I landed in grass and immediately whirled to look all around me, searching for whatever threat was there and to locate Kassandra.

It was late evening, the sun had set some time ago and there wasn’t much light in the area to see by, but I could tell that I was on Juneau’s campus from the nearby buildings and the distant silhouette of the curtain wall that encircled the campus. I could hear people talking and laughing from a distant path that had a group hurrying along it.

“Liam.” The voice came from behind me and quavered oddly. Spinning around again, I caught sight of what I’d missed at first. Kassandra was sprawled on the grass a few feet away. I dove to my knees next to her.

“Kass, what's wrong?” I demanded, already shaking my hands to dismiss the claws from my fingertips so I could check her over, as I couldn’t see any threats around us at the moment.

“Cold.” Kassandra chattered. I was close enough now to see that her entire body was shaking and her clothes were soaked through. It took only a quick touch to confirm that she was dripping wet and freezing. As I watched her whole serpentine body thrash like she was trying to convulse or drag herself towards the road, but the chill in the air was sapping her strength. I saw fragments of ice in the grass nearby as well, but they were melting away already. The air temperature was chilly with the sun down, and being wet wasn’t helping at all.

“Shit, that’s right. You’re cold blooded. I need to find a way to warm you up.” I muttered as I laid a hand on her neck. I could feel her pulse there, but it was slow and weak as the chill robbed her body of the heat needed to function. I had absolutely no idea how this happened or how much it could harm Kassandra. I just knew that I needed to fix the problem, and quickly. A message flashed over my vision but I mentally slapped it away to focus on her.

She’s cold, needs to warm up. She always talks about how warm I am. I thought rapidly and yanked my sweat-soaked t-shirt over my head before scooping the furiously shivering dwarf lamia up in my arms and pressing her against my chest to try and share what body-heat I could.

Her clothes were so cold and icy that I almost screamed in surprise. Living in Colorado, I’d gotten used to the cold winds and chilling winters. The combination of cold and wet made it feel like I’d just belly flopped into an icy river that was seconds from flash freezing. The sole grace was that my body was steaming from my workout, that kept the chill just this side of debilitating. Kassandra’s arms shifted from clutching at her own chest to weakly hanging on to my shoulders and she buried her face in my neck.

“Room.” She croaked weakly. “Fire to warm. Two…two oh…three.” Her whole body gave another shuddering shiver and I felt her tail try and wrap around my hips like she normally did when she hugged me, but she couldn’t seem to make the muscles tense enough to hang on.

“I got you, Kass.” I murmured, using one arm to pull her small body against my chest and then used the other to grab her coiled serpent body and toss it around my hips. Shifting the hand at her back to the other arm, I hefted her tail around her back then slung the last of her length over my shoulder to keep it from dragging on the ground. This also helped hold her in place as it wrapped across her back and then up over my shoulder, so it pressed her into me.

With my passenger secured. I started waddling towards the road ahead of me. I remembered vaguely what Rue House looked like, and that there were plaques near the doors. I just needed to get closer so I could read them properly.

The group that I’d heard talking on the road was already out of sight, but I cleared the distance to get back on the path fairly quickly at my lumbering pace. Despite Kassandra’s small size, the added length of her serpentine body made her extremely heavy. So heavy that I doubted I could have done this before enhancing my strength stats.

That thought had me trying something I had considered before but not applied. I felt the muscles in my thighs and calves swell in size slightly as I pushed extra mass to them and their associated tendons. An extra five pounds of muscle won’t do a ton, but I need everything I can get.

Moving became slightly easier after that. I felt Kassandra’s coils tighten just a bit more around me as she tried her best to burrow into my chest. Whatever she’d been covered with, because it was obvious she’d been utterly doused from how wet she was and I just hoped it was water, had soaked through my pants and was now making my shoes squelch as I stomped pointedly along the path. Kassandra continued to shiver furiously as the wind picked up in the courtyard and I felt the chill of the cold liquid on my skin even more.

