Chapter Two

A FOX'S LIFE

EVELYN

Three foxes stalked through the dense, warm forest. We could sense our prey was near as easily as we saw the damage it was doing to the grove through the dying plants and trees, each more haggard than the last. Every plant we passed looked as if it had been chewed into as the aura of the beast tore away at them, and the trees faired little better. It looked as if a disease were causing them to crumble apart. A spirit of famine had wandered into the clan's territory, and it was our duty to ensure that it was removed. We crept in slowly, each paw moving with great care as we crawled low to the ground. Its malignant aura was like a beacon, calling us right in its direction. My sisters and I were not directly affected, but it gave the whole area a dry, wearing, abrasive feeling. It was as if the ambient mana itself was being chewed away, and it made my fur stand on end. This was a test of sorts, and from how the elders had explained it to us, it was going to be a tough fight.

Now that we were spending more time dreamwalking in the spirit world for training, the elders had decided that we were no longer to use humanoid forms or any system-based magic or skills. They were a crutch that would limit our thinking, and we needed to break the bad habit. I'd even disabled some of my more powerful traits and title skills, like Devil's Crown and Light in the Darkness. Though it wasn't something we'd experienced yet, our kind could travel to many places through the spirit world, and there were plenty of worlds and realms where the system did not exist. This wasn't much of a challenge for Sybil, who rarely used system-granted skills at all and never used the system for magic. She had been here since the beginning, and with how much everyone looked down on the system, she tried to avoid it as much as possible. Amélie and I had been intimidated at first, but being in our fox forms made this easier. It gave us a place to start that was more about training and instinct. While we had learned class skills and spells through the system, we had learned all of our racial skills through use. Using them with or without the system made no difference. The system only quantified them in a status sheet for us.

Magic was a little different, but perhaps because of our nature, we had both already begun to bend the rules. We were magical beings, after all, and the system would never change that. Already, we were forcing more mana into spells to make them stronger or shaping them into altered effects for what we needed. It was perfect practice for using magic unassisted. We'd used our magic often, and the most significant change for our spells came from breaking the habit of calling on the system to initiate them. We had to practice magic as if learning it for the first time, summoning the runes to our minds and channeling the mana from beginning to end. It came easier than expected. We had always used our spells with the handicap of the system, but we couldn't help but see how they worked in the process. It was only breaking the habit of expecting our spells to automatically form for us that we needed.

Amélie had the additional step of learning to cast her magic from our own power rather than channeling that of Eito. Aurora allowed her to channel divine magic, but what she'd not known was that she had her own divine aspects to draw upon. She was nowhere near as powerful as Eito, but she had more than enough magic of her own. The spells were much more difficult, but she adapted quickly. It helped that Eito was not in this place, and she couldn't call upon him even if she tried. Her aspects and the intent of the spells already existed, and with her high level of Aurora, she was more than powerful enough to channel the divine magic to use them.

There were limits to how much of the system we could avoid, though. It was part of us now, and we couldn't fully reject it. Skills and attributes in my status would never go away. In my previous life, if I stopped practicing my violin, I'd struggle a bit when I picked it back up. But now, even if I were to return to Earth, I would never lose any knowledge or skill with the instrument. My skill level of thirteen ensured that my proficiency never diminished. Things like my attributes and effects from my titles were just part of who I was now. That wasn't really a problem. We were powerful for our age, but with two tails, we weren't entirely unreasonable for Kitsune. Just abnormal. Most Kitsune had unique abilities and specialties that made them who they were, and all had domains where they truly shined. And then, there was the mantle of the Sentarith. It was like accepting a bit more of the realm of the divine into your soul, and those who did so gained the benefits balanced with the responsibility.

