Kobe had been nice enough to give her a map.

Not a niceness she necessarily deserved, since she had very narrowly thought of murdering him just a few hours before (and feeding his remains to her not-dog), but whether or not she deserved good things was not something that ever really worried Akemi.

In fact, it never worried Akemi. Her set of personal ethics was quite simple. If something good happened to her, it was meant to be. If something bad happened to her, then she would, as quickly as possible, make it someone else’s problem. She didn’t really see any other way about living life. Any other methodology seemed inefficient, and, at worst, embarrassing.

This moral compass was never particularly compatible with other people’s. This fact had become abundantly obvious at as little an age as five or six, when she would threaten to beat up a fellow toddler over a misplaced toy truck. It wasn’t that she ever really made good on that promise. It was all about creating an atmosphere of fear and control in the daycare room, that was all.

(Kindergarten teachers famously would ask to have Akemi switched out of their class in three weeks or less, not really for bad behavior, but moreso for self-preservation.)

“So, Mutt,” Akemi said, using a name she had affectionately started to refer to the pika as—an inside joke with herself about how the tiny creature was just a mongrel dog—“do you think we’re finally here, or is this just a different gothic metropolis?”

Obsidian gates loomed before her, adorned with wrought iron and ancient, worn-down rune carvings. The runes glowed with an eerie, ominous green as she approached, seemingly aware of her presence.

“Hello there,” she greeted the runes, feeling it was just as well to make sure they knew she was aware of their presence. “You’re not going to shoot me down if I try and enter, will you?”

The runes made no comment. The gates themselves were open wide, a menacing maw which led into a dark city, illuminated only by torchlight.

She had arrived at night, after all. Akemi’s preferred time for arriving anywhere.

The path here had been straightforward; making use of Kobe’s map, she followed the merchant caravans until she saw the city’s black silhouette on the horizon. From afar, it looked like nothing more than a symphony of towering spires.

Perceiving no immediate threat to her life, she walked inside, only to be immediately assaulted with a different kind of threat—the unfortunate smell of urine.

“Ah, yes,” she said, pinching her nostril. “City living.”

She toured lazily through the city streets, Mutt trotting beside her, taking in the sights.

Grimguard was built unlike anything she had seen so far in Kodra; it bore the closest resemblance to the modern day infrastructure she was accustomed to, with its detailed, multi-use architecture: apartments hung over tobacco shops, schools of magic sat cozily between restaurants and county jails. What’s more, there were grates running along the cobbled streets, suggesting sewer systems, and perhaps, to Akemi’s delight, even modern plumbing.

There was only one problem—and this was a modern problem as much as it was a medieval problem—and that was that the place was a maze. She held Kobe’s map up, squinting like a grandmother at a smartphone screen, slamming into gargoyles and obelisks and pissed off pedestrians as she tried to locate the Accountant’s Office.

Kobe had, at the very least, circled the building on the town map.

“You’ll know it when you see it.”

His advice had been only partially true. It wasn’t the office’s architecture that gave it away, but its surroundings. The office itself was a small, unassuming stone building, situated between a barber shop (Cal’s Bloodstained Beards), a bakery (Dough Not Pass), and located below—most obviously—a pet store (Lethal Companions).

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

To make things worse, the office was not even an office. It was a damp stone wall with a single boarded up window. If it wasn’t for Kobe’s map, she would have walked right by it.

She glared at the window.

What am I supposed to do with this?

She tried what seemed most obvious: knocking. Her hand rattled against the wood, but nothing came of it but a few strange looks from passersby. Then she tried ramming her elbow in, yelping—the wood was unexpectedly hard—and finally glaring at it venomously.

“Oh, excuse me, young lady.”

She turned to find an old woman standing close behind her. She was a strange sight to behold; she wore a full-body black cloak, a hood, and a mask that made her face partially obscured. What Akemi could see of her was worn and wrinkled, and her stature was bent, crooked.

“I said excuse me.”

The woman roughly pushed past her. Akemi didn’t fight back, slightly stunned.

She then ran her wrinkled hands up the wall, massaging it. She seemed to be looking for something, but not finding it.

