Quinn woke to a crushing sensation in her lungs and her right hand in agony as if a red-hot brand was pressed down into it. She shook and thrashed as she opened her eyes but couldn’t move even an inch. It was as if sleep paralysis had struck her, leaving her crippled where she lay. A creature sat on her chest.

It was a wolf of all things. Its fur was a rich red hue with several strands ending in a yellow-orange. It was looking down at her with what she could only describe as worry. Its big red eyes were wide open and its ears flat to the head as it stared down. It would’ve been cute if it wasn’t asphyxiating her.

The wolf’s tail was straight down, laying across her right hand. It was normal fur near the base of the tail, but slowly faded to a radiant flame. A bright and brilliant flame. A flame that almost seemed to represent life itself. A flame that was currently melting her hand’s flesh from its proper place.

She shook and thrashed as much she could under its pinning embrace, barely managing to speak under the pressure of the creature. “G- get… off…. Can’t … breathe.”

Either by her actions or words, the wolf on fire understood Quinn’s desperate plea. Her vision was starting to darken once more as she watched the wolf jump off her chest. It sent a fan of sparks everywhere as it landed, though nothing caught fire.

Quinn coughed and sputtered as she tried to breathe in and out all in one go. Her lungs heaved as air rapidly went in and carbon dioxide came out. Her vision returned to normal as she sat up, breathing hard. She was still in her room, laying next to the chair. It seemed she fell out of it when she passed out.

The biggest difference was the large fire doggy standing in the middle of the room. It looked quite excited as its tail waved fast enough to leave sparks. For a moment, she thought the fire would go out, but it only seemed to grow as the wolf stared at her.

It obviously wasn’t hostile… Quinn still took precautions and set herself up to defend herself if the worst-case scenario occurred. She backed up and lay against the wall, prepared for the creature’s slightest hint of hostility. Her best bet was to try and blast the fire on the thing’s tail with Spout. Maybe it would damage the fire dog if its fire went out? If that didn’t do anything… her chances were less than optimal.

Seeing as the wolf wasn’t in the mood to maul her face off, Quinn looked over herself. Her right hand was burnt to hell and constantly sent a throbbing up her arm; it was a second or third-degree if she had to guess. As if having one messed up hand wasn’t bad enough… Quinn wondered if she should start learning healing magic with how often she was getting injured.

She felt extraordinarily light too, as if a heavy weight had been taken off of her. A thorough inspection revealed the athyrn still flowing through her body. Her mana was curled into her heart. The tightness of which made her feel as if she was having a heart attack, but her heart seemed to be able to function normally otherwise.

She could sense the mana wanting to expand from its compressed state, to grow and cover her. It was held back though. The athyrn that had been rather docile so far was restricting her mana’s movements like an anaconda. It held her heart so tight she could almost physically feel the unsettling grip.

The wolf started to move. Quinn gripped her fist tightly as the large flame creature bounded over to her. Her heart, already in some pain from the mana overload, began to beat rapidly as it approached, causing an increase in the levels of agony sent through her body. Fortunately, her hand was thankfully burned and not gouged, so blood wasn’t spraying everywhere with her increased cardiac activity.

The flame wolf looked down at her hand and paused for a second. Instantly, the creature’s tail stopped wagging as the fire dimmed rapidly. Its ears drooped and the ambient light in the room immediately dropped by several times. It whimpered pitifully as it looked at her hand with massive doggy eyes, almost as if trying to apologize for hurting her.

The creature had hurt her quite bad… but she couldn’t help but think it was quite cute. And if she ignored the throbbing hand of hers - which was quite easy since her heart hurt even more - she could almost pretend that it was a nice and normal dog. A fire dog. Hmm…. maybe it wasn’t so easy…

Quinn stood up and backed up to her bed. Although she didn’t think the dog was of the violent type, she was still worried it would attack her at any moment. She felt bad for feeling that way, but it was only human to fear that which she couldn’t understand.

She sat down and unwrapped her left hand, checking on it as she wrapped up her other hand. Her left hand was almost entirely healed. All that remained of the gouged flesh was an area of tender red skin that wasn’t quite the same level as the rest of the surrounding hand. Quinn was quite relieved to see it in better shape.

