Irene was starting to get the hang of this Apparition thing, but then the prospect of fate as a chew toy for some kind of hell beast was a hell of a motivator. The loud crack of her teleports had lessened into a quiet snap, and the frog no longer seemed as upset by the process, which was good because he might be the only reason she survived this.

“Frogger, use poison spit,” Irene said as she turned to face the hound once more.

The frog spat another glob of noxious purple poison at the beast trying its best to kill them, but he also tugged sharply on her ear.

“That’s a ‘no’ to Frogger then,” Irene said, watching as the hound shook its head, trying in vain to rid itself of the sizzling poison. At least she wasn’t wearing earrings. The frog’s grip was surprisingly strong.

Again the beast charged, and again Irene teleported out of the way, reappearing across the clearing. She stumbled slightly as she landed, but regained her balance with a hop. Gosh, being able to Apparate was so cool.

Croak, the frog said, complaining about the technique.

“Sorry Croaker,” Irene said.

A wet slap of a tongue across her temple spoke of the still unnamed frog’s displeasure with the name. An instant later, he spat another glob of poison at the hound, hitting it just above the eye as it prepared to lunge at them again. It sizzled and dripped down, narrowly missing the eye proper. The creature howled, tearing up grass and earth as it ran at them. She disappeared from its path, reappearing with barely a stumble. The beast, frustrated in its hunt, turned with a howl. It was met by another glob of poison, enraging it further, and it dragged its face across the ground, trying to rub the poison off.

“Good job, Kermit,” Irene said.

CROAK, the frog said, protesting the name.

Irene winced as her ear rang. “Ok, sheesh. I’ll keep thinking.” The beast gave up on cleaning its face, and raised its head towards her again, snarling low in its throat.

The hound’s face and shoulders were scarred and pitted by the poisonous attacks, but still it charged and chased her with the single minded intensity of a predator.

“At least it can’t think for itself,” Irene said, sparing a glance for the splattered remains of the bird person. She spun on her heel and vanished with a snap, avoiding another charge and any thoughts that she had killed some kind of assassin bird person. “Self defence,” she muttered to herself. “Just like the first time.” Oh no, she’d been here less than a day and already she’d killed two people.

Again the frog spat poison as the predator turned, but this time it was more spit than poison. Rather than eating away at the hellhound, it dripped wetly from its sharp fur.

The beast had flinched, but when the pain failed to follow, it shook itself and began to prowl, circling the clearing. No longer harried, now it felt free to toy with its prey.

“Uh, Froaky?” Irene asked, turning her eye on her shoulder companion. His rich blue colour was gone, resembling the wan cyan he had sported after Puddle had injured him.

Croak, the frog said, not allowing his weakness to stop it objecting to the name. He was trembling as he struggled to maintain his perch.

Irene reached inwards, breathing in as she did, and attempted to breathe out the white healing mist that had helped the frog last time. It did not come as easily, perhaps because of the giant murderdog trying to kill her, her attempts only resulting in white wisps that dispersed almost before they could reach her companion. She tried again, forcing herself to focus with the intensity that came with years of medical school.

The hellhound’s tail went still, and Irene was very mindful of the fact that it had a vicious looking thagomizer on its end. She could see it preparing to leap, and she breathed out, white mist coiling around the frog, but it had no effect, her companion still croaking feebly. The beast leapt, heavy paw seeking to swat her head from her shoulders. Irene turned inward, looking to be Not Here - but her new power failed, whatever sense or ability that let her teleport entangled with her attempt to heal the frog.

Sharp claws grew large in her vision, and her mind’s eye helpfully showed her a preview of what her mangled corpse would look like laid out in a morgue. She flinched, throwing up her arm in a futile attempt at defence as she fell backwards.

By fearful instinct and sheer luck, her invisible limb formed between herself and the predator, whatever limit that had prevented her from Apparating apparently not stopping it. The beast slammed into it face first, howling its fury, and she lashed out, pushing it away. She succeeded in doing so, but not completely, for as it was propelled it twisted in midair, and its tail lashed out. She felt a heavy blow on her shoulder, and a line of blood splattered across the ground. Someone cried out, high and pained.

