Arina walked beside her new master, paying careful attention to her surroundings. She had been outside Oinos Springs before, but never this far. The city had always been vibrant, a complex maze of surfaces and sounds that she knew every corner and cranny of. Out here, she felt… exposed. As the wind rustled through the tall, inedible grasses and rolled over the shallow hills, it muffled Arina’s sense of being. There was a vastness to this place, a vastness Arina could not comprehend. Her world grew fuzzy as the further it was away from her, and halted inexorably at the edge of her hearing. Out here, Arina was shrunken. A prey, constantly on the lookout for danger. It was shameful.

Still, her master had cautioned her to be careful here. She got very few orders from her master, so she would place extra focus on each one. The only other new order she had was to never touch the sometimes-man. The sometimes-man was a confounding beast beyond her comprehension, a presence that mocked Arina’s reliance on form, weight, and memory. Whenever the sometimes-man left, any unknown being that returned thereafter could be the sometimes-man. The others could always see who was and was not the sometimes-man, but Arina could not.

Arina did not want to touch the sometimes-man, so she walked at a pace that put her master between them. The sometimes-man had noticed this and changed his stride, presumably to mock her. Arina always matched it, equal and opposite, in perfect orbit around her master. It was satisfying. The sometimes-man never got too close to her master, which proved the creature was at least wise.

Master’s kin, the soft boy, did not have such restrictions. He and the master were of family, similar to her former master and his little-girl-grown-large, Isabella. The soft boy spoke most quietly, and least often, which Arina liked. Yet when he spoke it was usually questions, which Arina did not like. Her master refused to give indication on what the answers to the soft boy’s questions were supposed to be. It made giving the answers difficult even when she knew them, and she usually did not. Tests, constant tests.

He’d asked if she had hatched from an egg, which she had. He’d asked if she remembered hatching, which she did. He reacted as if that was strange, or possibly impressive. Arina didn’t know if it was strange or impressive, it was only true.

“What was that like?” the soft boy had asked. “How did it feel?”

These were always the hardest questions. Arina had to think a long time before answering them, but no one seemed to mind. The soft boy was very patient.

“I was not me, at first,” Arina eventually answered. “Then I was. I learned hunger, discomfort, restlessness. It was uncomfortable. So I fought and I struggled until it broke. There was nothing else to do.”

“That’s incredible,” the soft boy commented. “I’ve never heard of a sapient species that could remember their first moments like that. Do you have a particularly good memory?”

Arina thought about that a very long time. She simply remembered important things, and forgot useless ones. When she was hatching, she had nothing. Her head was empty. So all things were important, and she remembered all of them. Now, she did not care about some things, so she forgot them. Was that good, or was that bad?

“My memory has never prevented me from completing an objective,” Arina eventually responded.

The soft boy would then just nod to himself, retreating to silence to think of more questions. Many hours of travel passed this way, interspersed with banter between the soft boy and the sometimes-man which Arina promptly forgot. She only recalled the sometimes-man didn’t seem to like the conversations. Arina liked that he did not like them. It made the sometimes-man feel less sometimes, and more man. Arina could deal with man.

“Hey, hold up,” Arina’s master quietly ordered, and everyone obeyed as they should. “We’ve got monsters to the north-east. Five big ones.”

Arina’s master had been making these calls throughout the trip, leading the group away from confrontations. It was embarrassing, to be protected by one’s own master. No, not embarassing. Unacceptable. Arina would need to improve, rapidly.

“Alright, west it is,” the sometimes-man acknowledged, and began to move. Arina silently orbited her master to compensate.

“Well, actually... what if we didn’t?” Arina’s master posited. “Like, I’m honestly kinda bored. Aren’t you guys bored? Plus, it would help us save on rations.”

The sometimes-man stopped, and paused for a beat.

“You want us to go fight a bunch of monsters… because you’re bored?” he asked.

“Yes,” the master confirmed.

“The monsters here are supposed to be really dangerous, aren’t they?”

“Yup.”

“And you said these guys were really big?”

“Uh-huh!”

“And you said there’s five of them?”

“That’s correct!” the master cheerfully confirmed.