The new wrap around her right hand was far better than the original one around her left. The ex-scientist had learned slightly from last time and had wrapped it so it wouldn’t hinder her hand’s movements quite as much. It still wasn’t pretty, but it was far better than her first time so she took it as a win.

The dog hadn’t remained idle while she was busy tending her wounds. It had come to sit a few feet from her with a moping look on its lupine head. Its ears were still drawn down tight to its head, but its eyes were withdrawn and its brow pulled down.

Quinn looked over the dog speculatively. It was hard to pay too much attention since her body was - literally - throbbing with pain. Each heartbeat felt like it was sending a high-pressure geyser of blood down her veins. Well… even more pressure than usual.

She didn’t know what it was nor had she seen anything similar in the books she read. So what should she do with it? A large part of her wanted to run out and find the Schel Caravan Company’s employees and ask for help, but a smaller part of her wanted to keep the dog to research it. Eventually, her curiosity and desire for knowledge won out in the end and she settled her beating heart.

The first object of her curiosity was the creature’s flaming body. Just how were the flames maintained without burning the body itself? She suspected magic, but her mana sense revealed none of the substance in the wolf. Her next bet was athyrn.

And she was right. The wolf’s body radiated with a strong athyrn that felt, surprisingly, like fire. She could see the individual athyr floating around the fiery body as if held in place. The very air itself around the creature was probably hot due to this. Although its entire body was pulsing with athyrn, it was mostly collected in its tail. More specifically, the fire was still radiating warmth even though it was in a dim state. The athyrn was gathered there in one large fireball of energy.

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Quinn pulled free her books and rapidly looked for even a hint of the creature. She saw all sorts of creatures in A Traveller’s Handbook: Monsters, including the badgius which she bookmarked before moving on, but none of them were quite right. She swapped books and skim-read through Myths: Fight or Flight. All sorts of twisted abominations and deadly legendary beasts filled the pages as she flipped through them. Near the end, she found something similar to the creature in front of her. The entire back quarter was all about this one species of creature since it had so many subspecies. It was more like an entirely new class of creature than a species.

They were simply called fae, and there were dozens if not hundreds of thousands of variations according to Rimor Magellan. Magellan had a theory that, unlike other creatures, the fae - or fairy - weren’t born, but made. He suspected the variation in the fae was all thanks to this unique way of birth. He based this on a few things, the main one being a lack of reproductive interest in the species. He never once saw the fae engage in anything similar to the other beings he had come across. The biggest tell for his theory was the fact that there seemed to be no courting among the fae.

Magellan couldn’t say very much else about the fae since the species was such a big unknown. He knew more about the individual subspecies than he did about the overarching species. He repeatedly mentioned the lack of knowledge of the fae being a constant agony in the back of his head as he interacted with him.

The best he could figure it, the fae were creatures that held a strong tie with athyrn. Like the venerus, they could control and manipulate it, but the fae’s power was far greater than the bloodsuckers. Since Magellan couldn’t sense athyrn, he could only base his observations off the few chance encounters he had where they summoned their formidable might.

She quickly flipped through the pages until she stumbled across what she thought might be it. Magellan had dubbed the creature a flamup. They were apparently found in areas of the wild with both a high wolf population and areas of intense heat. They weren’t as disdainful to humans as some of their brethren, but the flamup weren’t exactly kind to Magellan the few times he had seen them.

They were super weak to large quantities of water but could evaporate any small amounts like it was nothing. Their biggest weakness from Magellan’s experience was completely enshrouding the fire fae in dirt and letting it burn itself out. They needed oxygen to survive and were only fully dead when their fire went out.

That being said, flamup was extremely loyal to those they deemed as friends and loved company. Magellan had befriended a couple of them and they loved to eat meat and have their fur scratched. He warned against touching their tails though since they were the hottest part of the fae’s body.

Quinn felt a hot nose press up against the bandage around her hand, drawing her away from her book. It seemed as though she had lost her vigilance as she read on about the intriguing fae. The flaming wolf approached her while she wasn’t paying attention and was sniffing at her.

