Wizard’s Hand wasn’t really a hand. That was just what Hogarth called it. Lemon could pick up lots of things at once, as long as the total weight wasn’t too much. One heavy thing, or lots of light things. The number of light things she could pick up depended mostly on how much she could clump them together into one bundle.

In this case, the need to aim made it harder to pick up lots of stones at once. Sure, Lemon could throw five or six at a time, but they wouldn’t hit anything, and she wasn’t playing fetch, so what was the point?

Instead, she targeted the closest torch, ripped it out of the mud it had been planted in, and did her best to tip it completely upside down to bury it in the ground. If she was quick enough, maybe the fire would go out completely.

That didn’t happen, of course. It would have been too easy. But it did get the bird-people’s attention. One of them, the one who’d just had a turn, left the circle to go over to the torch, which was when Lemon pelted her in the head with a rock. Wizard’s Hand could get them moving at a pretty good speed, and the bird-person collapsed to the ground the instant the sharp crack of rock meeting skull filled the air.

That got the attention of the rest of them, and a second bird-person took three little flapping hops to cover the distance. She said something in that bird-speak they used, which sounded like two crows fighting over a heel of bread, and Lemon struck again. A second rock shot out of the darkness ten feet to Lemon’s right, and struck the bird-person right on the mouth. Teeth went flying and she let out a wailing screech of pain.

Their ritual was now thoroughly interrupted, or at least Lemon thought it should be. None of the bird-people were throwing bones into the center anymore, but that one who’d been chanting hadn’t stopped or even slowed down. The Bad Magic was still hanging in the air, no longer building, but not diminishing either.

Lemon knew more than the average doggo about magic, and she knew a ritual anchor when she saw one. Sometimes the slightest nudge could cause the whole thing to fall apart. Other times, as long as the base kept going, the ritual could handle all kinds of interference. It was just her luck she’d gotten stuck trying to thwart that kind.

The bird-people were closing in on her now, but in a way that suggested they only had a general idea where she was and couldn’t actually see her. That was great for Lemon, since she was fifteen feet away from her rock pile, which was where they were looking. She scooped up another one and hurled it at a random bird-lady, who unfortunately dodged in a display of feathery acrobatics that left her on her back on the ground while the other bird-ladies let out evil, hissing laughs.

That was just creepy, and Lemon determined the best way to make it stop was more rocks. She fired off three more, one after another, with the result of hitting two of them in the face and one in the stomach when she startled and tried to fly straight up. Dismayed with her progress, Lemon decided she needed to reevaluate her strategy.

Beating up these bird-people wasn’t going to break the ritual, and she didn’t have anywhere near enough stones to beat them all. The one she’d hit first was already awake again and wearing an expression that looked a lot like food-lady’s had when she’d caught Lemon with the steaks.

Lemon snuck off through the dark, careful to stay well away from the revealing light of the torches. She abandoned her pile of rocks in favor of circling the ritual site and gaining access to the bones instead. It required her to get a bit closer than she liked, but all the bird-people were looking in the wrong direction anyway. Lemon scooped up the biggest bone from the pile, one so big that she would have struggled to hold it in her jaws, and clubbed the chanting bird-lady in the face with it.

Her eyes flew open and, her chant interrupted, let out a furious scream of rage. Immediately, all of the other bird ladies spun in place and flocked back towards their chanter. Lemon waited until they were close to the bone pile, then flung random pieces in every direction before knocking over two more torches and making a run for it into the night.

The bird-ladies took to the sky in every direction, their screaming echoing through the Harp E Woods and alerting more and more of them of the intruder in their midst. Lemon scampered back to her hollowed out log and considered her next move.

The Bad Magic had broken when she’d clobbered the chanting bird-lady, so first of all, mission accomplished. Lemon was indeed a good girl. She hadn’t actually killed any of the bird-ladies, which was fine. Lemon knew lots of stories about monster hunters, but they usually had magic weapons or spells. All she had was her charm collar.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Considering what she had to work with, Lemon thought she’d done pretty good for herself. Now that the Bad Magic was gone though, it was time to run for it. She just needed to make a clean getaway, like that one time she’d swiped Hogarth’s eggs and toast while he was finishing cooking the diced potatoes. Nobody had seen her do it, not even Midnight!

Somehow, they’d known it was her anyway, but they hadn’t seen her. She was sure of that.

None of her charms were going to help with staying hidden. The best she could do was keep leash active to help her run faster, but Lemon didn’t think she was in all that much trouble. The bird-ladies didn’t see very well in the dark, so it should be way easier to sneak away from them than it was to sneak by Midnight.

