory, but still a victory.

EXP: 61% (1568/2250)

But once I saw the EXP roll in, suddenly it didn’t feel so hollow anymore.

Maybe someday, when she was less tired and more fully in-tune with her own powers, we could have a fairer fight, and I’d have the power boost of a lifetime.

Just as I was pondering this secret to ultimate power, the door of the faintly lit cabin opened. I wasn’t sure whether to be happy that it showed signs of life and hospitality, or to pity their disrupted human sleep schedules.

On the other side were Reed and Bayce, both dressed in pajamas. That dull light highlighted their edges with faint fire-flickers of red.

“Welcome back!” cried Reed.

“Welcome back! I can see you’re all gross and sweaty,” Bayce said. “Come in and get changed already!”

“…I don’t appreciate being called ‘gross,’” Chora said.

“They’re jokes, Chora! I’m just being lighthearted!”

Chora narrowed her eyes. “Don’t be so careless. You should make sure our cat friend understands that, so that we don’t—”

Reed coughed really extremely loudly. “We apologize for any offense,” she said slowly and deliberately, “and get on with the business of welcoming you.”

“Right,” said Bayce.

“Wait,” Chora said, “please don’t tell me you expected us tonight and last night, and stayed up late just to…just for us to not come.”

Bayce blew her fears off. “It’s like eight o’clock, it’s not hurting anybody.”

Reed said, “We prepared all of us a special after-midnight supper.”

“One that wouldn’t go bad if you never came back!”

“Except the milk.”

“Yeah!”

“And please don’t tell me you don’t like milk!” Reed cried, looking right at me. “I’ve seen you liking milk! So please, come in, towel off, and enjoy a buffet of muesli!”

She said “a buffet of muesli” like it was the star of a Vegas show.

“There’s also s’mores,” said Bayce.

“But also, the muesli comes in fun flavors.”

“The fun flavors,” Bayce noted, “are always trying to imitate better foods.”

Chora said, “S’mores aren’t better. They’re pillows of sugar on planks of sugar. Hardly food. And you know you only made them to try and one-up Reed’s s’moresli.”

Bayce cheerfully stuck her tongue out. “Somehow I don’t think artificially sweetened oats with sugar-blasted raisins is the multivitamin of the food world.”

Reed frowned. “Uhh, all food has value?”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“Whatever,” Chora said. “Thank you both for your efforts. Let’s just eat.”

I agreed fully.

The two young women led us to the den. It turned out that the faint light I had been seeing was the fireplace, lit in isolation. Instead of sitting at the table, Bayce had been reclining on one sofa (the one that wasn’t my bed) while Reed had been sitting on the floor in a bundle of blankets.

“Blankets and s’mores by an open fire… That’s a fire hazard,” said Chora.

“It sure is,” said Bayce, “but I have enough Water Spells.”

“Also,” Reed said, jumping at the chance to introduce all the food and drink options, “there’s hot and cold water ready for you, along with the cold milk, and we made some hot chocolate, and there’s still lots of tea.”

“Ah, I got some complementary tea from Outlast,” said Chora, and she went on to explain our whole journey there and back.

Right now, I was focused more on the food. Reed and Chora came with me to the kitchen and helped me pick out a glass of milk, conspicuously avoid the muesli, toss the last of the fried fish into a pan along with some onions and leeks, and continue to avoid the muesli. Chora, at least, got a very large bowl of it. All of this was heaped on a tray in Reed’s hands.

“…seemed interested in collecting their feathers,” Chora was saying.

“Ahh, that must be for Bayce’s cantrip,” said Reed.

“Ohh…”

It was super weird to have people talking about me, right over my head, with no idea how their lines of communication matched up until they tied their loose ends up with each other again.

“Did you get enough, friend? Feathers, not food.”

“Meow…” I said hesitantly.

“I guess you’ll have to check with Bayce?”

I nodded. Then, realizing we were in a kitchen for cripes’ sake, and that I had an item in my Inventory technically classified as crunchy meat, I realized that I could be giving these people a present of my own. I mean, they always needed meat here. And if they couldn’t eat it, I would. I myself refused to eat hearty assortments of alpine nuts and grains, so in that sense, it was only fair.

Without warning (how was I really going to warn them anyway), I turned toward an empty spot on the counter and dumped out the magpuck corpse.