She pulled her hand back rapidly and used her other to rub the top of the animal’s head. It instantly stopped all movement as its tail wagged extraordinarily fast. Its ears drooped this time in immense pleasure as its foot started to tap the ground.

Just as she was beginning to relax and lower her guard, something caught her attention from the corner of her eye. A face appeared at her door. It pressed outwards until a whole person completely phased through the rough-hewn planks. The person looked roughly human, though their features were a bit longer than normal. It was a male with lithe facial features and a mop of silver hair. He was wearing similar clothes to the ones she had seen in this area.

The ‘man’ was extremely similar to another creature she had seen in Magellan’s book. He was a fae, though a different subspecies than the flamup. She hadn’t paid much attention to his species, but she thought he was called a sidhe? Magellan said they were similar to humans but tended to have… alien thought processes.

Regardless, she instantly threw an arrow at him. She wasn’t hoping for much, but if it could just distract him long enough for her to draw her bow- the arrow simply flew through the sidhe with no effect.

The male paused and a frown pulled tightly over his face. “You, you can see me?” Quinn saw his eyes flicker to her hands still trying to draw her bow and arrow. “Halt!”

Quinn paused, though not of her own free will. A burst of what felt like hardened air was holding her limbs still so she couldn’t grab anything. Her athyrn sense revealed a tightly knit net of athyr that felt of the wind. Her heart began to pound harder, the pressure not helping as she tried to resist the bonds.

The flamup immediately turned around and started to growl at the sidhe. Its haunches were pulled tight as it glared up at the well-dressed male. Quinn could see its eyes burning - literally - with a threat as its flaming tail became completely still. The flames on its body, however, grew erratic as the heat from her front rose by several times.

The wind ‘cuffs' were released as the male backed off with his hands raised. He looked incredibly annoyed, probably the most she had seen anyone annoyed other than her mom when she tried to pull away her drink. “Okay, okay. I let her go… why are you even defending this, this human?”

The flaming wolf barked and growled several times as it glanced back at Quinn as if to make sure she was safe. It moved protectively in front of her with its body still in the posture to attack. The flames of its body arched up and into the air as if to obscure her form from the male's vision.

“Fine, I'll leave her alone. Now come along, Wulur. You can’t just run away anytime you want; we’ve been over this far too many times.” The sidhe looked disappointed as it shot her a look of pure disdain like she was some kind of insect he hoped someone would squash.

Quinn paused her actions to attack as she sensed the mood shift, but still stood up and prepared herself to pull and fire an arrow rapidly. “W-what’s going on?” She also tried to gather her mana but slightly panicked as she found that it didn’t respond as it was locked away behind the athyrn. It was as if the wall surrounding her heart halted access to the powerful substance. It was quite an unsettling feeling after she had gotten used to its weighty presence over the past couple of weeks.

“Nothing you need to know, human.” A sneer filled his lithe face as he called her species like it was some kind of curse. For all she knew, it was considered a curse to the fae. They were said to have alien thought processes after all.

The flaming wolf barked several more times, its aggravation clear to Quinn’s ears even if she couldn’t understand what it was saying as the other fae could.

The sneer vanished from his face. “Really? Ugh… fine. Human, Wulur wishes to know your name. Tell me quickly so I can leave this wretched place.”

She wanted to rebelliously deny sharing her name, but the memory of how easily she was restrained flashed through her mind. “I-its Quinnzel.”

The flamup turned to her and rubbed its head against her leg a couple of times before trudging over to the sidhe’s side with a sad look. Before she could even react, the two vanished through the cracks in her door, the sidhe in a way similar to the first time, and the flamup- Wulur turned into a gout of flames and slid in between the cracks.

Quinn sat there, her books still open by her side and the scent of fire radiating from the room. It was several times darker with Wulur gone, but she barely noticed as her mind whirled rapidly. The gears seemed to be locked in place as they tried to break down her memories of the past few minutes since she woke up. Just what the hell was that? What just happened? She woke up to a flaming wolf of all things and was shortly after assaulted by a creature she had never seen before, both of which were apparently rare creatures since they showed up in Myths: Fight or Flight. What the actual hell was going on?