Felix stood in front of his full body mirror, in the rooms he'd been given in the Mud Castle, and regarded himself, reveling in the novel and satisfying sensation that hadn't gotten old yet. He was wearing pants.

It was morning on the third day after their escape. Felix had been fitted and dressed by a pudgy village woman with pink cheeks and dexterous fingers. She had been the previous lord's tailor.

Now Felix wore a fresh pair of dark blue pants, a fine sky-blue tunic with laces on the collarbone, and a fancy embroidered belt. He refused to wear boots, preferring the natural pads on his feline feet. He had been convinced to accept sandals, but these were in his pack right now. He might wear them if the terrain ever got too rough, but a closed-toe shoe pressed against his claws uncomfortably. Even barefoot, with his blue curls tied in a ponytail away from his face and dressed his new garb, he looked positively medieval. And he loved it.

"You should be able to shapeshift your feet to make them human, you know," said Eva Fortuna's cute little voice from behind him.

Felix could see his soul companion, currently taking the form of a grey-blue tabby kitten. She yawned then stretched luxuriantly at the foot of the bed, before leaping off and blink teleporting onto Felix's shoulder.

"You're not using our mental connection to talk this morning?" Felix asked.

"I have a voice," she said. "I might as well use it."

"If you say so," he said. "Just don't talk out loud in front of strangers just yet. Even in this world, I'm not sure talking cats are a normal every day thing."

"This world is magical," she said. "They'll accept it whether they like it or not."

Felix rolled his eyes, but through his psychic connection to his soul companion, he knew she would concede to his request, if only for the time being.

The past couple of days had been lazy and refreshing. A bath. A new set of clothes. No one trying to kill him. After spending a month of his life in relative threat of imminent death, or imprisoned with the promise of being killed eventually, it was a nice change to simply be allowed to sleep in and eat to his heart's content. The castle's head cook, a woman named Marie, had at first been in a good enough mood to feed him as much as he wanted to eat, and Felix discovered that he could eat a lot. He had been especially famished this morning, after the new development in his and Eva Fortuna's abilities that had been unlocked last night. His once-status had discovered she was able to tap into his magic reserves to manifest a body created of condensed magic. She had sucked him dry of magic, and he passed out. In the morning, he awoke with a hunger and headache, and a tiny (Missus) Mister Blinky sleeping on his chest. This morning, he had eaten enough that Marie had finally gotten upset enough to chase him out of her kitchen with a wooden spoon when she discovered he had cleared three pots of stew which he shouldn't have.

Felix had spent the last three days meditating and reconciling his gains. Also, he conversed with Eva Fortuna to try and better understand the connection between them. They were fundamentally different beings and yet bound by an intimate connection that was hard to put into words. She was a being whose soul and body were both created purely from magical intent, while Felix was a hybrid being, made of both flesh and magic, while having a soul that had been taken from Earth, a magically barren world. And yet despite their differences, there was an affection and comfort that he felt from her constant mental presence. She was like a magical familiar, a twin, and a soul mate all wrapped into one.

Eva Fortuna could not say why Felix had been brought to this world, Erda, so similar to his own and yet fundamentally different by its preponderance of magic and powerful beings. beyond it having been somehow tied to her survival.

"You should probably ask Dad why he pulled you here," the cat on his shoulder said. "The connection I have to magic gives me access to a lot of information I didn't have before, but I don't know everything."

"Lugalbanda, the Demon Prince..." Felix muttered, staring at his own reflection thoughtfully. "You think we look anything alike?"

"Probably not the cat ears and tail," Eva Fortuna said. "I'm sure he can control his shapeshifting better than you and pick a more masculine beast if he wanted to play the part of a beast man."

"Ouch."

"Or he'd pass himself off as a human," the kitten said with a slight shrug. "Humans are more common in this world than this shape you're stuck in. Though if you practice, I'm sure you won't be stuck in it forever. You do have the human template now that you got from eating that priest, Sandy. Also, I'd like to remind you that the whole demon thing you're worried about isn't really a thing."