Thankfully, Rue House wasn’t far. I spotted the familiar shape of the building and hurried to the door, checking the brass plaque to confirm I was right. The door was secured with one of those old thumb latches that you pressed down on and it lifted a bar inside to unlock the door. I had to shift my grip on Kassandra to press the latch and push on the door. This, unfortunately, had the effect of leaving only my hand on her butt to support my burden. Kassandra made no protest though, just clinging a bit tighter as she continued to shake.

The door, however, wasn’t willing to work with me. The latch clunked, but didn’t move more than a tiny bit. Shifting Kassandra, I tried again with my other hand. Pressing down on the lever that should have lifted the bar inside and disengaged the lock. It again clunked loudly, but didn’t move enough to actually unlock. It’s like someone locked the door from the inside… I thought and my patience ended at that point. Kassandra’s shivering was getting worse and I could feel her coils loosening once more around me as she started to lose consciousness. So I did the only thing I could think of at the moment.

I took a step back, hitched Kassandra further up on my hip, and then gave the door an almighty kick right at the latch.

There was a crunch of breaking wood and a faint shout of surprise before I gave it another kick. I normally wouldn’t be able to put so much power behind a kick without over-balancing, but with the addition of Kassandra’s weight to my own I could put a great deal more force behind the blow. The second kick did the job. Both of my ankles were screaming in protest from the strain being put on them, one for the weight and the other the impact, so I was glad when the door swung open with a crash of splintering wood and I hurried inside.

The interior of Rue House was set up much like I would have imagined a wild west style saloon. The first floor was mostly taken up with individual study tables and social spaces, with well padded chairs scattered all around and lots of polished hardwood. A pair of stairs, one to each side of the room, led up to the second floor that overlooked the main room. A third and fourth floor did the same thing, leaving the center of the room open to the air so that one could look over the balcony and into the main room easily. Doors marked the walls on the second through fourth floors showing where each of the dorm rooms were and I started to the nearest set of stairs, ignoring the yelling coming from what I guessed were other residents of the building.

“Kass!” Rieka’s voice cut through the chaos and caught my attention when I hit the bottom of the stairs and looked up, seeing Rieka all but flying down the stairs towards me. “Liam?! What are you doing here?”

“She’s freezing, Rieka. I need to get her to her room and get her warmed up. Don’t know what happened to her, I just got an emergency summon and arrived to find her soaked and freezing in the grass.” I relayed rapidly, doing my best to keep my tone even as the shouting from below got louder while people demanded answers and shouted threats, but no one seemed willing to chase after me.

“The door?”

“Pretty sure someone locked it, and I wasn’t going to take the chance.” I didn’t stop moving as I stomped up the stairs. Rieka glanced between me and the crowd of other students, some of which had their spell rods out and were pointing them towards us.

“I’ll deal with them. Kass’s room is over there, the door's unlocked already.” She indicated a room just a short distance away that shared a wall with the front of the building. “Get her warmed up. Kass, hang on. Liam’s got you.” Rieka squeezed past me as I turned to hurry down the corridor. Kassandra’s shivering had slowed down now that we were out of the wind, but it still felt like I was holding an armful of limp and cold spaghetti.

I left a trail of wet footprints and small puddles while I headed to the door that led to Kassandra’s room. Thankfully, Rieka’s statement was right and it wasn’t locked.

When I pushed the door open, I found the familiar bedroom that I’d seen the last time I’d been summoned for a ‘planning session’ with the girls. A tea set was laid out at the table by the large, squishy couch with another chair next to it. A small stack of books was piled onto the table and the embers of a fire were glowing in the fireplace. Light was provided by a pair of crystal spheres sitting on the table next to the books. The baseball-sized spheres glowed with a steady light that served to illuminate the room fairly well.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Guess Rieka was waiting for you, Kass.” I muttered as I hefted my soggy burden onto the couch. Kassandra clung to me limply, her fingers digging into my back.

“Cold…Liam.” She managed to squeeze past numb lips. The pale skin of her face and chest were tinted just the slightest bit blue.

“Hang on, we need to get the wet clothes off you.” I grimaced as I said that, but Kassandra nodded jerkily, giving her consent.