Irene gasped as she fell to the ground, a line of fire carved down across her collarbone. She pushed herself back, adrenaline helping her ignore the pain. Splintering wood drew her attention, and she saw a tree collapse on the hound, pinning it briefly. It began to savage the tree, turning on it like it was another attacker, and she took the respite to turn frantic eyes on her wound.

She was lucky. Even as she scrambled further backwards, she knew it could have been much worse. A wide gash started on her shoulder and cut down across her collarbone. The thagomizer had barely brushed her, but had it been even a centimetre closer…had she not fallen back before it struck, it would have pinned the frog to her shoulder on its way to her heart.

As it was, she was not the only one wounded. One of the smaller blades of bone had caught the frog, leaving a mangled mess of what had once been its left hand. The pained cry had been his, and now it was barely clinging to her shoulder with its unharmed hand. Irene looked upon it with dismay, thoughts of her own injury pushed to the side.

“Oh, g - we’ll fix this, you’ll be ok,” Irene said to the frog, more affected by his injury than anything else in this world she’d yet experienced. Suddenly this wasn’t an adventure, no jaunt through the woods of a magical land. She had dragged this poor frog from its home, and now it had lost a hand, injured and in pain because of something she’d done for a second time. “We’ll fix this,” she said again, a promise, and she reached out and within, searching for the healing mist.

She pushed herself to her knees, and the frog scrabbled to keep its balance. Its wounded hand made contact with her own injury, blood intermixing, and in that moment there was a connection.

It could not be described nor made sense of save for flickering feelings too fast to identify, asked and answered by instinct, emotions passing between two lifeforms at the speed of thought. An invitation was offered and answered, and a compact forged by dint of the sense and power that she had discovered in this new world. This was no crude expression of magic clumsily wielded - this was something deeper. Something older.

The connection bloomed into something more, and the frog - her frog - became something more. For a brief moment, she felt a pain in her hand, and an emptiness in her belly, but then it was gone.

The victorious roar of the hellhound drew their attention, the beast snapping the thick trunk it fought in half with a flex of its jaw, and it turned its attention to them once more. Black eyes watched them with an unthinking hunger as it pawed the earth, but Irene was not afraid. She felt confidence borne from the knowledge that she was not alone in facing the beast, and she readied the sense of power within herself that she was growing more and more familiar with.

Its patience expended, the hellhound bounded towards them, slavering maw opening wide as if to swallow them whole.

CROAK, her frog bellowed, eyebrows bristling at the foe that had dared to injure it so. Its throat swelled, and Irene could feel a gentle tug on something deep within her chest, and she gave of herself, pushing out with her own power.

Her frog was pale and washed out still, and bleeding to boot, but what erupted from its mouth was no small glob of poison spit. A veritable river of toxin burst forth, blasting the hound head on. A pained howl was pried from its maw, but that only opened the way for the poison to flow down its throat, and it choked on it. Red fur began to shrivel as the creature rotted from the inside out, decaying rapidly. What was once its head was melting into a horrific slurry of bone and flesh, sloughing off onto the once pristine grass of the clearing. Irene raised a hand to her nose to ward off the stink, but there was none, the poison eating away even that.

The hellhound had died with a gurgle and a whimper, and peace returned to the forest. Irene stared at the thing that had come close to killing her, her pulse slowly settling. It felt different to Puddle somehow, less of a magical adventure and more a threat to life and limb. A cautious songbird broke the silence, warbling from its hidden perch, and other forest denizens slowly followed suit.

“Ok,” Irene said to herself. “Ok.” She let out a breath and reached up to her frog, stroking his side. “You did good -” she broke off, searching for another name, but when she thought of more frog-like diminutives they struck her as wrong, unsuitable for her dignified companion.

Croak, her frog said, peering at her with his large eyes as he encouraged her.

“Charles,” Irene decided. “You did good Charles.”

Croak, her frog, Charles, said. He sounded satisfied. His eyebrows rippled and settled, like an old man arranging his newspaper just so. Then, he raised his mangled hand, looking at it meaningfully.

“Right,” Irene said. She was still kneeling, and she wasn’t quite ready to get back to her feet, but that was fine. She reached within, breathing deeply of the world around her. It was easier this time, now that she wasn’t in imminent peril, and she breathed out, exhaling white mist that left her and Charles shrouded from sight. Gradually, it began to fade, and she could feel it being sucked into their injuries, whatever property that gave it its healing properties wrung from it like a wet towel. Pain faded with it, and she looked down.