Felix remembered. One of the hardest things to grasp from Fortuna's explanations in the past few days was that Felix's concept of demons was skewed. He'd been thinking of himself as a half evil creature, when according to his soul companion, that was a silly idea, even if it was incidentally a popular one even in this world.

People in Erda, just as in Earth, believed demons to be evil, having forgotten the origins of the word. Demons, or, daemons, were once believed to be deities, beings descended from the stars. Divine creatures. Now, that connotation had been lost over the centuries. Demons, angels, jinni--these were all beings born from magic, specifically from a powerful intention. Sometimes they came to being through mysterious machinations of the cosmos themselves, other times they were made through the direction of other powerful beings. While there were connotations to the words that people used to describe them (such as demons being 'evil,' and angels being 'good'), these were semantic and superficial meanings added on to what were fundamentally the same kind of entity. Often who used what word to describe what was a matter of what culture the speaker came from.

"You really think we'll eventually run into him?" Felix asked.

"Probably," she said, shrugging her tiny shoulders. "And we'll probably run into a lot of powerful jinn along the way. It's inevitable."

"That sounds lovely," he said, sarcastically. Then a thought occurred to him. Something that had been niggling the back of his mind since he first came to this world. "Why did my status tell me that I had been drawn by a demon prince when I first came into this world?"

"Because you didn't know the word jinni in your past life," Eva Fortuna answered, beginning to lick her paws. "And status magic filters esoteric knowledge into a language you can understand to help you process the information. You and I might be speaking English now, but you've been talking all kinds of languages since you got here. That's only possible through the same magic that feeds you status information so that you can comprehend the rules of this world. As both our understanding grows, the filter that we use to interpret it will become more and more effective."

"None of that explains why I feel evil, though," Felix said, remembering the murderous instincts that had been growing inside him. The same instincts he had drawn upon to take pleasure from fighting and killing monsters as well as Father Sandra. As well as undead zombies. As repugnant as the thoughts were, Felix had enjoyed that violence. That hate. That anger. That blood.

"As a half demon, or half jinn, whatever word you want to use to describe yourself, your own thoughts and intention shape who you become. You think of yourself as evil, and so you become evil. Your thoughts, words, and intention have power, Felix."

Felix considered this.

"Oh, and don't forget all those repressed feelings from your past life," Fortuna continued. "If you let your regrets consume you, you risk becoming a monster who doesn't know how to have fun. So you better lighten up. No one likes a curmudgeon."

"I can't believe you just called me a curmudgeon."

"Yup. Now all you have to do is quit being an old fart and have some fun."

"You're bossy," Felix said, grabbing the kitten by the scruff of the neck, then tossing her on the bed.

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This world was a lot to take in. It was like a medieval version of his own world, and yet with the addition of magic and the supernatural, it was alien and dangerous. And now he had a snarky kitten bossing him around. The unruly kitten bit his ear.

"Ow."

"You're welcome," Eva Fortuna said, teleporting back onto his head as he made his way out the door.

***

The lady Sly called a meeting later that afternoon. Sitting around the long table in the simple room in the castle were Felix, Muzio, Raine, Johan, and the lady Sly at the head of the table.

"I want to thank you for staying at the Mud Village this long," the lady Sly said, bowing her head gracefully. "I know that you have been eager to leave this place and that it is filled with unpleasant memories."

"You said it was important," Muzio said, inclining his own head. "It is true that I would prefer to be gone from here and make it to Alba. There are things that I must do there. My brother was part of our party when I was captured and I am eager to learn if he survived the wounds he sustained as I covered his retreat. If he did survive, he would have gone to the city. However, as you are the benefactor responsible for our safe rescue, I owed it to you to be patient."

Raine's face twisted in anger. She still blamed herself for everything that had happened to her group. The only reason Muzio had been captured and that his brother had been hurt was because they had been trying to rescue her.