“Why?” the sometimes-man inquired, exasperated. “We could just walk away, but you want to risk your life fighting a bunch of huge monsters that outnumber us?”

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Arina chimed in coldly. “They will not outnumber us for very long.”

Arina would be happy to take care of the monsters herself, for she was hungry and large monsters were comprised of much meat. However, it would seem her master was a warrior, a creature of similar hunger, and Arina had a far more serious craving to see her master in action than she did for a mere meal.

“Alright, well that’s two votes for monster slaying!” the master said cheerfully.

“What? No way, tummy-rumble’s vote doesn’t count!” the sometimes-man insisted. “Brainwashing excludes you from the democratic process!”

“If only,” the soft boy muttered.

“Come on, Darron, back me up on this! This is a crazy, terrible idea and you know it!”

“Yeah,” the soft boy agreed, “but why are you so worked up about it? I watched you jump into a volcano and it just made you stronger. Sure, I could die, but I’m pretty sure you literally can’t.”

“That’s three votes for monster-slaying!” the master exclaimed.

“It absolutely was not,” the soft boy argued.

“Oh, well that’s too bad, because they totally heard us arguing and they’re already on the way here!”

Sure enough, Arina felt the footsteps of five large, bipedal beasts rushing towards their current location. Judging by their gait she presumed they were each around twenty feet tall. They leaned forward as they ran, indicating the presence of a counterbalancing tail of some sort. Each stomp forward was precise, with an abnormally small impact area for their size and plenty of shock absorption; the creatures were digitigrade. Perhaps more dangerous than the big sounds of their stomping impacts and brute strength, however, were the little sounds– small drops of liquid flew from their mouths and hissed on impact with the grass, withering and warping the flow around them. It was dangerous, whatever it was.

“Yes! Finally!” Arina’s master whooped in triumph, drawing her blade. “Some honest-to-god acid breath! Northern plains, it has been too long!”

“Shara, you suck,” the sometimes-man whined, settling into an amateurish combat stance.

“If you wanna sit this one out, you can,” Shara informed him, “but we both know you could really use the practice!”

The sometimes-man groaned but did not retreat. The soft boy, meanwhile, ducked low to hide himself in the flowing grasses and retreated. Arina was shocked. She had not expected the soft boy to be so cowardly! To her relief, he soon stopped creating distance, watching the battle from a respectable range, keeping the master between himself and his enemies. The soft boy must fight from a distance, is all. Once again, the master protected her followers, rather than the other way around. It was confounding, and Arina would not put up with it if she had a choice.

“Requesting permission to engage,” Arina said.

Her master chuckled.

“Granted.”

The wind erupted. By Arina’s will, a swirling, screaming blade of wind manifested in each of her hands, immediately silenced. Arina pulled the air apart around each one, leaving a layer of true nothingness through which sound could not pass. A tumultuous whirlwind, cloaked in vacuum, would rip her enemies apart like a localized hurricane. Impatient for her meal, Arina charged forward to intercept. This would be her chance to prove her skills to the master, and she could not disappoint.

The air itself aiding her movement, Arina closed the distance to her enemies in less than a blink. An enormous arm swiped down at her, fingers outstretched; she noted the beast’s hand must thus be clawed. The attack was far too slow, and Arina had already passed between its legs before the swing completed. A shallow cut erupted on each of the beast’s ankles, but it was shallow. Too shallow. The monster’s body must be covered in tough hide, or possibly scales.

While her first was still reeling, Arina moved to a new target. The second beast spat at her, but she suddenly changed direction and attacked a third. Leaping up, she flared more power into her blades and carved a gash up the monster’s torso and arm, cut her other blade at its jugular, and sprung off its body back towards her first target before it understood enough of the situation to counterattack.

“I am obligated to ask,” Arina informed it mid-flight, “do you wish for me not to kill you? A failure to communicate an opinion on your mortality will render you a valid target for permanent subjugation.”

The beast responded, but not with words. It thrust its claws directly at Arina’s midair approach, but a simple twist of the wind was enough to pass a hair’s breadth beside the arm and carve it up for its troubles. That was as good a failure to communicate as any, she supposed. Arina took a stab at where she expected the monster’s eye to be, but her guess was wrong and she gouged out only more scales. She swung a few more quick cuts at the beast’s face before launching again, weaving towards a new foe.