Her ratty shirt was still stained with blood, but the wound that had caused it had closed, though not without leaving its mark. A thick rope of scar tissue remained, crawling down over her collarbone. She shivered, very aware of how close to death she had come. “Goodbye to shoulderless dresses, I guess,” she said, not terribly concerned. It could have been worse.

Croak, Charles said sadly, looking at his own injury. Instead of repairing the near shredded flesh, the injury had healed into a rounded mass, white scar tissue contrasting harshly against the rich blue of his skin.

“I’m sorry Charles,” Irene said. For whatever reason, her ability to heal hadn’t worked as well with injuries caused by physical trauma as it had to fix Puddle’s black mist.

Croak, Chalres said, patting her on the cheek. He set his clublike hand on her shoulder for balance, his good right hand resting on her ear.

Irene let out a sigh, but steeled herself. “Right,” she said, looking around. “...Yangjie?”

The once tranquil forest clearing was a mess, torn up and spotted with patches of poison from the fight, to say nothing of the still dissolving body of the hellhound. The tengu was still a splattered pile of bones and meat, and Yangjie’s body still lay where it fell, but of Yangjie ‘himself’, there was nothing to be seen.

“Yangjie?” Irene called again. She frowned, getting shakily to her feet. Had he been taken while she was busy? It wasn’t like he could go anywhere on his own.

Croak, Charles said, pointing across the clearing.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Irene squinted, unsure of what he was looking at, until she saw it. The hellhound had left an imprint of one clawed foot where it had leapt at her, and pressed into the dirt in the centre of it was something black and rounded, about the size of a - oh. She hurried over, and took in Yangjie’s plight. In one of the hellhound’s mad charges it had stood squarely on the man’s head, leaving his face buried in the dirt, blind and mostly deaf to the battle.

Perhaps sensing her presence, Yangjie ground out a cry for help. “Mrmmph!”

Stepping quickly, Irene bent down to scrabble in the dirt, trying to get a handhold with which to pull Yangjie free, but he - his head - was wedged in tightly, too tight to get a grip on him. A thought occurred to her, and she hesitated, but only for a moment. “Sorry about this,” she muttered, and grabbed him by his hair.

“Mrmghk!” he protested.

Some of his hairs were torn out, but Irene gathered up more and pulled harder, and was rewarded as he began to slip loose. She blew out a breath, and Charles croaked encouragingly as she set herself and gave a final great heave.

“Nrnghk mmah hair!” Yangjie cried as he came loose with great force, only to have his momentum arrested by Irene’s grip on his once lustrous hair. He swung from her grip, dangling wildly.

“Are you ok?” Irene asked, quickly setting him back down on the ground, neck down.

Yangjie pulled a face and spat, clearing a mouthful of dirt. Once perfectly sculpted eyebrows had been left ragged and unkempt, and there was a cut on his cheek from a stone, but it was his hair that had suffered the most. “My hair,” he moaned, sounding more upset than he had when he was first decapitated. “I was the envy of the Thirteen Houses, and now see what I am reduced to!”

“It will grow back!” Irene reassured him, and she knelt, beginning to brush clumps of dust and dirt from his face and crown.

“Wounds of the body may heal, but those of the spirit linger,” Yangjie said, eyes full of sorrow, and also dirt. He blinked rapidly, trying to get it out.

“Uh, is this something that is going to heal, or?” Irene asked, glancing between Yangjie’s head and his body.

“Not without help,” Yangjie said. He snorted, and dust shot from his nostrils.

“Do I just put your head back on your neck?” Irene asked. “I only know one healing spell but it doesn’t seem too good with physical wounds.”

Yangjie tittered in a way that made it seem he should be hiding behind a fan. “Your Qi resonates with the world like that of a master, yet you speak like a rube. You should have a care for the manners you affect; those without the eyes to see might mistake you for the most unrefined of juniors.”

Irene hesitated, glancing at Charles. He was looking up and away, not meeting her gaze.

Even reduced to a mere head, Yangjie’s keen eyes missed nothing. “You…are a master, correct?”

“I mean, I’m a doctor. I graduated with excellent marks,” Irene said.

