The sun rose high! The cabin awakened! Birdsong and summer breezes filled the air.

Reed opened the door to her room and peeked out, stifling a yawn. Soon she would discover that downstairs was a mess and several plates were totally busted…but before that, she would see me, on the stairs, sitting behind an explanatory piece of paper. That was kind of the best warning Chora and I could give. Better than having them see it for themselves first and scream!

Naturally, I had that thought right before another cry from another bedroom. “Ah, another wonderfu—good gosh!”

My cat form cat-gulped. Why was Bayce screaming?!

She burst through her door, looking more unkempt and drowsy than I’d ever seen her. “Something’s up,” she rattled off to Reed. “Don’t know what, but there’s some kind of plague on this house.”

Reed’s shoulders stiffened. “A plague…what?”

“Like an evil influence. Or…not evil, just off.” She whirled a hand by her head. “It hit my mind about as soon as I woke up.”

“I believe you, but I don’t feel anything.” She massaged her head. “Or do I?”

“Meow!”

I said it extra loud to get their attention. They looked down at me and the piece of paper on which Chora had helpfully written, “An evil spirit wrought havoc in the den and kitchen. Chora and I will explain more. Have breakfast?”

That’s right. Desperate times called for desperate measures. Not only were we about to have a serious breakfast…it was going to be facilitated by Chora, the woman of no breakfast.

Once again she was acting as my sage keeper, but I truly appreciated it this time. We’d cleaned downstairs together—some tough hardwood stains that needed chemicals notwithstanding—but she and her non-jiggly hands had done most of the work. And with her as facilitator, this whole conversation was bound to be five weeks shorter than it would've been with just me explaining.

Chora was a horrible cook. That along with her morning taste for solitude were critical reasons why she rarely came down for group breakfast. But give her credit where it's due: she kept it simple, not wanting to make the food situation worse. The scrambled eggs were burnt, and while all the green and purple things hiding in the egg-mash were just more cool exotic fruits to me, Bayce grimly snarked that after the cooking they were "completely unrecognizable."

I enjoyed it, though—again, I’m used to eating literal garbage, so while I knew this was bad, it was better than raw eggs. Also, the sparkling apple-ish juice was decent. Chora didn't make that part.

Bayce did not look happy. If Reed was tense, Bayce was three times tenser. She’d looked out the windows before Chora had started serving food, and just glancing toward the silver dust in either direction had made her shiver. Nonetheless, they both sat in near-quiet as Chora set things up. We all knew she wanted to take control of the situation.

As we waited, I made some room on the table and brought out the spirit board—clunky, and something that needed a tinier substitute for when I went on the road with anyone, but good for now. My eyes drifted between the housemates speaking and the board's elegant letters.

Chora set down a jug of ice water, stood behind me, and began. “I’m sorry, everyone—in the sympathy sense, not in the I-caused-this sense.”

Reed reached over and set a hand on her shoulder. “You’ve done more than enough, Chora.” She glanced pointedly at the empty seat. “Have you eaten yet?”

“I don’t really…well…” She winced, but nodded and took a seat.

Turning to her, I spelled out, “IM OK. SIT”

Seeing me spell words with my paw put a sparkle in Bayce’s eye. She wasn’t exactly relaxing, but…she was intrigued. She mouthed, “Cool…”

As Chora loaded a plate with far more eggs than I’d anticipated, she said quite formally, “Our friend Taipha, the seminormal cat, has entrusted me with the telling of the story of what happened. Since it would take so much time fo—”

She stopped when Bayce raised her hand.

"Come on, Bayce, I haven’t even started. How is this a time for questions?"

"Nobody told me she had a name!" Bayce said incredulously.

Chora wrinkled her nose at her. "Thanks for adding that new information. Like I was saying..."

Bayce still had her hand up.

"Yes, Bayce."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Taipha, I was just wondering...why is your name unpronounceable?"

Wha...? No it wasn't, she was pronouncing my name right now!

Reed gave Bayce a frowny face. “I know all this is strange and rough, but taking it out on Chora’s eggs and Taipha’s name…”

“I’m not!” she said, raising her hands palms-forward. “It's just...logistically weird. Like, you have a cat mouth, and most of what you say is 'meow.' That's true, right? So why...why would your name have 'T' sounds and 'F' sounds in it?”

I...I didn't know what to say. Though her thought process seemed alien at first, she was totally right. I stared for a good few seconds, then set a paw on my board and spelled out, "YEAH DUNNO IT WAS JUST SOUNDS I ALWAYS HAD IN MY SOUL. CATS DONT TELL NAMES."

The table patiently received my message, collectively nodding as if my statement—which had felt to me like little more than a "whatever I dunno"—were the wisest thing of all time.

Reed added knowingly, "There's a novel about cats where each cat has their own personal name, one that's both earned and supremely expressive of who they are."

My eyes flashed with curiosity. "NAMES?"

"Uh...I think they were all things like Rumbleskumble."

Oh...

With that long prelude over, Chora proceeded to the meat of the story. Or the several meats. Given that Chora had gotten my life story and summaries of lots of weird Vencian adventures out of me earlier, there was way too much ground to cover.