Lemon ate a sausage for good luck, peeked out from her hiding place, and took off into the dark. She found that the soft ground actually helped keep her running quieter and tried to keep herself going in the direction where things stayed soft. Occasionally, she’d hear wings beating in the sky, and whenever that happened she tried to shelter under the nearest tree if she could.

No bird-ladies ever dropped down and attacked her, and even though Lemon was tired, she ran for hours in the dark. Eventually, she realized it had been a long time since the last bird-lady had flown near her and, exhausted, she settled down to rest. She was very, very thirsty, and even though the occasional puddles she found smelled and tasted bad, she lapped up a few mouthfuls anyway.

Then she treated herself to a victory sausage (just to get the taste of the gross water out of her mouth) and went to bed. It had been a busy day for her, after all, and she wasn’t even half way to the conference yet. She’d check her map in the morning and find out how far she had to go.

* * *

Lemon was up with the dawn and quite surprised to find herself in some place that didn’t really look at all like the Harp E Woods. There was a lot of standing water, a lot of mud, and not a lot of trees. There were still some trees, but only here and there.

That meant, fortunately, that there were no nests and no eggs, which was just fine by her. Lemon’s future plans involving bird-ladies was to tell someone else and let it be Their Problem, which was distinctly different from her problems. She’d done her part in foiling some Bad Magic, none of which she felt was her responsibility in the first place.

She’d only done it because that’s what good girls did. Also because throwing rocks was kind of fun, even if it was also kind of mean. The bird-ladies deserved it though, so she didn’t feel bad about it at all. Now that she thought about it, she should have saved some of those rocks in her bag. Oh well. It wasn’t like rocks were hard to find.

Lemon pulled her map out and stared at it, her tail slowly sweeping back and forth across the dirt while she did. She knew she wasn’t in the Harp E Woods anymore, probably. It didn’t look like any woods she’d ever been in. And she thought she’d been running mostly to the left on the map, which meant she should be in a wide-open place with lots of green grass and people.

She looked around. There were no people. There was no grass. There was some moss though. Maybe she’d gotten the color wrong. Lemon quickly pulled her spectacles charm out of her bag and switched out her leash charm. Then she looked around again to confirm that everything was still muddy gray and mossy green.

No grass, which the map said there should be. Which meant… “I think I’m lost,” she said.

If she hadn’t gone left, maybe she’d gone up. The map said that above the Harp E Woods was a lot of mountains. Lemon looked around again and spotted the mountains far, far away. So she definitely wasn’t in the mountains then. But if she wasn’t in the grass area, and she wasn’t in the mountain area, the only thing left was the woods area.

Or was it? Lemon peered at the map, so close that her snout touched it. There was just a tiny little patch at the top of the Harp E Woods, before it turned into the mountains. Unlike the rest of the woods, it was colored gray, the same gray mud and water she was seeing around her. That must be where she was!

Lemon’s tail started pumping rapidly as she hopped up and looked around. Okay, she knew where she was, and she was… a little off course, but that just meant she needed to keep going sun-ward to get back to the road. Or, wait, it was only sun-ward after noon, and since it wasn’t noon yet, she needed to go away from sun-ward, whatever that was called.

Lemon stuffed the map back into her bag, replaced her leash charm again, and started walking away from the sun. She was chasing her own shadow, and as long as she kept doing that, eventually she was bound to run into the road. It was a solid strategy, with no way for her to get lost.

Except that pretty soon she ran out of ground. Things just kept getting wetter and muddier until she was up to her paws in water, with no telling just how much deeper it got. She could swim if she had to, but swimming was so much slower than running. It might be faster to walk around, not to mention safer. Definitely cleaner.

She needed a water-walking charm. Hogarth could make that for her, she was sure. When she finally got to the wizards’ conference, she was going to ask him for one. Until she had that though, she didn’t really want to go swimming in the gross muddy water that probably had stuff living in it. Nope. No thank you.

Lemon circled around the lake and kept to relatively dry land, which only lasted another few minutes before she found herself cut off by a sludgey river. It wasn’t very wide, but there was no end in sight. Going around the river wasn’t an option. She had no choice but to swim.

Gingerly, Lemon padded forward until the water was up to her belly, then her shoulders. Then she kicked off the muddy bottom and paddled her way towards the opposite shore. She just kept telling herself that there was nothing in there, that it would only take a minute to cross.

There was nothing in there. Nothing at all.

Something brushed her leg.

There was something in there! Lemon did not like this! She needed to paddle faster!