“Yo, Arina!” her master called, finally catching up to the fight, “have you fought a lot of monsters before?”

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“Most of my experience has been fighting humans and other sapients,” Arina admitted dryly, “but the adjustments seem simple enough.”

“Uh, less than you’d think!” Shara called back, entering the fray with a cleaving strike that removed the fingers from her would-be attacker. “If you hit humans with attacks like yours, they’d be bleeding out on the ground by now, but these guys regenerate! You’re just pissing them off until you get a killing blow!”

Regeneration would explain a lot. Arina’s first strike had been intended to knock the towering beast to the ground by cutting its tendons, but it had seemingly no effect. Her strike against her next target would have opened two arteries and easily killed a human, but she’d since heard no decisive crash that would signify a fallen foe.

“I understand,” Arina responded.

Here she was, trying to show off to her master only to get chastised for her ignorance. It was pathetic. Further failures were not an option. In order to get a killing blow, Arina would either need to lower her opponent’s defenses enough to strike through their sturdy hide, or she would need to target a vulnerable spot like the eyes. Both were options available to her, though they each carried risks.

Letting one of her blades wink out of existence, Arina removed her mask. This was her first option: consumption. A vrochthízo’s bite devoured more than mere flesh, it devoured aura itself. With each bite she would not only inflict physical damage, but weaken her target’s barrier to further strikes, eventually allowing her to go deep enough to kill. This was also an appealing option because it involved her eating.

Her second option was to impale her targets through the eyes. This would be an inherently easier and less time-consuming option, except for a simple problem: she did not know where the monster’s eyes were. She had covered the front of one beast’s head with gashes and had not felt any soft flesh. Perhaps it had reinforced eyelids, or perhaps its eyes were elsewhere on the head, or perhaps it had no eyes at all. Arina had no way to know; she felt only the beast’s shape, position, and movements, not any fine details. All of her knowledge on human anatomy was practiced and memorized, not something she could simply detect.

Arina surged forward. She would search for weak points one more time, then eat her foes alive should that fail. A large part of her hoped it would, but she pushed it away. She was a professional, and would not succumb to such base desires.

The sometimes-man had engaged the closest beast and was doing his best to avoid its swipes and the incoming acid blobs from its two supporters. Arina scored a quick cut on his target to distract it and continued onward. Arina’s master engaged two at once, dancing around them like a champion toying with children. Her blade was brutally efficient, weaving between attacks from both sides and delivering a limb-shattering counter whenever the opportunity presented itself. Though her attacks were not killing their targets, the master didn’t seem to mind in the slightest.

What a horrifying, beautiful creature. This was not a master she strove to keep safe and out of reach, but a master Arina strove to reach at all. What backwards world was this, where the servant needed help from the one she was bound to serve?

Arina launched herself into the sky with a powerful updraft and descended upon the monster assaulting her master’s back. She took another few guess-stabs at its face: nothing, nothing, and nothing. Time for plan B. Gripping her free hand on the monster’s shoulder, she sunk her teeth greedily into the side of the beast’s neck, pulled out a chunk of its flesh, and swallowed. The monster’s blood gushed everywhere, burning her face and dissolving her skin. It seared like fire as it went down her throat, but it mattered not. She was a vrochthízo, and her stomach would turn it all to dust. The indescribable joy of sustenance flashed through her in an instant, only pleasurable long enough to leave desire behind. The extra weight of the flesh in her esophagus quickly vanished into nothing, the dying life within it consumed to heal wounds the acid had inflicted.

Her body screamed for a second bite, but Arina leapt off the monster’s body instead, avoiding a retaliatory swat that would have squashed her like a bug. The second bite would come, and it would be easier than the first.

“Yo, Adgito!” her master called out, “You doing okay? You’re looking a little, uh, lizard-womany!”

“Yeah, I’m fine!” a female voice Arina didn’t recognize responded. “No uncontrollable biological urges to eat everyone, just scales and bad breath!”