In our home with our family, we were not nearly as powerful as compared to being surrounded by humans. Nor in this forest, hunting this spirit of famine. We had been tracking it for what felt like hours, but now that we were near, we couldn't miss it. The moment we'd come into range, I'd begun the first part of our plan – Stirring up a storm. I had a far better understanding of how this process should work now and how to control it. Nearly three months past, when we'd fled the eruption of West Peak, I'd found myself with forty points for attributes, spells, and skills. The very first thing I'd done was put those forty spell points into [Control Weather]. It wasn't only because I was tired of accidentally snowing everyone in but also in response to an endless storm we needed to sail through. This time, at least, when the horrible downpour of sleet and snow began to fall, it would be entirely intentional. We'd not gotten many clues about what we were facing or what to do about it from the elders. They'd been teaching us for some time now, and those lessons needed to be put to use. Lessons like how not to think about this like a human or an adventurer. Our goal wasn't to kill a monster to get experience. It was to remove a threat from our home. This wasn't a villain coming to conquer. It was a spirit following its natural instincts. When we looked at the impact it was having, we could tell many things about it. It liked the warm, dry air of the summer. It was further drying out the air as its aura decimated the life around it. Something about the decay was feeding it, and here, with the warm, dry summer weather combined with the impact of its aura, there was much to feed upon.

So, our opening moves were simple. It was about to get much more cold and wet here. Amélie had already begun to generate an aura of protection and healing, and Sibyl was doing her best to capture all the residual death energy before something else could absorb it. We didn't need to kill or even fight the spirit if we could convince it that it didn't want to be here after all. We slowed as we closed in to give the spirit a chance to leave as the air cooled and our auras took effect. This also gave my storms some time to build. My ability to summon storms was much faster than it used to be, and I could go even faster in an emergency, but I had to maintain concentration and control if we wanted to avoid unwanted side effects – like sudden unwanted tornadoes, massive hail storms, and out-of-control lightning strikes. Don't ask me how I know.

"It sure is a good thing that we have all day to do this. If you two were going to wake up and leave me here alone sometime soon, that would be a real fun time for me." Sybil chirped happily.

I shot her an annoyed look, "I'm casting as quickly as I can. Any faster, and I'll start accidentally tearing trees out of the ground."

Amélie's tail swished in amusement, "You two are so cute. Do not stress yourselves. Everything is going fine."

And, like she said, everything was going fine. The air was quickly chilling to the point I could see my breath, and the lightest hints of raindrops had begun to break through the canopy. It only took a few more minutes of us closing in for the sleet storm to be in full effect, quickly coating everything. Fog began to fill the air as the layers of ice quickly melted, but so much was falling that it was building faster than it could disappear. It wasn't long before clumps of ice and slush were falling to the ground with the dripping water, and the further we walked, the worse that effect was. The standing trees were thinning out, and soon, so was everything else. The spreading aura of famine had caused everything nearby to die off and quickly begin to decay. And then, we were suddenly stepping out of the dying trees and into a dead clearing. It was probably close to a mile across, and no wonder that the elders decided it was a threat. All of this was forest before, and we could see the path the thing had taken to get here. Just a line of death cut through the trees. In the center of the clearing, radiating with magic like nothing I'd ever seen before, was a massive insect. It looked like a grasshopper, only meaner and the size of a cargo ship. It was already coated in a layer of ice, but it wasn't moving at all. Its antennae drooped in a long arch to touch the ground in front of it, and its eyes, where they weren't covered in ice, were a dull, cloudy purple.

"Is it dead?" I asked dumbly.

"Oh no, dear sister. Do not worry. It is only taking a nap. The poor cute grasshopper will be just fine." Sibyl told me in a convincingly comforting tone. She was too good at that.

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But I could see it had no aura. It was still radiating its magic, but there was no life in the thing. I could see something behind it, though – a much smaller kind of life, and I pointed it out. "Behind it. On the ground. Or maybe in the ground. We should check it out. But what can we even do about this thing? We can't leave it here."

"I have a plan. Let's go check it out!" Sibyl chirped before prancing ahead.

I watched her go for a moment when Amélie stepped beside me and gave a little fox shrug before running after her. With a sigh, I followed. Sibyl slowed just enough for us to catch up but not enough to take the haste from our steps. Soon, we were running beside the thing to get around it. I was entirely unsure what could have killed something so massive. It was even more confusing because it looked entirely unharmed. Its size up close was unreal, and the mana it gave off was starting to give me a headache. When we finally made it to the back end of the spirit, it was obvious that the aura that we were seeing wasn't just one, but many. In a hole in the ground just behind it were hundreds of eggs. Some on top looked like they were struggling with the layer of building ice, but I doubted it would last long enough to kill them, and it certainly wouldn't do anything for those below it.