Splorcht.

“Aah!” Reed shouted.

“Ah,” Chora reacted.

“AUGH!” cried a voice from the other room. “What is that smell? We really need to get rid of that trash.”

Reed cried back, “It’s not the trash! It’s a special surprise from our good friend, come see!”

“Okay…” I heard every slow rustle of Bayce dragging herself away from the non-smelly fire.

Reed and Chora had crowded around the body on the counter, as well as the greenish-reddish puddle underneath it. If I’d known there was so much fluid in there, I would’ve at least grabbed a towel…but nobody turned around to catch my apologetic look.

Chora pinched a leg. “The cat spirit appears to have brought us…a terrible demon. Right?”

Reed said, “Or is this just a unique, one-of-a-kind animal?”

“Meow!” I affirmed, dearly hoping that my Inventory wasn’t wrong or misleading on this.

Now Bayce was here, and after gagging for several seconds, she concluded with absolute conviction, “That’s a magpuck.”

Reed covered her mouth with quiet surprise. “I thought those went extinct…”

Bayce was awestruck in her own way. “They did.”

She launched into the sad story of a clutch of magpuck eggs found a century ago in an ancient, volcano-stricken city. Some were traded off to unsavory private collectors. Others went off, famously, to a seedy zoo, and all eyes were on them, hoping they would breed. But no more eggs were laid…and the last surviving magpuck was taxidermied, then stolen.

Wow! That story was almost more nauseating than the body. If only Vencians knew that just putting a huge concentration of feathers in one place for a thousand years would produce them.

I followed my cabinmates back to the den. We all needed a rest, after all. Onto the tray of food and milk, Reed had added even more cereal product, plus hot drinks. A deep bowl of cold milk was reserved for me. Everything was set in the middle of our pillow-seats and quilts. I dug in.

***

Three marshmallows on a long, bare branch hovered over the fire until their edges blackened. Trying a marshmallow sounded good right about now. So did trying the crackers and chocolate that went with them.

Message from Sierra, the Goddess of Nekomata Please don’t eat chocolate.

—Oh yeah, poison. Got it…

“Hey, cat,” Bayce said. She was holding the branch in the laziest-yet-highest-effort way possible: while her body lounged on the sofa, her head and right arm jutted off the edge, getting her just far enough to comfortably hold up the marshmallows. (If that could be called “comfort.” What a daredevil.) “You want one?”

I pointed at the marshmallows and at a box of crackers by the sofa, avoiding the chocolate.

“That’s sad,” said Bayce. “Cats don’t eat chocolate? Or—horror of horrors—oats???”

“Why do you keep making fun of my oats?” said Reed, who was, by the way, eating a generous bowl of muesli and milk.

“It’s the fact that you call them ‘your oats’ that makes them so mockable.”

Chora herself was eating a huge bowl of them, conspicuously avoiding the pieces that looked somewhat sugar-blasted. Even so… “Oats are the blandest food,” said Chora. “Even with add-ons. It’s a fact.”

“Oats,” Reed said with a presidential air, “have sustained humanity for generations. They’re the lord of grains! Early farmers raised civilizations on oats alone.”

“That was wheat,” said Chora.

I bared my fangs at her. I had to stand by Reed, even if I agreed that oats weren’t very powerful!

“Look, Reed, I love myself some oats, and I honor and respect you for preparing so many, but you’re never going to make oats cool. In any form.”

“Oops,” Bayce said, staring at her ‘mallows.

Chora squinted at them. “…Those caught on fire, didn’t they?”

“A bit.”

“Why didn’t you try to put them out?”

“You want spit on your s’mores?” she sneered. “Anyway, tell me if you want these or I’ll throw them in the overflowing trash.”

Reed and I raised a hand and a paw.

Soon I was handed a graham cracker with a bump of sludge on it, a substance that looked both hard and soft at the same time. I bit in. It was—heavenly! Probably because of my weird cat taste buds.

“Mmm!” Reed hummed, obviously lying. “That’s about a six out of ten, in my book.”

“Ah,” said Bayce. “No good.”

“It’s the start of good.”

Bayce’s mouth fell open. She leaned upright-ish on her forearm and cried, “No it’s not! A six is on the cusp of mediocre!”