Living in cold weather that got snow like I did taught me about dealing with hypothermia. Wet clothes were a huge no-no, and without internal body heat, I had to work quickly to get Kassandra warmed up. That meant that we needed to get the cold and wet things off and I couldn’t spare the time to accommodate modesty by bringing someone else in to change her clothes. My brain was still in full ‘emergency mode’.

Thankfully, the clothing Kassandra was wearing wasn’t super complicated. The short skirt came loose easily with a series of buttons along one hip and I tossed it onto the floor by the fire. Removing the underbust corset took more work, because Kassandra wasn’t able to help me figure out the laces and toggles. She just curled up and shivered while I worked. Getting it and her shirt off left her bare to the slightly warmer air of the room, but her pale skin was still wet. I tossed the soggy clothes by the fire before snatching a blanket off the foot of the bed and using it to quickly scrub her down to get as much liquid off her skin as possible. That done, I snagged the large, fluffy comforter off the bed and hurried back to her. The whole time, I did my absolute best to not stare at her curvy figure or the dark pink nipples that crowned the soft curves of her breasts where they peeked out from behind her arms. Kassandra was very well endowed and I now knew without a doubt she didn’t wear a bra. Shaking my head, I focused instead on how I could help her recover, growling to myself under my breath as I thought. Caveman brain can go sit in the corner. Getting her warm is more important than boobs, damn it.

I only paused long enough to toss a few more logs onto the fire from the rack that sat by the fireplace before I skinned out of my pants and underwear in order to remove any sources of wet and cold. Equally bare now, since my shirt was still lying in the grass outside, I hopped up onto the couch and settled in the center just behind Kassandra. With the fire and the blanket, she would warm up quickly. At least I hoped that she would. But I wasn’t going to take any chances.

It took a bit of wrangling to get Kassandra’s still limp coils around me once more, but I had her against my chest in short order with her coils wrapped around my hips and lap and the blanket draped over top of us to enclose as much body heat as possible. I did my absolute best to not think about the hard pebbles of her nipples pressing into my chest, or the softness of her bare skin on mine. The last thing I needed was to make this awkward by popping a boner when she was draped over my lap like this. Instead, I focused on rubbing her back, sides, hips, and tail as much as possible to boost her heat by friction. Slowly, her chilled flesh began to warm up once more.

“Liam…” Kassandra’s voice was soft, weak even, but she wasn’t chattering as much now. “Thank you. Sorry.”

“No! No apologies for this.” I growled as I squeezed her tighter to my chest. “You needed help and I came. I don’t want to think about what would have happened to you if I hadn’t gotten there quickly.”

“Hibernation.” Kassandra muttered, her body still shaking with the occasional shiver. She buried her face into my neck again and clung to me with a bit more strength. “Froze. Saved me.”

“I’ll always come if you need me, Kass.” The words were out of my mouth before I thought about them, but they weren’t untrue. I’d known her for less than two weeks, but that hadn’t stopped a deep affection from growing for the energetic and friendly dwarf lamia, or for her shy and reserved friend Rieka. I didn’t know where this friendship was going, but I resolved to see it through. Kass didn’t respond, just clinging closer to me. I was happy to feel her coils tighten, as the increasing heat was slowly restoring her strength.

Rieka arrived a few minutes later to find us swathed in blankets. She had a spell rod in each hand, one of which she set onto the table next to me and the other she slipped into the holster on her hip.

“I went out to look and found that in the grass.” She said by way of explanation. “Since almost all the coins in it were discharged, and the ground nearby was soaked with freezing water, I assumed it was Kass’.”

“Thanks.” Mumbled the dwarf lamia from inside the folds of the blanket. Only the top of her head was poking out and the mass of red curls were slowly drying and fluffing out once more. Rieka glanced over at the fireplace and moved to stir the fire with the iron poker from the rack next to it. The logs had caught and the fire was rising finally, emitting a billow of light and heat into the room in response to being moved about. She also spotted the soggy clothes lying on the floor next to the fireplace and shot me a questioning look.

“When someone is freezing to death, the last thing you want is wet clothes. Bare skin is preferable, as it makes it easier to warm them up.” I explained quickly and a furious blush crashed onto Rieka’s face.

“So, are you two…?”