"Well, that is a new problem," Amélie chirped dryly. "They did not say anything about eggs."

Sibyl flipped her tail. "You see problems. I see opportunities. If Evelyn is done torturing the babies, I'm going to get to work."

"Sibyl! What the heck! Stop being mean to me!"

She stopped her bounding toward the eggs and turned around to sit down and face me, "I can't. I read in a book once that siblings show each other affection by picking on each other. I love you a whole bunch, and you need to know."

I gave her a flat look, "That's an excuse."

She nodded with a sly grin, then bounced up and ran around me in a circle, "Come on! You're not even trying! Amélie told me all about the 'Az'imonn the Lazy Klutz' ordeal. We can't have that. We can't have that at all."

"Wait. You're trying to make me mad so I'll insult you?"

"Yeah! Give me your best shot!" she yipped, jumping up and bouncing around like a little foxy boxer.

I just shook my head, but she kept staring. Finally, I sighed, "Fine. Your fur is frumpy."

She froze, her eyes going wide, "You jerk!" And she launched herself at me.

I used [Squall Step] to appear far behind her and continued running to the eggs.

"That's cheating! Get back here!" she chirped loudly, but I could hear the laughter in her voice.

I reached the hole where the eggs were. It was more than twenty feet in diameter, and I began to circle it as Sibyl gave chase. She would never catch up, and she knew it. Eventually, she stopped and grumbled at me before starting to mumble about egg soup.

I moved around next to her and chirped, "You're not serious about soup, are you?"

She huffed at me before jumping down to a small, clear space next to the eggs. And then, out of nowhere, a large, boiling cauldron appeared beside her, and the pile of eggs seemed to tip itself over into the thing. The cauldron looked like it could hold about two hundred gallons, but somehow, the hundreds of football-sized eggs just kept falling in, splashing the liquid around but never overflowing the cauldron. It was like it had no bottom.

"How are you doing that? Where did that thing even come from?" I chirped down at her.

She only turned her nose up in the air, chirping back, "Imagine being a boring [Hero] class that didn't even have the ability to summon magical items out of thin air." And to emphasize her point, an oversized witch hat appeared on her little fox head.

"You two do realize that Elder Haruka is watching us, yes?" Amélie chirped, amused.

I gave a little shrug, and Sybil chirped, "It's fine. I used my own magic. Besides, I think she likes it when I brew things. Hey! Start breaking off parts of that big one and tossing them down here! I need it, too!"

I slowly looked over at the giant, dead bug with dread, realizing the gooey, disgusting job ahead of us.

Nearly an hour later, I awoke and took a deep breath of the comfortable morning summer air. Even this far inside Lihume, I could taste the ocean breeze, and I smiled. We had only been able to spend a month in Vigilance before the summons to the capital finally caught up with us. It was an easy trip with the runeship, and we'd been here ever since. The past month had been very educational and very boring. Not today, though! I quickly got out of bed, dressed, and hopped out of my room and straight into Amélie's. She was actually home this morning, lying in bed as if she were going to stay there. I dove in beside her, wrapping her in a tight hug to squeeze the sleep out.

"Ouf! I was so comfortable! Okay! I am awake!"

I gave her a huge smile as my excited, wide eyes met hers, "Come on! We have to get to the beach before it's crowded!"

"Evie! Are you sure? Everyone says swimming in the ocean here is very dangerous. There are monsters, sharks, gawkers, and worse!"

"Nope, too late. You promised. You said if I tried Sibyl's weird cauldron drink, you would come swimming with me! A deal is a deal! Let's go!"

Amélie whined, "But that is not fair. You are making me get up early. It is not like that was such a hardship for you. It tasted just like a chocolate milkshake!"

I nodded seriously, "It sure did. And that is going to haunt me until the day I die. Now let's go!"