Felix felt bad he hadn't done more to talk with Muzio since they made it back to the castle. He should have been trying to get to know him and Raine better. Instead, Felix had been more focused on sleeping in and eating tasty foods. In the weeks they had known each other and shared a cage, Muzio had only ever briefly glossed over the circumstances that led to his capture. He was a man of action who wanted to focus on the task at hand and not be distracted by dwelling on the past. Felix had so far held little ambition beyond surviving and the desire to remember who he was. Beyond that, he realized he had no idea how to make it in this new world. For now he had resolved to go with the flow and follow Muzio. After all, the man had promised to show him to a big city. That seemed like something to look forward to at least.

"Master Attendolo, I have no doubt you would have escaped that cave on your own eventually," Sly responded. "I merely followed my mistress's directions and provided horses."

Felix thought she was underplaying her role. Indeed, the mysterious lady Sly had been present when Felix, Muzio, and their rescue party had finally cut their way out of the cave. The lady had stepped out from an illusion that had been masking her presence from the wandering undead who had already escaped the caves, and guided them onto their mounts. Of course, not before ordering Mentiroso to collapse the entrance of the cave with explosives.

Felix hadn't asked many questions, being happy that whoever the mysterious lady was, she had the foresight to bring pants. Felix had been so happy to finally be rid of his nakedness that he would trust her no matter what anyone said. Well... that might have been an exaggeration, but her gesture had gone a long way to helping the cambion feel safe about following a group of strangers back to the Mud Castle, even if they claimed that the bandits who ruled it had been taken out.

"Is your mistress from the College of Mages?" Muzio asked. "I am curious why a powerful illusion mage was sent here to aid us."

Sly's smile was enigmatic and alluring. There was something suddenly sensuous about the way she held herself.

"My mistress has worked with the college at times," she said. "She has worked with and around all the societies of note. At the moment, I believe she has taken up a teaching position at the Academy at L'Aquila. As for myself, my mission was originally only to gather information. You could call it an auspicious coincidence that led to my being allowed to intervene."

Her eyes shifted to Felix for a moment at the mention of an auspicious coincidence, before returning to Muzio.

Muzio seemed to read into that gaze and his posture shifted to a more guarded one.

"Then you know what he is," Muzio said.

"Yes," Sly said.

"And he is the real reason you mounted a rescue?"

"Also, yes."

"The... only reason you mounted a rescue?"

Sly's lips tightened.

The hairs on the back of Felix's neck stood on end. He wasn't sure if this was a good or bad thing. He wanted to trust Sly. She had helped them, after all. But Muzio smelled wary. That was troubling.

"My mistress would like to extend an invitation to the cambion outworlder, Felix, to join her at L'Aquila," Sly said. She proceeded more carefully than before, sensitive to Muzio's growing wariness. "There, she can provide training and protection to him from the powerful forces that will try to either recruit or destroy him. The invitation extends to you and your friends as well. I would appreciate your help in escorting him there."

Felix and Muzio exchanged glances. Then Muzio looked over at Raine, who shook her head. "What about Tonduzzo?"

"I'm grateful to you for all you've done for us," Muzio said finally. "It's up to Felix if he wants to go with you. As for Raine and I, we need to go to Alba first."

"To find your brother, correct?" Sly asked.

Muzio nodded.

"I must go there as well," Sly said. "I want to warn the city council of the undead threat."

"You don't think we killed all the ones who came out of Father Sandra's cave?" Felix chimed in.

Sly shook her head. "No, and there is the possibility there may be other sites just like it. Zarik believed there were, and that this was a plan by the House Visconti to conquer the region."

"Who is Zarik?" Felix asked.

"Zarik Mudalal was the lord of this castle," she said.

"The one Johan killed?" Raine asked, nodding at him in approval.

Johan, who had been lost in thought thus far, brightened at the mention of his name, though he blushed when he realized he was being lauded.

"Aye, ah helped a wee bit," said the half dwarf. "'Twas mylady who deserves all the credit though. Not meself."

Sly placed a hand on Johan's arm and he blushed even harder. Then she stared intently at Muzio.

