He woke up to a lot of noise; a cacophony of clashing and banging metal. Yuzuru didn’t want to open his eyes but he didn’t have much of a choice. It felt like his brain was vibrating from the chaos. He needed to make it stop or risk throwing up.

He was lying on a straw bed, with a nauseatingly low ceiling that seemed to have been stitched together from metal sheets and bent nails. He got up, hissing as pain shot up the left side of his body.

“You shouldn’t move so much,” said a kid who was standing to his right. She looked five, maybe six, with a pair of drooping puppy ears that framed her tiny face. “Hi,” she said with a wide smile. “My name is Leona.”

She wasn’t alone. There were two more kids standing beside her. One had leopard spots all over his face, the other was more lizard-like.

“Hey there,” Yuzuru said to all of them. “I’m Yuzuru, novice adventurer... or maybe dead.”

The kids giggled.

“Are you a traveler?” asked one with leopard spots.

“Are you going to marry Taiga?” the little lizard wanted to know.

“Uh,” said Yuzuru. “I don’t particularly have plans to.”

“Don’t talk to him, children.”

From around a bookshelf, Taiga appeared with a bundle of wooden planks in her arms. She was followed by another animal child, this one a little older than the three who were around Yuzuru. She had lines of soft feathers running across her cheeks, going down her neck.

The kids scattered. Yuzuru stood up, only to receive an armful of planks from Taiga.

“Stack them by the windows,” she ordered. “We’ll nail them up together.”

The weight of the planks made Yuzuru want to sit back down, but he forced his legs to carry the burden. “You really hate explaining yourself, don’t you?”

Taiga was already walking back towards the bookshelf in the middle of the floor space. “We’re out of time," she said. "I spent the afternoon dragging you here. Now the sun is going down.”

Leona pointed to Yuzuru’s abdomen. “You almost died.”

Yuzuru looked down to where the girl was pointing. His shirt was gone and thick white bandages were wrapped around his midriff. He touched the bandages, wincing.

Taiga came back with more planks. “You got skewered,” she said, answering one question, finally. “I would have dodged the debris but I guess I owe you thanks for your efforts.”

“She gave you our only health potion,” said the leopard-spotted boy from behind the bookshelf. Then he leaned out and made a kissing face.

“Catch.” Taiga threw Yuzuru a hammer, so fast it blew past him and lodged into the wall.

The kids ran around, shrieking and laughing.

“Are you trying to kill me?” Yuzuru grabbed the hammer and pulled it out, leaving a hole in the metal.

Taiga brushed past him and stuck a plank of wood over the gap. She held her hand out.

Yuzuru contemplated getting revenge, but he couldn’t possibly do that to someone like Taiga, even if she was an NPC.

Wasn't she?

He handed the hammer over. When their hands touched, he realized his watch was gone.

Nightfall came shortly after. The moon, when Yuzuru got a glimpse of it as he hammered the last plank over the window, was crimson. Almost as soon as he stepped away from the window, he heard the deep whomp, whomp sound of wings resonating through the sky.

“Is this the part we hide?” he whispered to Taiga, who was looking out a peek hole by the door.

“Yea.”

To his surprise, the children threw up their hands and cheered. “The Calamity Dragon is here!”

A long, hollow howling echoed like thunder, rolling through the entire shack.

“Alright, everyone.” Taiga pushed from the door and made her way to the bookshelf. She pulled a lever and a hatch slid open along the floor. “Line up.”

With the sound of wings growing louder, the temperature plummeted. Yuzuru sat on the bed and told himself the cold was because all the windows and doors were boarded up, but a part of him knew it was something more sinister than that.

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The four kids gathered by the hatch. It soon became clear to Yuzuru why they weren’t scared. As each of them went down the hatch, Taiga handed them something from her shoulder bag. Baubles and knickknacks and broken toys, Yuzuru recognized a few things as what she picked out from the trash earlier. He contemplated saying something, but after seeing the delighted expressions on the kids’ faces, he decided it was best to stay quiet.

Leona was the last to go down. She stopped by the entrance and looked up at Taiga with big eyes. “Can’t you come down with us?”

Taiga kissed the top of her head. “We have different jobs to do during the Blight Moon. Mine is protecting this house. And yours?” She dug into her bag and pulled out, of all things, Yuzuru’s watch. “Is to protect this for me.”

Leona’s eyes went even wider. “What is that?”

“A magical artifact,” Taiga said, reaching down to clasp the watch around Leona’s tiny wrist. “Here, see how it lights up? It’s magic.”

Speechless, Yuzuru watched as Taiga pressed all the right buttons on the watch to make it do all of its tricks.

Leona looked awestruck, but then another howl echoed through the walls. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, shaking the shack's very foundations.

Leona gave a tiny cry.

“I know you’re scared,” Taiga said, crouching down so they were eye-level. “That’s why I’m entrusting this very extremely powerful weapon to you.” Taking Leona’s tiny hands in her own, she turned them so that the watch was facing up.

Leona sniffled. “A weapon?”

“That’s right, sweety.” Taiga smiled. “The light is poisonous to Blight Beasts.”