“Oh, where’d they put the damn thing…”

An amused grin tugged at the side of Akemi’s face.

Foul-mouthed assassin granny. I dig it.

The woman turned to her, as if reading her thoughts.

“Young lady, don’t you have somewhere to be? I don’t enjoy the staring.”

Akemi shrugged. “I think we’re headed to the same place, gran. Starts with an A, ends with C.”

The old woman’s bushy old eyebrows rose. She then turned away from Akemi and felt up the wall a bit more. Her fingers wrapped around an errant stone, and tugged at it. A small depository box came out of the wall, and a single pet treat fell out of it. A brown, tiny thing, shaped like a dog’s bone. The woman pocketed it.

Then she looked at Akemi, sighed, and rattled the treat-dispenser once more. Another treat popped out, and she handed it to her.

Getting a whiff of it, Akemi nearly dropped it in disgust; it smelled terrible, like rancid fish.

“You new recruits are so sensitive. Get on with yourself.”

The woman started walking away.

“Wait, what?”

Where is she going?

Akemi paced behind her, which was surprisingly difficult. The woman weaved between the congested streets like a lithe feline, constantly fluttering in and out of view. The only reason she was able to catch up at all is because she didn’t go very far; the door to Lethal Companions jingled open, and the old lady stepped inside. Akemi stalked after her.

The pet store was a festering little place. The entire store smelled like the rancid cat treat. Cages upon cages of animals were stacked like containers at a shipping facility. Akemi would have felt bad for the animals—she had a soft spot, after all—but the creatures inside those crates could hardly be described as animals at all. They were mostly teeth, eyebrows, and drool. Red beady little eyes were ubiquitous across all of them.

Mutt hissed as they entered, scratching at Akemi’s leg to be picked up.

“Oh, don’t act so scared,” Akemi said to the pika, scooping it up nonetheless and settling it in her hood. “You’re probably a bigger monster than half these guys.”

The old lady was focused entirely on a cat in the shop’s corner. Unlike the rest of the store, this cat was free-range, not confined to any dreary crate. It was a weird crossbred sphinx cat. At least, that was Akemi’s best guess at explaining what she was seeing. Its body was hairless, except for a few sprouts of filament that shot off its mangy head, and its fluffy, squirrel-like tail.

“This is my handsome darling Percival,” the old lady turned to her and explained.

“He’s yours, I assume?”

The old lady laughed. “Oh, surely not. Percival belongs to no one. In fact, I might just belong to Percival. I’ve fed him more over the years than I’ve fed myself. I’m practically skin and bones, but look at this fellow, he’s got a tail as healthy as a horse’s mane. Perfectly handsome.”

Akemi grimaced. Sure, when you very conveniently ignore the rest of him.

The old lady squatted and fed the treat to Percival. Then she got up and walked forward down a darkly lit hallway. The entire shop was poorly lit, but whatever continued beyond Percival was completely unseeable. It had the outline of a corridor, but that was all Akemi could see. The lady disappeared almost instantly into the drape of shadow. She had utterly vanished.

“Hello?” Akemi shouted out, confused. “Gran-sassin?”

Akemi attempted to follow her, stalking forward, but found her head colliding with a rock hard wall. She moaned, her hand flying to her forehead.

What the hell?

It had to be some kind of trick of the light. She was staring at an open hallway, of that she was sure of, but when she experimentally pushed her hand towards it, the palm lay against an invisible wall, hard as stone.

Percival hissed at her. The man who worked the cash register, a silent, hulkish thing, spoke up.

“Gotta pay the toll,” he said. “Percival’s one greedy beast.”

Jaw hanging, Akemi stared at him, then to the cat.

“So you’re this world’s cerberus, huh?” She squatted to the face the cat, whose whiskers were as dented as an old car. “Alright. Fine, you little mongrel. Eat.”

She tossed the treat into the air, and Percival snatched it with surprising agility. He then proceeded to meow—a dark, ancient sound—lick his paws, and walk inward toward the dark, endless hallway.

Akemi followed him, bracing for impact, but found herself eagerly consumed by the darkness.