Arina panicked. Who was this woman? Where did they come from? Why was master talking to them? They sounded like they were near the sometimes-man, were they helping him fight? Arina’s senses didn’t detect him anymore. The sometimes-man was missing! Had he abandoned the fight? How did he flee without Arina… Oh. The woman was the sometimes man. He-or-she had changed so quickly Arina hadn’t even noticed. Arina calmed down a little, cursing her stupidity. When would she get used to that absurd creature?

Suddenly, a glob of acid entered her perception range, the roar of battle and shock of the sometimes-man’s foul trick having hidden its fuzzy, liquidy form until it got close. Arina still weaved to dodge it, moving the wind to brush herself aside. Yet the monster she had gotten a taste for took advantage of her impromptu dodge, managing to catch her out of the air with an enormous, clawed hand.

She bit down hard as it closed its fist around her, chewing off an acidic chunk of finger, but the monster seemed intent on returning the favor. Caught and overpowered, Arina’s limbs were locked in place with only her head peeking out, like the candy part of a lollipop no one was patient enough to try licking to the center of. She frantically chewed another bite out of the monster’s finger, but it nonetheless brought her inexorably closer to its own gaping jaws, saliva burning as it dripped down on her hair.

Enraged at her incompetence, Arina prepared to summon the last of her inner power to blow the monster off its feet, hopefully dislodging herself from its grip in the process. She’d be weakened and unable to manipulate wind afterwards, but a quick meal would remedy that… assuming it worked. If not, death awaited her. So be it.

However, before she could put this plan into motion, a sudden spasm wracked the monster’s arm. With a wild flail, she was launched from its grip into the air. A most fortuitous and doubtfully coincidental occurrence.

“Arina, drop your barrier!” the soft boy suddenly called out from behind her. It was quiet, as usual, but Arina had little trouble hearing quiet things.

Arina quickly realized the soft boy was requesting that she remove her own natural defenses. A ridiculous and foolhardy request, which Arina obeyed immediately. The soft boy was master-kin.

At that moment, Arina felt two sharp, pinpoint pains right behind her temples. It wasn’t painful enough to be debilitating, but it was certainly annoying. Was this mockery, or incompetence?

“That’s where their eyes are,” the soft boy informed her. “Well, relative to your skull. Go for at least a foot deep on the stab for a fatal blow.”

Ah, so it was neither mockery nor incompetence. It was victory.

Arina nodded in acknowledgement and called her vacuum blades back to life. Her opponent’s weaknesses revealed, she returned to the fray with a vengeance, surgically de-braining any beast foolish enough to give her the chance. When all five monsters lay defeated, three had been slain by Arina’s hand, and two were downed by her master’s.

The master, not having access to Arina’s mobility, was forced to reveal her enemy’s weak points by literally cutting them down to size. She stood triumphant over a crippled, limbless monster still twitching in the throes of death, a feast Arina interpreted as reward for her work and gladly partook in.

The sometimes-man and the soft boy had slain no beasts, but Arina could not deny their impact on the battle. While her master had faced off against two monsters and won, the sometimes-man had drawn the attention of three for the majority of the fight and come out seemingly unscathed. The soft boy was no doubt the cause of her escape from the literal jaws of death, not to mention how he’d noticed the intent behind Arina’s failed attacks and corrected them. She suspected he may have been assisting all fronts of the battlefield, in subtle ways that wouldn’t draw attention to his defenseless form.

Arina had killed many groups of coordinated people like this, but this was her first time being a part of one. It was… different. Everything was very different now.

She would cope. For now, she would enjoy her meal. The monster roared and whimpered in agony as she chewed it to pieces, its regenerative abilities not fast enough to replenish lost limbs in time to save itself. Acid splashed all over Arina’s face, burning her eyes, but that was fine. She’d never had much use for them anyway.

“Hey, uh, are you okay?” the sometimes-man-now-woman asked. “You look kinda... um, I mean, doesn’t that hurt?”

Arina declined to answer. It was a satisfying meal, painful or otherwise, and she did not intend to interrupt it by prattling with an enigma.