But she could start with the essentials. “There seems to be a spirit coming to Taipha again and again. Toying with her. We’ve decided to call her the Sapphire Queen, and we think that at least one old local poem predicts her arrival. She literally broke in last night just to battle Taipha—and as you’ve guessed, she left this powder everywhere. It’s not just outside. It’s on the roof too.”

“I knew it,” Bayce mumbled, twitching.

“Oh, and she’s cocky. That’s the most annoying part.”

“Meow,” I said with a nod.

“She didn’t want to fight Taipha until she was holding the Drunken Dragon’s Blade—which, by the way, might give us no power boosts, but gives Taipha a huge upgrade under certain conditions. No doubt in my mind that she was chosen by the dragon…and most likely deliberately set up to duel the Sapphire Queen.”

A pretty elegant summary, actually.

Reed lifted a hand to her mouth. “I had no idea that any of—that you—wow…” Frazzled, she shook her head. “I’m sorry you had to go through that alone. I-I almost can’t believe it. You were attacked. In my house. It won’t happen again.”

I gave Reed a serious glare.

Was she trying to protect me? From a berserker who had to have stratospheric stats and levels?

That was a line I preferred not to cross—putting her or the other cabin humans in the line of fire. I could recover, they could not.

She looked taken aback for a moment, but then she steeled herself and glared right back.

“I mean it,” she said. “I don’t care if you’re stronger than us. There’s strength in numbers, and just…you shouldn’t have to be alone.”

“But…doesn’t Taipha have to be alone?” Bayce said. After Chora’s summary, the light in her eyes had changed again. Now her expression was cooler, aloof. “Think about it. The Queen came for her. She attacked only her. If there is now a plague upon the house…it seems to only be a consequence of the Queen going after her.”

I sat up straight and nodded enthusiastically! Yes, exactly my point!

“So we need—no offense—to send Taipha into exile!”

I froze.

Reed and Chora didn’t want to admit it, but…there was a big gash in the cabin wall, one made by a weapon we couldn’t comprehend. Whose fault was that? Not theirs. Technically not mine, and yet it kinda was.

I had been alone before. I probably had the power and wits to do it again, and better. There was a strong chance that I needed to do it.

But…I didn’t want to. The idea actually hurt. That fact threw a wrench into things.

There was a silence. Chora stepped in. “Well, I haven’t told you everything,” she said.

I looked up at her with luminous eyes, and seriously debated hugging her, or nuzzling, or even allowing for scritches—just to thank her for the distraction. But I stayed still, not wanting to throw her off her game.

“Taipha’s found many other things that could be turned to our advantage…”

And here it was. The fire hydrant of facts was unleashed, and knowledge gushed across the table. Of how I had found a suspicious sword buried alongside the time stones northwest of here. Of how the Queen had appeared to me on the water, and given me a heretofore-kinda-useless, definitely ominous book. Of how I had been—

“A planet without magic?!” Bayce almost sounded furious.

“She didn’t say her birthplace had no magic,” Reed said, “she just…strongly implied it? Is that right?”

“That’s so sad!”

“It had advanced technology,” Chora said. “I mean, to its detriment, but still.”

Bayce perked up ever so slightly. “Did they have free universal public teleportation?”

She looked to Chora and Chora looked to me. I didn’t exactly know what Bayce just said, but I ended up shaking my head. Given the country I’d lived in, no, most things cost money there…

Thirty minutes later, we had covered significant ground. Chora and I had resisted the idea of answering too many questions at first, but soon the whole table was engrossed, and even I came to relish the chance to practice spelling speedily.

Within half an hour, I had described to them—in long and painstaking words—my former homeland’s national highway system, its interaction with the pathetic national railway system, the general evolution of cars, the purpose of stoplights, the colors of a stoplight, several variations of stoplights, and at that point I stopped being so into it because the only thing on my mind was why were they all so into stoplights? I mean, Bayce I could understand, but everyone? At least Sierra had implanted random Earth knowledge in my head that could entertain them all, I guessed.

I squinted at them. “WHY”

“It’s just so beautiful to imagine these colorful shining lights waving from wires in the breeze, unifying humanity,” Reed said.

Chora shrugged. “Order in the chaos.”

“You have to spend so much time driving because you don’t have the magic to teleport,” Bayce said, shaking her head. “And your whole country has to change shape to accommodate it just to make all you drivers feel better. That’s rough.”

“I DIDNT DRIVE, BAYCE”

“Oh yeah.”

“WELL ANYWAY LETS STRATEGIZE?”

They all started blinking and rubbing dazes out of their eyes. Reed was the first to sit bolt-straight and proclaim, “I know it’s been lingering in the back of our minds, but I’m not kicking Taipha out if I can help it. We have many, many ways to fight back. And—and I can get scuffed up!”

“BUT U CANT DIE AND COME BACK. I DID”

“Right! …Wait, you didn’t tell us that part!!”

Meanwhile, Chora stared motionlessly and Bayce was gasping with shock.

See? There was always, always more ground to cover…