“Yup.” Kassandra purred, wriggling closer and squeezing me with a bit more strength in her long tail. “Liam is waaarm.”

“I think she’s going to be okay now.” Laughed Rieka, sitting down on the edge of the large couch. “I want the whole story though, Kass.”

“Dunno. Someone hit me with a water spell while I was coming back from an errand.” Kassandra’s words were muffled by her hair, so I took a moment to brush it back so we could hear her better. “I conjured an ice spell to defend myself, thinking I was being attacked. Ended up chilling the water on me a lot and I panicked. They panicked too, I heard cursing and then people running. Called Liam when I realized I couldn’t move well enough to get back. Prank that got out of hand.”

I picked up the story there, filling Rieka in on what I saw when I arrived through to the point where I found the locked door downstairs, since she knew what came right after that. The wolf-kin woman nodded slowly as she listened, her ears twitching occasionally.

“Okay, that explains the door. The folks down in the common room just said someone kicked the door in for no reason and they saw you come charging through. We are lucky everyone was so surprised that they didn’t know what to do, someone might have hurt you out of fear. Honestly, it startled enough people that they didn’t react right away, which gave me time to explain.”

I had been intending to say something, but Kassandra’s coils tightening around me squeezed the words out. Instead, I just hugged her back and let Rieka continue.

“Lady Maia had the door repaired with a spell in no time. She told me to check on you and then report to her what I found out. You two okay for now while I go fill her in? Last thing we want is her to come in here and find you both naked.” Rieka’s eyes darted towards the two of us once more and her blush reappeared. I tugged the blanket a little higher to hide my bare chest better. Kassandra was back doing her little ‘squeeze, relax, squeeze’ kneading thing with her tail, which told me she was feeling much better, but said nothing.

“Yea. Go fill her in on what happened. I’ll stick around until Kass is feeling better.” I reassured Rieka. The wolf-kin nodded quickly before rising to her feet. A moment later, Kassandra and I were alone again in the room, the only noise being the quiet sound of her breathing and the crackle of the fire.

“Thank you again, Liam.” Kassandra’s voice was quiet enough that I almost missed it.

“Of course, Kass. Never doubt I’ll come for you.” I squeezed her back and heard a quiet, tearful sniffle coming from her. “What’s wrong?”

“I lied to Rieka a bit. I know the girls who did this.” Kassandra’s voice was far more reserved than I’d ever expected to hear from her.

“Who?” The word came out as a growl and I clutched her protectively to me. The knowledge that she was naked under the blanket entirely disregarded as I turned my glare towards the door, almost hoping the mischief makers would show up again.

“Another noblewoman by the name of Josephine and her group.” Kassandra murmured quietly. “They’ve been causing problems for me for a while because of my friendship with Rieka. They don’t think a ‘scalie’ like me should be hanging around the princess. They were taunting me and told me to stop monopolizing the princess, and when I refused, one of them doused me with water for daring to refuse ‘the Lady Josephine’ anything.”

“Does Rieka know?”

“No. I don’t want to tell her about it. She’d blame herself for problems befalling me because of her. You know she would.” Kassandra burrowed her face into my neck and sighed. “This would have just been a prank, but I reacted to defend myself and the ice magic got away from me. I really need to practice more…”

“I told you, Kass. You call and I’ll come. You need me to play heater while you practice, I will. I’m certainly not complaining right now.” I brushed the hair back from her face again and, on a hunch, pressed a kiss to her temple. The dwarf lamia in my lap giggled quietly before sighing happily and squeezing me tighter.

“Okay, Liam. I’ll do that…thank you again for saving me.”

“Anytime, Kass.”

We sat in silence for several more minutes while the heat of the fire soaked into the room and I finally had time to check my interface. The message that had distracted me earlier was at the top and then a second one had come in later regarding the first.

Assist your contracted companion, Kassandra Silverscale, by stabilizing her condition.

Reward - 50 SP

The second message was the same, only with the ‘completed’ tag attached to it. A third and fourth message were there too, both of which I was quite pleased to see.

Power Shape-Shifting (Minor) has achieved Mastery 1000/1000.

New Powers available in the System interface.

Congratulations, Traveler.