“Then why don’t you use it?”

Taiga’s smile faltered. “B-because…”

“She has me to protect her.” Yuzuru came over and rested a hand on Taiga’s shoulder. “I’ll be here too, so don’t worry about a thing, Leona.”

Taiga glanced over at him, her usual glare softening just a little.

“Oh, okay then,” said Leona, letting out a big sigh. She turned to face the basement stairs, and then with one last longing look behind her, walked down into the dark.

As soon as Leona was out of sight, Taiga shrugged off Yuzuru’s hand and stood up. “I’ll give your watch back when the sun rises,” she said. “I just needed something that glowed.”

“She can keep it,” Yuzuru replied. “It doesn’t have any sentimental value or anything.”

“Good,” said Taiga, pulling the level on the edge of the bookshelf to close the hatch. "Because I was just being polite."

“You do this like its routine,” Yuzuru pointed out.

“Once every three years,” Taiga said. “Even so, you never really get used to it.”

Outside, the night grew quiet but no less cold. Yuzuru started to shiver. He didn’t want to seem weak in front of Taiga, so tried to cover it up by making small talk.

“Are they all yours?”

Taiga brushed past him for the stairs. “Come. We need to prepare.”

“For what?”

“A boring night, if we’re lucky.”

They situated themselves on the balcony that was the second story of Taiga’s shack. It was little more than a platform running from one side of the wall to the other and felt barely stable enough for both of them to walk across.

Yuzuru followed Taiga to the end of the balcony, where a metallic half dome was set up. It looked like a spartan shield wall, with gaps between sheets of metal large enough to see through. Two mounted crossbows were perched on top of the dome, and Taiga gave him instructions on how to use them.

It basically amounted to Shoot anything that comes into the house.

Yuzuru didn’t bother asking what might get through the barricade. He could already start to hear the throaty baying coming from behind the walls, the scraping of claws.

Taiga sat behind the dome. There were two chairs. She gestured for Yuzuru to use the other.

There was a box behind them filled with crossbow bolts. Yuzuru watched how Taiga loaded her crossbow before doing the same to the one in front of him.

"It’s like you knew I was coming," Yuzuru said.

“There used to be someone who did this with me,” Taiga said as she adjusted the screws fixing the crossbow in place. “She was a traveler too.”

“There are others like me?" Yuzuru asked. "Other people who got transported to this world?”

Taiga reached back into the box again, this time pulling out a dusty cloak. Handing it to Yuzuru, she said, “This was hers. It won’t fit but at least it’ll keep you from freezing.”

Yuzuru put it on, deciding it was better to be warm than any other alternative. The cloak was plain gray with a length of coarse rope to tie around his neck. It didn’t reach all the way around his body but was thick enough.

“What happened to the owner?” he wondered out loud.

“She died.”

"Oh."

Something clattered against the west side of the wall. Yuzuru jumped. Next to him, Taiga swiveled the crossbow to point at the door.

Seconds ticked by.

Darkness stretched on. They had boarded the shack as best as they could but it wasn’t enough to keep moonlight from streaming in. As the hours passed, a line of red light crept across the floor.

Yuzuru stared at it for so long that whenever he did look elsewhere, the line stayed within his vision.

As night wore on, the noises grew steadily quieter.

Yuzuru's muscles were getting sore from being so tense for so long. Whatever was out there didn’t seem to know how to get inside. They didn’t sound like they were going away either, though.

“Is death permanent in this world?” he asked, breaking the hour-long silence.

“Don’t know,” Taiga said. “I’ve never died yet.” She slid her chair over to the wall and rested her head against it. “I can’t wait for the sun to rise. The first thing I always do is have a bath.”

“Before you let your kids out?”

Taiga shot him a dry smile. “They’re not actually mine. Well, they are now. But…” She sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Sometimes I wish I can go downstairs with them.”

“I can watch the door,” Yuzuru offered.

“You won’t last a second if a Blight Beast broke in.”

“You’re probably right.” Without anything to do, Yuzuru reached into the box and took out a bolt to play with. Heavy and with a tip made of steel, it looked powerful. And expensive.

“Today was your first day, isn’t it?” Taiga asked. “You don’t even have any skills then.”

“Ah-ha. So there are skills.”

Taiga shrugged. “That’s how I heard Honoka describe it. I didn’t really understand it. Still don’t, to be honest.”

The crossbow bolt slid out of Yuzuru’s hands and thudded to the floor.

Taiga hissed, “You idiot!” She snatched up the bolt and pointed it at Yuzuru, but her anger vanished when she saw the look on his face. “What? What’s wrong?”

Yuzuru swallowed. His voice stuck to his throat so he had to force them out. “The traveler that was here. What did you say her name was?”

“Honoka,” said Taiga, a frown creasing her brows. “Did you know her?”

Yuzuru felt the world spinning. “You could say that,” he said, hearing his own voice from a million miles away. “Considering how she’s - was - my girlfriend.”

Taiga’s eyes widened. She looked down at the crossbow bolt in her hands, then up at Yuzuru. She started to say something, but the Blight Beasts chose that exact moment to break in.