She got up after only a few more objections. I knew she was just as excited as I was, even if she was hiding it, and she knew there was only so much more time we could waste if we were going to sneak out before our instructors arrived. We'd shown Ophelia what swimwear from our home looked like, and while the island nations would have been openly accepting of any style from home, here they were a little more conservative. This was especially so for the nobility. So, she'd made us very nice one-pieces, which I preferred, and swim skirts, which I thought were incredibly silly. Women here didn't like to show so much of their legs, so they wore these skirts over their swimwear that varied in length from just above the knee to full ankle length. We kept them as short as we could get away with.

As soon as we were dressed, we made our way to the window and enacted "Operation Seagull." It was as simple as it sounded. We used [Mimicry] to shapeshift into seagulls and glide on the air currents down to the beach. This wasn't the first time we'd escaped this way, and the guards still hadn't figured it out. We didn't exactly advertise that we could shift into things other than foxes, after all. Our guards were a little overprotective – and they certainly would do their best to stop us from skipping our lessons to go out in public. They were assigned by the king and put there as much to protect us as to spy on us and try to keep us in line. We had developed a small reputation for being unruly and mischievous, and I had no idea how that had come about. The guards were necessary sometimes, though, so we didn't object too much. We just escaped when we needed some time without being under their eternally scrutinizing eyes. So, we glided down to the beach, focusing on our goal and not getting distracted by the endless smells of food and many other distractions that vied for our attention. The moment we landed next to a few beached rowboats, we shifted back and stepped out onto the beach together. I knew we were hard to miss with our fox ears and tails, but that was okay. It was sort of a way to police ourselves. We couldn't be missing for too long because someone was bound to report spotting us. When word eventually made its way back to our guards, they would come to retrieve us, and we'd get back to being responsible. There were plenty of people out on the beach and a few feet out into the water fishing, but we looked to be the only two there with swimsuits. We walked in the surf for a while, spotting wildlife and looking for a good place where we could swim without being in the way of someone fishing. It was fun to just be normal people doing a normal thing for the first time in so long.

This was our first time going to the ocean to swim. We'd walked the beach a few times, but there were concerns about how safe it was. There were no big sea monsters in the Shallow Sea, and the sea monsters that could exist here usually didn't get close enough to shore to worry about. There were normal dangers of the sea, but that was true of any beach here or on Earth. Eventually, we found a stretch of unclaimed water and waded out. Amélie lagged a little behind me, actually being nervous for once, but I led the way with a big, encouraging smile. I giggled at how my tail kind of tried to float and looked back to see Amélie doing the same. As soon as I was able, I hopped up and began to swim. I knew swimming would be different, but I couldn't help but laugh with joy at my own reactions. Even I thought it was adorable how my ears just folded back on instinct to help keep water out. More amusing was how I was automatically doing my best to keep my tail out behind me and using it for balance and even steering. I'd felt it before when swimming as a fox under West Peak, but in a humanoid form, it was so weird! Its buoyancy also made swimming different, but not in a bad way. I did have a bit of a problem with the strong instinct to keep my head above water. It wasn't so bad in a bath, but swimming where I couldn't touch the ground, it was almost like a phobia with how much I didn't want to go under. Eventually, Amélie joined me, and we swam a few laps in our little space before she signaled she wanted to head to shore.

"I think we have been found out already," she told me as we reached the shallows, and I looked up the beach to see a few guards on horseback riding in our direction.

"That was fast. I don't think we've even been gone for two hours."

Amélie sighed, "Either they are catching on to us, or someone overheard where we said we would be going."

"Or someone on the beach ratted us out," I said with a frown. We were going to need to find a better swimming spot.

"It is okay. I think this is enough swimming for me anyway. The ocean makes me nervous."

I looked out over the water and couldn't help but nod my agreement, "It is a little scary. We need a pool."

We began walking to meet our escort, and Amélie said, "We may have to wait until we can go to Siren's Reach for that."

I knew she was right. Soon enough, our escort caught up with us, and we began our walk back to the castle while listening to an eternally long lecture about the dangers of the ocean. I didn't mind, though. This was just another day in my calm, peaceful new life.