For a head without a heart or lungs, Yangjie managed to pale dramatically. “A doctor? Like some kind of peasant?”

“Hey,” Irene said, vaguely offended.

“Which of the Thirteen Houses do you belong to?” Yangjie asked, starting to sound slightly desperate.

“These Houses, what were they again?” Irene asked.

Yangjie closed his eyes. “Please tell me you belong to a sect.”

Irene’s silence was damning.

“How did you even get here?” Yangjie demanded, glaring up at her. His poise was gone now, cast to the winds, and if he had hands he would have thrown them up into the air. As it was, he was reliant on his messy eyebrows to convey the depths of his aggravation.

“I don’t know!” Irene snapped back, her own irritation rising. “Today was supposed to be my first day off in weeks but I was dumped in this forest without so much as a by-your-leave! I had plans! Plans that didn’t involve fighting evil twins and killer birdmen and hellhounds! I don’t even know what planet I’m on!”

“Planet?” Yangjie asked, petulance replaced by confusion. “We do not dwell on a planet.”

“What do you mean this isn’t a planet,” Irene said, looking around at the forest suspiciously. “Is this some kind of VR-”

“We dwell on the Promised Land,” Yangjie said, looking at her like she had just claimed the earth was flat. “The Ring of the First Cultivator, crafted so that the worthy might follow in his footsteps.”

“A ringworld?” Irene said blankly. “Is this a xianxia or scifi?”

Yangjie ignored her words. “But if you did not bring yourself here, then you cannot leave with a One Thousand League Step,” he said to himself with dawning horror. “You would have to walk from the forest…”

“Is that dangerous?” Irene asked. She was suddenly less sanguine about her adventure if there was a constant risk of hellhound attack in otherwise serene forests. “Are there more of those things?”

“Hellhounds reside on the Outer Ring, not the Inner,” Yangjie said, brushing away her concern. “But if we have to walk, we are weeks from any civilisation worth the name. There is nothing but peasantry for leagues upon leagues.”

The worry in her chest eased, but then a thought occurred to her, and she narrowed her eyes at him. “What do you mean ‘we’?”

“Ah, yes. Well,” Yangjie said, his irritated manner suddenly falling away. He tried to smile at her. “Your grace and generosity would not see you leave a disadvantaged young master alone and helpless, would it?”

She pursed her lips. “No,” she admitted. “How far are we from…anything?”

“From civilisation? The Sector capital is a month away,” Yangjie said. “From some backwater village? Perhaps a few days.”

“And you want me to lug you all the way to the capital,” Irene said.

“I would appreciate being escorted by one so lovely as yourself, yes,” Yangjie said. “I am of course a person of some importance, and such a deed would not go unrewarded.”

Irene fought the urge to rub at her temples. Was this a fetch quest or an escort quest?

Croak, Charles said, looking down on Yangjie from his perch with clear disdain.

“How rude,” Yangjie said, brows shooting up in affront.

Croak.

“The nerve-!”

Irene ignored the growing argument between her frog and the talking head. Did she really have a reason to deny him? It wasn’t in her to leave someone in the middle of a forest while they were helpless, and he knew about this new world she found herself in. He could tell her what she needed to know to avoid another hellhound situation at the least. She found herself warming to the idea. The fight might have been a bit of a wakeup call, but this was still an adventure of the kind that dreams and fables were made of. She would not let it pass her by.

This seemed like the perfect tutorial quest, anyway.

“-your poison is completely lacking in subtlety, too,” Yangjie said with an imperious sniff.

“Ok,” she said, interrupting the disagreement. “I’ll help you get home.”

“You are a vision of hope and beauty,” Yangjie said with a smile, a hint of his old poise shining through.

Irene decided to keep the spot of dirt on his front tooth to herself. “And you’ll tell me about this ringworld we’re on.”

“It would only be polite to answer your questions as you bear me on my way,” Yangjie said. “Shall you cradle me to your bosom, or place me on your free shoulder?”

“No.”

Yangjie frowned, a delicate thing that had likely set maidens to weeping. “Then how will we travel?”

“I’ll figure something out,” Irene said, perhaps a tad ominously.

His face became pinched. “A certain level of dignity is expected to be afforded to sect members from those who ser-” he cut himself off.

“Yes?” Irene asked, putting on a vacantly polite smile. “Those who what?”