“I’m pretty sure she’s fine,” her master responded for her. “How about you, Adgito? I know it’s not exactly your idea of a good time, but that was a pretty good workout, right? Plus, think of all the people those thingies won’t kill now that we got ‘em!”

“Yeah, that’s great, Shara,” the sometimes-woman claimed, despite speaking as though it was not, in fact great. “As usual, everything worked out the way you wanted it to, all the results were beneficial for us, and we didn’t get any say in the matter. Victory for you.”

Arina felt her master droop.

“Uh, sorry Adgito. To be fair, it was mostly your loud complaints that alerted these lizard dudes to our location, though. I’m honestly not trying to force you into this stuff.”

“But you’re pushy, you’re used to getting your way, and when things crop up that help you with that you have no qualms about taking advantage of them.”

The master sighed.

“I promise I’m trying, here. I’m staying out of your head, I tried to stop and ask you guys about the fight before rushing into it, and I gave you a chance to back off before it started. What else should I have done? I want to be your friend.”

The two of them stared at each other in silence for a while, which was nice. Arina’s old master had never been this talkative, especially when she was trying to eat.

“Yeah, I’m sorry too,” the sometimes-woman admitted. “I shouldn’t have snapped like that. Besides, I got us into this mess when I kicked a dude in the face, so I’m not really in a position to get mad about starting a fight, right?”

“Hey, yeah!” the master playfully responded, “This is your fault, huh? Can you imagine how many fewer armies could be following us right now, if not for that?”

“Probably one fewer,” the soft boy commented.

“One whole army fewer!” the master repeated. “That’s a pretty significant quantity of army. Like, sure, the number one doesn’t sound really big, but golly I feel like it’s still a pretty substantial army value. Army… allotment. Army quotient? It’s a lot of army.”

“All right, all right, I get it!” the sometimes-woman laughed. “I’m sorry for pissing off the army that was already planning to kill you long before I showed up.”

“Apology accepted! Now, onto more important matters. Darron, is this meat edible for us mere humans?”

“Not even a little bit,” the soft boy responded. “Even if we removed all the fluids and ate it as jerky, the compounds that comprise the acid would remain. They are incredibly toxic.”

“How toxic we talking, here?” the master asked.

“I suspect you would die of dehydration from fluid loss via diarrhea,” he calmly informed her.

“So like, seven out of ten toxic?”

“Maybe eight. The process would not require much time.”

“I take it all back,” the sometimes-woman lamented. “I want off this wild ride.”

“Well, you are probably immune in your current form,” the soft boy responded. “You appear to be forming the acid yourself. I would guess you could eat them without consequence.”

“I’m gonna pass on that. You and the brunch queen aren’t exactly making it seem appetizing. Did anyone ever teach her how to use a fork?”

Struggling vainly against Arina’s teeth, the final monster breathed its last. Arina stood up, wiping the remaining blood off her face. It hissed where it hit the ground.

“When my previous master brought me to formal dinners, I would stand beside him instead of partaking in the meals,” Arina informed him. “So no, it is not a skill that ever needed to be part of my repertoire.”

“Hold still,” the soft boy commanded her, and she did. His weak hands caressed her face, pouring magic into the damaged tissue. Though each bite had healed her somewhat, she had come into contact with a lot of acid.

“Your barrier is down,” the soft boy commented. “...Was it down for the entire fight?”

“I have been suppressing it, as instructed,” Arina informed him. Did he forget?

“Oh,” the soft boy said. “I just meant to put it down temporarily, so I could cast that spell on you. I’m sorry. I should have been more specific.”

Eventually, he finished his repair work, alleviating the pain and making Arina’s body feel normal again. Apparently, she’d also gotten a few lower ribs cracked from when the monster had crushed her in its hand, but Arina hadn’t really noticed.

A little while later, Arina’s master cleared her throat.

“Um, you can stop suppressing your barrier now,” she said.

That was good, it had been annoying. Arina let her body’s natural protection resume its function, like letting out a held breath. With luck, they would come across more of those monsters in the future. They were delicious, and now that she knew their weak point they would be simple to dispatch. Plus, the more she ate, the less painful the acid had felt.

Perhaps there was some merit to avoiding the consumption of people after all.