Chora simmered. “Numbers are numbers,” she said, pretending not to have a reaction…but as a wise goddess once told me, pretending not to react is the biggest and angriest reaction of all.

More marshmallows were roasted, this time to the proper consistency. But as Bayce taught me, there were multiple “proper ways.” Bayce preferred hers to have a brownish edge, while Reed wanted hers white yet gooey. Chora, of course, wanted none. I wanted mine as black as the spirit of the Beacon.

Conversation flowed from the current eats to Bayce’s study habits (consistently inconsistent) and Reed’s plans for the next week (camping when the skies were clear again—reading, painting, and woodcraft until then). I listened with full attention until Bayce started talking about fortuitous star signs again.

By that point, though, Bayce was starting to yawn dramatically. Curving around like a snake, hands standing on the floor, she brought her head close to Reed’s and said, “Hey, I’m about to…”

Reed’s eyes widened with concern. “Wh-what?”

Bayce came closer…closer…until she was practically leaning on Reed’s shoulder. Reed brought her ear closer.

“No, look at me,” said Bayce.

She did. Then Bayce yawned in her face with the widest, most uvula-exposing yawn possible.

Reed flicked her head away and put her hands up in laughing surrender—both amused and horrified. “Augh, go to bed, Bayce!”

“It’s okay, you can hit me!”

Reed managed a playful slap against her cheek. That satisfied Bayce, who slinked off the sofa once and for all.

“G’night, people,” she drawled. “Hey, cat, I fed you tonight. Can I give you scritches yet?”

Ack! My whole body twitched in sudden horror. If Bayce started scritching, I was certain she’d graduate into grabbing and hugging, then into flinging me around. But we’d been doing so good lately! She hadn’t descended into baby talk once!

I stared viciously at her.

“Scritches? Rubbies? Tumtums?” Her hand squirmed evocatively.

I looked away. “Maow-w-w…”

Chora said, “Bayce, why are you like this?”

I sensed venom in her voice…but evidently her old friends didn’t see it that way. Reed laughed, and then Bayce snorted.

And at that, even Chora smiled. “If you wanna rub somebody hairy, just put a wig on a frog.”

“In that case, I could just rub myself.”

“Good night, everyone,” Chora said—and she pointed straight at the staircase.

Bayce stumble-jogged off, almost crashing into the banister, then hoisted herself away. She waved as if seeing off her adoring fans. In a way, she was.

Giving her the feathers could definitely wait for tomorrow, once she was, y’know, fully lucid.

“Good night!” Reed shouted up.

“Meow,” I said gently.

And Bayce was gone. We looked on in silence at her, then the void where she just was, and didn’t look away until we heard the telltale closing of her door.

Chora’s comical mood changed on a dime. “Reed, cat spirit, I really appreciate the both of you,” she said the moment we heard a door close upstairs. “Sometimes I also appreciate Bayce…but I don’t like struggling to say it when she’s around. It’s just…hard to be sincere, when she’s around, and I feel like I have to pal around all of a sudden, you know?”

I could almost hear the whiplash.

“Um…” Reed looked away to the fire and blinked. “Thank you, I appreciate you too…”

I could tell she was struggling to climb over a hill of awkwardness. I was too! By mixing her honest feelings about Bayce into compliments for us, she really tanked the atmosphere. Did she even realize that? It kind of annoyed me, and I wished I could say it.

Not that I would know how. Human manners were a minefield.

“I’m working off of assumptions,” Reed said, “but you must have had a long two days away from your temporary home. And maybe that’s not making it any easier to hang out with all of us right now.”

Chora took a long exhale. “Yeah,” she said. “I can admit that. Thanks for turning my insult around, too. That could have been…really bad.”

“Why are you like this?” I could’ve just as easily said that about Chora—or anyone I knew. Why’d they have to take potshots at each other? They had good moments. And they had an entire backstory’s worth of them, if the moments I’d seen weren’t enough!

But…maybe there was nothing I could do. Maybe they should just work it out themselves. Still, as Reed and Chora hugged, and Chora drifted up to her own bedroom, I couldn’t help but feel helpless.

Well, at least I could do little things. Like learn how to do what Reed did with Chora’s insult, diffusing the tension by turning it into something more fun. Until then, I’d be limited to giving them strange meat at random times, but hey.