“Those who search for enlightenment,” Yangjie continued smoothly. “I can aid you, even if I cannot reveal sect secrets, but I cannot do this from the bottom of a satchel.”

“I’m not going to put you in a bag like a piece of luggage,” Irene said. “I don’t even have a bag.”

“Yes, you are somewhat lacking in possessions,” Yangjie said, inspecting her comfort clothing with critical eyes. He nodded somehow. “You should take my garments for yourself, lest you be thought a peasant.”

Irene looked at the corpse and the dark red pool of blood that had spilled from it. “I’m not wearing that,” she said flatly. She didn’t care that the blood had avoided the fabric, there was still a dead body in it.

“It is crafted from the silk of eighth generation midnight orb weavers,” Yangjie said, wheedling. “Tailored by hands that have never known anything coarser than the softest fabrics.”

“Your corpse is still in it,” Irene said. She felt it a point worth reminding him of.

“Not for long,” Yangjie said.

Irene stared at him, letting her blank face convey the magnitude of her disinterest in anything that involved stripping his body.

“Kindly touch my head to my neck,” he instructed.

Confused, but doing as she was asked, Irene took up his head and approached his body, taking care to avoid the pool of blood that was already beginning to congeal. She made to place his neck back on the stump.

“Mind my hair!” Yangjie said, as he found himself perilously close to the bloodpool.

“Right, sorry,” Irene said. How could she have forgotten the hair while she was holding a severed head back to its body at the head’s request. She set Yangjie on the back of his neck and held him in place. “Now what?”

“A moment,” Yangjie said, and he closed his eyes.

Several long moments passed, and Irene fought the urge to fidget. She was not unfamiliar with bodies, but this wasn’t the hospital, and she certainly wasn’t wearing her scrubs. The moment stretched longer still, and she opened her mouth to question Yangjie, but then she felt a pulse.

It was like the sense of power she had discovered within herself, but at the same time utterly foreign. The pulse started in Yangjie’s head, but echoed down, into his body and through it. A single tremor rippled through the blood as well, and then there was the sound of a match being struck.

White flames erupted from the corpse, and Irene flinched back, but there was no pain. They seemed to flicker and dance through her without touching anything; even the grass was spared. The body was not, and nor was the blood, the white flames consuming them over the course of mere heartbeats. Flesh glowed and began to break into flakes, becoming too bright to look at as they joined the flames, and soon there was no trace of the body at all, not even the bloodstain. There was only the black hanfu, now empty.

Yangjie sighed tiredly, opening his eyes. “Such things are difficult when one is divorced from their meridians.”

Irene set him down once more, eyes wide. “Was there a reason for that?”

“I may have been brought down by a cowardly assassin, but it will be a warm day on the Outer Ring before Yangjie the Serene Peacock leaves his body to be rendered into pills by any fourth rate cultivator that stumbles across it,” he said haughtily.

With great effort, Irene suppressed the amusement that threatened to break out over her face. “Perish the thought,” she said. “Completely unbecoming of-” and here her lips quivered “-the Peacock.”

“Just so,” Yangjie said. “Now, you may do away with those…things that you are wearing and make use of my hanfu.”

“I’m not wearing that,” Irene said.

Yangjie tsked, like she was an unreasonable child. “You need the protection it offers.”

“You just died - were decapitated in it!”

“There are no impurities or traces left behind after I applied my Purifying Phoenix Breath to it,” Yangjie said. “You don’t want all whose paths we cross to think you one of the peasants, do you?”

“Won’t an outfit that nice make me a target?” Irene asked. “It would be better to go unnoticed.”

“No one would dare assault an obvious cultivator,” Yangjie said dismissively. “A young peasant woman, travelling alone, however…”

Irene pressed her lips together. She already had three kills to her name since she was dropped into this world, which was two more than she was comfortable with. “Fine. But I’m not wearing your under layers.”

A satisfied nod was her only answer, and Irene moved to inspect the outfit. It had been a while since she had dealt with traditional clothing like this, but it wasn’t exactly brain surgery. She had the outfit untied and laid out in short order, and Charles jumped from her shoulder, hopping over to Yangjie. He planted himself directly in front of him, and the man went cross eyed trying to keep his eyes on him.

“Must you?” Yangjie asked. “The lady is only donning an outer layer.”

