“You’ve lost your mind,” Lacey huffed out, “or I’ve lost mine.”

At least that had been what she’d wanted to say. Instead, Lacey reached out a hand and said, “I will serve the White Wolf.”

He took her hand and rose before her, her head craning up to watch his eyes as they still searched hers. It was more than disconcerting. It was disarming. Her whole body quivered like some idiotic schoolgirl with a crush. At least she thought it was because of hormones until the quivering turned into a tingling that immersed her body in icy warmth that romance novels explained so eloquently as a hero tips the heroine right over the edge of ecstasy.

“You are her,” he leaned closer, but Lacey leaned back, jerking her hand out of his.

“What the hell?” she swore, the loss of contact with him, doing nothing to lessen the pins and needles that coursed through her body.

“It’s happening,” Okami stepped back but couldn’t take his eyes off of her. “The magic is coming home.”

“Make it stop!” Lacey commanded, finally noticing an aura of fireflies in golden hues expanding from her body.

“Even if I could, I wouldn’t,” he chuckled.

It was like she had lived half a life with half a soul as this energy filled her. It was confusing and slightly painful, but it was also relaxing. The fireflies entered and left her body, each bobble of heat and cold leaving a bit of itself within her as it crossed into and out of her body as if her very molecules made way for them and their gifts. The entry and exit were pinpricks of pain, but the joy and pleasure they left in her body more than made up for it. The more that flooded into her, the more she became greedy for it, pulling it to her ruthlessly until each mote of light was gone.

“My grandfather told me, but I thought he was exaggerating,” he whispered. “It was beautiful and terrifying at the same time.”

“Agreed,” she breathed out, feeling both so powerful that she could take all the air from the room at once and yet so overwhelmed as to want to collapse. Lacey contented herself with grabbing the back of a nearby chair, the marilune falling from fingers that were almost numb.

The White Wolf caught the fruit before it hit the ground and took it to his lips. She watched his eyes close as a low groan echoed out of his chest. “There is a bit of resonance left in the fruit,” he admitted, almost sheepishly. “The whole room is probably flooded with it. I’ll take the fruit with us in case you need to refresh the power.”

“With us?” Lacey blinked back at him, hating how overwhelmed she always seemed to feel. “Where are we going?”

“I hate to rush you, but there is something you need to see,” he explained, dropping the fruit from the bowl into a pouch at his side. “It would be best if we got started soon. The power is at its peak now, but you will need some time to learn to use it.”

Lacey found herself being hustled through an old wooden door on the other side of the cavern. She hadn’t realized that she’d capitulated, but some part of her knew to follow his lead. With the power that had installed itself into her body came an urgency to do what was needed. Instead of using energy to fight off the feeling, Lacey let it sweep her away. It was as if she had plunged into a fairy tale, but rather than oppose the plot, Lacey found herself invested in its progress. In Gran’s stories, Gran had always been a little reluctant and the endings were filled with the regret of letting the first spark of the fantasy not sweep her along the adventure. Lacey had, as a child, decided that she would not make the same mistake.

Morning was a time enough for dreams to dissipate. The White Wolf might have grabbed her hand again to pull her along, but Lacey joined him at his side once they emerged from the cavern. The world sparkled with fantastic things that would have bothered Lacey in the real world. The sun shone over a small village with dirt roads, thatch-roofed houses, and wolf-folk that walked upright or ran on four to hurry. The White Wolf rushed ahead through the trees as she stared, but she chased after him on a playful laugh through woods that smelled of pine-pitch and recently melted snow.

They wove nimbly around a herd of pigs being shepherded into a nearby pasture where they joined a few geese and ducks that looked too fat to fly. The pling of metal on metal combined with a smoke in the air that could only come from a blacksmith further down the road. The call of wolf-folk and some that looked more foxlike than wolf filtered through the market, but the White Wolf didn’t stop so neither did Lacey. Okami headed straight into what could only be a tavern, pausing only long enough to ring a brass bell outside the door. Lacey didn’t wait to see how folks reacted to the bell’s toll as she chased the White Wolf into a surprisingly well-lit tavern.

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“Another raid?” the barkeep asked, wiping his rough hands on an apron as he pulled them out of a sink full of sudsy mugs.

“Not this time, Smitty,” the White Wolf gave a grin that would let no one forget that a wolf resided in the human-like skin. “This time we fight back.”

Lacey bent over, a little out of breath from having chased the excited wolf-man through the forest and small town.

“Does the lady need a drink?” Smitty cast a suspicious eye at Lacey, but she didn’t care.

“Do you have juice?” Lacey panted. “If not, water would do.”

