Chapter 2

LYCAN

I was standing on a hill before a scene of utter destruction. Stretched out before me was a city, or what was left of it. My heart began pounding in my ears as I recognized one of the skyscrapers, half of its shape curving around to make that familiar cylinder, the other half embedded in the side of a snowy mountain that bisected the city.

Snow drifted through the smoke.

Thick smoke rose up in the air somewhere from the midst of the shorter buildings that led to the beehive of human creation called a city. I could see a fire raging in the distance, burning on the edges of the large freeway that vanished into a tangle of massive trees, only to emerge again in bursts, like someone had taken a city and poked holes through it, inserting a natural landscape.

As I watched the huge skyscraper that was occupied by a bank shimmered, its metallic walls changing to match the stone, shifting to look like a massive medieval castle constructed by ancient elves.

“I thought all the mundanes were in the training dungeon,” a man said. “I don’t think anyone from the magic realm even knows that clothes like that exist.”

I had been so engrossed by the sight of a modern fantasy apocalypse that I hadn’t noticed there was a man sitting on the hill a few feet away from me, his hands behind him in the dried grass as he leaned back to look up at me. He was younger, maybe in his early twenties, but I couldn’t be sure as he was built like a linebacker determined to win a professional body-building contest. He had tousled brown hair and golden eyes. He was wearing a pair of well-worn jeans and a black tank top under a baggy plaid jacket, but his feet were completely bare.

I looked around.

He and I were the only ones here. There were no other people on the hill looking at the spectacle. I couldn’t see anyone running around. No cars were moving about, no screaming, no shouting, none of the noise I would expect when a massive city looked like it had collided with a fantasy world.

“I am not entirely sure what is going on,” I told him, smoothing my hands over my beige skirt. “Nor do I have any idea what a mundane is, but the impression I’ve gotten about my current situation is that I go where I’m needed.”

“Where you are needed?” the man asked. “Wait, did you get some sort of teleporting ability with your class? What is your class?”

“I’m a therapist,” I said. “And class systems are a societal construct designed to control access to social resources.”

“You’re a what? What is a therapist?” the man asked.

“A therapist is a trained professional who helps people understand their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors especially when they are struggling with something,” I said. “A therapist is like a partner in problem-solving or a guide for navigating the mind and emotions.”

The man blinked at me.

Then his face crinkled, the corners of his eyes folding up as he began to laugh.

“Okay guide,” he grinned, patting the ground next to him. “Therapy me.”

Some things were of much bigger concern right now, such as the city I grew up in being mushed into a mountain and burning down, but the likelihood of any of this being real was extremely low. I was most likely dreaming, and it wouldn’t hurt to go along with the dream. Dreams were a good way for the subconscious to process information and give it to the waking mind, so there was no reason to fight this or freak out.

“My name is Deirdre, and you are?” I asked, moving to where I could see his face and body position easily. I really needed to sit down on the ground and lower myself to his level so I wasn’t towering over him, not that I was towering, he appeared to be quite tall, unusually so. I hesitated looking at the ground.

I couldn’t sit in the grass without being profoundly uncomfortable.

“Use this,” the man said, shrugging out of his jacket. He didn’t lay it on the ground next to him, instead, he leaned over and tossed it at my feet. “I’m Liam.”

“Liam, that’s an Irish name,” I said as I carefully knelt and spread the jacket out, leaning down to sit on the side of my leg while keeping my knees together. This was not the most professional setting.

“I don’t know what that means,” he says. “It’s a common lycan name.”

“A lycan?” I asked.

“You know, like Rawr,” he held up one hand and tensed it like he had claws at the end of his fingers. Then his fingers changed, growing as black claws erupted from them. Thick hair sprouted from the back of his hand.

I wanted to scream and throw myself backward, but that wasn’t professional, so I controlled my internal reaction and remained outwardly calm.

“You can change and shift your body into something else,” I stated, identifying the moment for what it was out loud rather than panicking. I found it helpful to verbally identify things to control my internal fear.

“We all have abilities now,” he said as his hand changed back to normal. He put it back down on the ground behind him and turned to gaze out at the city. “Even you should have something. The mundanes aren’t so mundane anymore. You all got to pick though.”

There was a tension in that last sentence, a pinched expression on his face as his teeth clenched.

“Do you feel this is unfair?” I asked. “Did you not get to pick being a lycan?”

“No, I was born this way,” Liam said, putting a hand on his chest, his tone turning rough and raw. “She didn’t give us the option to be something else. You all got to choose, pick a class, and go through a training dungeon. You could have even chosen to be a lycan. Who the fuck would want to be a Lycan?”

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“You are unhappy being a lycan?” I asked him.

“It's not exactly that,” he said, running his hand through his hair before putting it back down on the ground. He had smeared a little dirt on his forehead and I could see a burr from a weed had gotten stuck in his hair from that action. “It’s that mundanes have no concept of what it would be like. It's hard enough knowing that you can shift into a murder hobo at any second. Choosing that though? Knowing Fiz, she didn’t explain much and mundanes are just picking things without any idea of what they’re doing. Did you understand what you were doing when you chose a therapist for your class?”

“This isn’t about me,” I said automatically. “I-”

“The fuck it isn’t about you,” Liam interrupted as he looked over at me, his golden eyes flashing. “You’re a mundane. This entire thing is about you.”