Croak, Charles said, eyebrows bristling.

Yangjie rolled his eyes, but Irene ignored them, slipping the hanfu on over her sweatpants and shirt. It might have been a man’s outfit, and slightly overlarge, but the sheer softness of the fabric made such things a distant concern. She tied the belt off, before turning this way and that to admire it. Charles turned from his staring contest with Yangjie and leapt back up to his perch, settling himself in with an approving croak.

“You see?” Yangjie said. “Eighth generation midnight orb weavers.”

Irene could grudgingly admit that it was the most comfortable thing she had ever worn, and that was just the outer layer over her old lounging clothes. She couldn’t imagine what a full outfit would feel like. Still, that didn’t solve her problem of how she was going to carry Yangjie on her travels, and she wasn’t cradling his head to her chest no matter how nice the outfit was. A thought occurred, and she glanced at the remaining fabric. “Hmmm.”

Attempting to tear the white underlayer into usable strips was an exercise in futility, but she was able to adapt, and soon she had wrangled it into a form that she could use.

“What are you doing?” Yangjie asked, watching her suspiciously. “I will not be stowed away in a pouch.”

Irene took up the head, and settled him into the makeshift sling cum backpack she had created, before donning it. “How’s the view back there?” she asked.

“...this is undignified,” Yangjie said from his position on her back, facing away.

“It’s that or I tie you to my belt using your hair,” Irene said. “You’d bounce with every step, too.”

There was a pause.

“I will endure.”

Croak, Charles said. He sounded amused.

Irene surveyed the clearing. When she had arrived, it had been pristine and idyllic, the perfect place to relax. Now, it was savaged and torn up, a shattered tree on one side, and two corpses within it, one crushed and the other near melted. Whatever Charles’ poison did to burn away the stench of melted flesh was fading too, and the hellhound was beginning to stink. The body of the tengu, already attracting flies, did nothing to help the matter.

A flicker of reflected light caught her eye, and despite her own preferences, Irene was compelled to approach the corpse to investigate.

The armour the tengu had worn was shattered beyond repair, and not suitable for a human body regardless, but that was not what had caught her eye. Laying in the dirt, miraculously free of gore, was the hilt of the sword that had been used to cut Yangjie’s head from his shoulders.

“What is it?” Yangjie asked. “What do you see?”

Irene was reminded of that one friend who asked questions constantly through a movie or show, and ignored him. She took up the hilt, inspecting it. It was a simple design, rounded and long enough for her to hold with two hands, and there was a stylised tiger face etched into the guard, mid snarl. There was nothing that looked like a button to make the blade appear, but she knew she had seen it, a sword filled with fire.

Something about the hilt seemed to beckon to her, and she looked at it suspiciously. Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain, she thought. Aloud, she said, “if you start talking to me I’m having Charles melt you.”

The hilt made no visible response, but Yangjie spluttered.

“Not you, Yangjie,” Irene said. The hilt continued to beckon, giving off a sense of invitation, and Irene bit her lip. It was worth a shot…she tried to push some of her power into it, trying to direct it from her core and down her arm into it.

Golden, shimmering light erupted from the hilt, blasting across the clearing. It sliced through several tree canopies, and their branches fell to the ground with a crack and a clatter. Irene yelped, startled, and the light disappeared as soon as it had come. She looked at the hilt in shock. If she had been pointing it at herself, she would have put a hole through her head. She froze at the thought, remembering an old movie. She shook her head at herself, disbelieving even as she considered it.

Well, there was only one way to find out. Again, more carefully this time, she fed some of her power into the hilt, feeling the connection form.

A blade erupted from the hilt once more, shining a brilliant gold. It was twice as long as her, and unwieldy to the extreme, even flickering slightly as she concentrated on maintaining the connection, but that didn’t stop the wide grin from stretching across her face.

“Lightsaber,” she said. The excitement that had been tempered by the near death experience against the hellhound came roaring back, and she held back a laugh. She swept the blade around, accidentally doing some more trimming. It was silent, not making the sounds she expected of a lightsaber, but that was ok. She could provide. “Vrmm, zhmm, krsch.”

The blade gave a final flicker and died, her glee overcoming her focus, but her smile remained. Look out ringworld. Irene was coming, and she had a lightsaber.