“This is no lady,” the White Wolf declared, and the way they snarled the word “lady” made her think it must be a bad thing. “This is the Lady and if we do this right, we could end the reign of the Goblin Queen for good.”

“Which direction?” two wolves thundered through the tavern door with the demand. One, his ears a golden tan color, held a club over his head, ready to bash the tables. The other, almost black from head to foot, sported a drawn sword and shield. They both wore leather armor studded with bits of dull metal.

“This one,” the White Wolf laughed at them, and from their faces, Lacey got the feeling that he didn’t do that often. “Take a seat. This time we raid her forces!”

“Did I hear raid?” a bearlike woman poked her head out of a back room even as another foxlike man came in from a back door. The woman was ready with a cleaver and the fox’s eyes glinted with malice.

“Come in and sit,” the White Wolf called out to them all, as more clambered into the room. “Let’s get some ales out while we plot it all out. Weak ale though. We have a fight to get to.”

Lacey took a pale yellow fruit juice from Smitty and let herself lean back against the bar. Every eye settled on her in one way or another as they quickly sat around and quieted. She ignored the bear’s curiosity and most of their hostility. It was clear that strangers were not to be trusted. Out of the corner of her eye, Lacey noticed that the White Wolf poured a bit of purple into each of their mugs as they were passed around. He wasn’t hiding it, and they didn’t take offense at it. Instead, they each took a purposeful gulp of their ale and met the eyes of the White Wolf head on. It was clear that they trusted him and no one else, not even each other. Then she watched him toss back the last of the purple potion and grin for them all.

“She hasn’t taken any,” the foxlike one sneered at Lacey.

“I tossed a whole potion down her throat not a few moments ago,” the White Wolf clapped the foxlike person on the shoulder with very little strength. “You’re going to have to trust me on that, because it isn’t safe to force any more on her right now.”

Eyes didn’t clear in sudden trust as Lacey drank more unaltered juice.

“I’ll have proof in no time anyway,” he told the whole room, which was now crowded with what could almost be a small army of mercenaries. “She isn’t a spy. She’s the Descendant.”

“The Descendant?!” the murmurs floated around like waves on the shore as Lacey was scrutinized again. She had to remind herself to meet their eyes bravely and grasp the adventure with both of her shaking hands.

“I saw the transition with my own eyes,” the White Wolf nodded to them excitedly, and Lacey held her breath to learn more.

“She could be the very Goblin Queen herself!” a barrel-chested bear-man called out over the noise of the whispers.

“She followed me straight from the other world, Graham!” the White Wolf protested. “There is no one more skeptical of the old legends than me, but not only did she fall into the hole after me, but she then passed out. I carried her helpless body to my own bed and watched her sleep for several hours. I even feigned sleep myself to see if she was faking it. There is nothing the Goblin Queen would like better than to slit my throat in my sleep. She’d not pass that opportunity by even to round up the entire resistance.”

“This still smells more like a trap than a godsend,” the gruff Graham crossed his leather-encased arms over a massive chest.

“I dumped a full potion of dispel magic on her, after which she manifested the magic right in front of me,” the White Wolf continued, undeterred by the doubts on the faces that surrounded him. “I could have discounted her claim of being the granddaughter of Akuzukin, but no one can mistake the magic.”

“The Goblin Queen also has the magic,” came a voice that Lacey couldn’t distinguish among the faces.

“Maybe she doesn’t,” the White Wolf protested. “That’s why I called us all here so dramatically. Grandfather told me that when the magic is bestowed on the foreigner, it is exhausted by the initial transfer.”

“Transfer,” Lacey whispered, trying to understand what he was saying.

“As the Decendant,” the White Wolf changed his focus to Lacey and held her eyes with the force of his personality and conviction, “you own as much power as the Goblin Queen. She is like to be furious right now and must being coming for us soon, but we have a window of opportunity. You two share the power.”

“Why?” Lacey asked.

“Only foreigners can wield the power that is currently coursing through your body,” he told her, taking her hands in his.

“The Goblin Queen is a foreigner?” Lacey asked.

“Yes,” he admitted, but quickly moved on. “She commands the Goblin Army because her magic has a hold on them, and as long as she uses the magic to help them, they will follow her. But when you got here, she lost half the magic to you. If we can teach you how to use your magic quickly, then we can use her weakness to unseat her from power.”

“Then teach quickly!” Lacey squeezed his hands excitedly.

The room got hushed as the White Wolf turned over her hands and held them that way by ringing her wrists with his long fingers. “It is simpler than simple, from what Grandfather said. You just need to focus those sparkles of yours through your hands and command them by will alone.”

“Just?” Lacey goggled at him, nerves shaking her tenuous confidence.

“Try,” he told her and to him it was simple. He didn’t have to do it.