He gestured at the burning city in front of us.

“How does that make you feel?” I asked, dropping back to one of my easy classic questions. I was feeling a little overwhelmed by the creativity of my own brain in making up this complex character who knew a great deal of the backstory of this environment. This level of fantastical complexity was not normal for me, at all. Normally I dreamt about driving to work and discovering I was naked when I stepped out of the car.

“It makes me feel…” Liam looked up at the sky. “Abandoned.”

“Where do you think that feeling comes from?” I asked.

“It comes from the fact that Fiz is a shitty friend,” he said. “Her soulmate just rewrites himself to be her perfect match and she just ghosts me? All I get is a ‘you’re free go where you want don’t kill mundanes’. I don’t need to be told that. I’m not the one who did that in the first place. She’s the one with the insane body count.”

There was a lot to unpack in that.

I had to start somewhere, so I started at the part that was less focused on murder.

“What were you hoping to get from your relationship with Fiz?” I asked.

He let out a heavy sigh.

“I mean…” he looked over at me, his golden eyes flashing. “To be fair, I was hoping to fuck her.”

“So someone you were trying to sleep with stopped talking to you after she got into a relationship with someone else?” I asked.

“I wasn’t just trying to sleep with her,” he said. “I mean, I took care of her. When one of my own pack decided to try to off her I took care of that.”

“What do you mean you took care of that?” I asked.

“You mundanes,” he shook his head. “I killed them, okay? I felt really protective of Fiz, even before I knew the whole thing about who she was. So I protected her.”

I still wasn’t ready to touch the whole murder subject. Just him casually saying things like that was making me feel pretty anxious, sitting alone on the top of a hill with him.

“Do you feel like she owed you something for protecting her?” I asked.

“No,” Liam looked out at the burning city, freeing me from the intensity of his gaze. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know, it would have been nice for her to say thank you or I appreciate you or anything other than go be free now bubye.”

“What did you say to her when you said goodbye?” I asked.

“I…” he hesitated. “I didn’t say anything.”

“What would you say if you had the chance?” I asked.

He was silent for a long moment.

“I think I should say that to her,” he said, finally. “Uh, what was it again? She needs like a help sheet or something.”

“What are you-” I didn’t get a chance to finish my question.

“I’d like to speak to a system administrator!” he shouted.

Then he lowered his voice, looking back at me.

“That is a weird spell I can tell you that one,” he said.

There was a loud pop and the same woman from before, with the long pearl and orchid studded hair appeared in front of us, backlit by the burning city.

“Liam!” she smiled. She held her arms out wide as he rose to his feet. I stood up as well, stepping off the jacket and picking it up, dusting it off, and folding it over my arm as Liam stepped forward and hugged the other woman. She didn’t look that small to me but when he put his arms around her she just about disappeared.

“Oh this place is a mess,” she sighed as she stepped back out of his arms and turned to look at the city behind her. “I did not anticipate how much work this was going to be getting this all running smoothly. The dungeon’s being a little bitch too. It’s like really attached to the old way of doing things and dropping people into acid traps isn’t really my idea of training them. What did you need? What’s going on? Oh! You found the therapist! Wait, why is she out here?”

The woman focused on me, her eyes flashing from hot pink to brown to gold in a few instants as she frowned.

“You are not supposed to be out of the dungeon, it isn’t ready out here yet.” She tilted her head as she pursed her lips, staring at me.

“I was wondering,” Liam laughed. “She just teleported in next to me like it was nothing saying she goes where she is needed.”

“You need therapy?” the woman turned her head to look at Liam suddenly. “Of course you need therapy. Free for the first time in your life to do whatever you want wherever you want and I bet that is a little intense.”

“It is,” Liam said. Then he took a deep breath. “It’s more intense that you didn’t say goodbye.”

“Why would I say goodbye?” the woman frowned. “I haven’t gone anywhere. I’m running around trying to fix this whole mess. What do you want? Do you want to wear a leash and follow me around like a little puppy dog that says woof when I want it?”

Liam laughed, the sound bright and sudden.

“Fuck off Fiz,” he chuckled.

“That’s what I thought,” she grinned back. “Now is this what therapy does? Makes you all mopey and shit?”

She focused her gaze on me.

“Expressing your emotions and asking your friends to acknowledge them is not being mopey,” I said. “It is a part of human connection.”

“Neither of us are human,” Fiz said.

“My ability didn’t say I went where humans needed me, it says I go where I’m needed,” I pointed out.

“It was really nice to talk to her,” Liam said. “I’m a fan. Plus, you’re the one who wanted people to choose their paths forward. You can’t really give her shit for not fitting into a mold.”

“Fine, you know what, let’s ping pong back in the other direction then,” Fiz said. “What do you feel is most missing in this situation?”

“Furniture,” I nodded.

Liam laughed again, the sound bright and sudden.

***

Special Class Ability Gained:

Conjure Furniture - Who would want this? You really need to think about your responses when you’re talking to divine beings.

***

“Now back in the dungeon!” Fiz said.

***

Ability Restriction Applied

Go Where Needed - Automatically teleport when needed, inside the dungeon.

***

“I thought you were spreading the dungeon out here,” Liam said.

“Right, that should be the training area,” Fiz frowned. “I don’t want her-”

Her words cut off as the world flashed.

Go Where Needed Activated.