"After we find your brother, and after I warn the city, will you escort the cambion and me to L'Aquila?"

Felix felt a bubble of anger rise up from his gut. .

"My name is Felix, not cambion..." Felix growled, surprising himself with how possessive he was of his name all of a sudden, given how foreign it had felt only a few weeks ago. "Also, I'd appreciate it if you quit talking about me like I don't have a choice in the matter. The least you could do is ask me if I want to go with you to this whatever it's called."

"Yeah, that's right!" Eva Fortuna echoed from his shoulder, much more passionately than Felix had been. Her hackles and tail were raised and she hissed. She looked cute rather than menacing.

Everyone stared.

What are you doing? Felix chided telepathically. I told you not to do that in front of people yet!

Ooops, she replied. I don't like her ignoring you like that. She was being rude.

Sly lifted her eyebrow and the corner of her mouth twisted in a smile. Muzio barely reacted to the talking cat. Raine looked amused and delighted.

Besides, I don't think anyone in this room minds much do they? Eva Fortuna said smugly.

I guess not...

"Please forgive me. Felix, would you and your familiar like to come with us to the Academy at L'Aquila?" Sly asked.

Some of Felix anger deflated.

"I don't know," he answered, feeling kind of foolish. "I've never heard of that place. I haven't hear of most places for that matter. I'm kind of new here."

Muzio surprised him by filling in the blanks.

"The Academy at L'Aquila is an institute of higher learning for adventurers," Muzio said. "It produces high caliber aratori."

"The Academy has departments dedicated to a number of rare classes and jobs, as well as the standard fare. Given that you are unfamiliar with our world, Felix, I believe it would be a fantastic place for you to come into your own power."

In addition, the Academy, it turned out, functioned both as a guild and learning institution. It was a place where both the extremely wealthy and worthy could hone their skills. The Academy would then take its students into its guild and work a higher caliber of jobs for the Adventure Society and any city states that might hire them.

"It has a good reputation," Muzio said when she was done explaining. "My father might have sent me there if he could have afforded it, or if he had the connections. I would be lying if I said I was not tempted by the opportunity to train there for myself."

"As I said before, the invitation extends to all Felix's friends," Sly said.

"I bet Tonduzzo would love it too," Raine said, sounding the most excited that she had so far. The elf girl was mostly a mix of sadness or pent up rage, but for a moment, a bit of what might have been her usual personality seeped through.

"Well that settles it," Felix said. "If you guys want to go to the school, then we can all go after we find your brother."

"And if we decide not to go?" Muzio asked. "What will you do then?"

"Apart from this obnoxious kitty on my shoulder, I don't exactly have a long list of friends in this world."

Foruna bit his ear again.

"Ow! Would you quit doing that?" Felix picked up his soul companion by the scruff of the neck and set the kitten on the table. She harrumphed, then crossed the table to Raine's extended hand, where she was petted by someone who could appreciated her cuteness.

"Anyway," Felix continued, rubbing his ear. "As I was saying, I don't know a lot of people. And you've been a friend. You promised to teach me sword fighting and show me around a city. I'm going to hold you to that and stick around for a while."

Sly sighed at hearing this, but did not argue her case any more.

"At least we have a way forward. If there are no objections, I would like us to travel together to Alba in the morning," she said. "I have completed the wards I placed around the village to protect it against the undead who might roam in this direction."

"Mah lady," Johan said, sounding sheepish. He had been so quiet throughout the meeting that Felix almost forgot he was there. "Ah won't be going with you. Ah need to stay here and take care of... The village council asked me teh... Someone needs to be here and ..."

Once more, Sly placed her hand on the dwarf and he blushed. Though this time he looked very sad. He looked like he might cry.

"I'll miss you too, Johan," she said. "But I understand. Your village needs you. You will make a wonderful steward of Johan'ston."

"You heard?" Johan asked, his face twisting in a grimace at the mention of the new moniker the villagers had elected. "Ah hate that name."