It’s been about six months since I left the first town. I had been somewhat…distracted on my way out, so I hadn’t grabbed any jobs from the adventurers guild, so I ended up making really decent time. According to my map, the next town should be somewhere within a 20 mile radius of my current location. Unfortunately, the page of my diary on which I had placed the map was rather small, so all my map had told me was that I was right on top of it.
During these past three months I had made excellent progress on my demonic magic. I was now able to dial the intensity down to a level that wouldn’t completely screw up other people’s heads. Sophia had had nightmares for a week after I had gone too hard the first time, which I both apologized for profusely and completely understood. I still have those nightmares to this day after all, so for her to kick them so fast was truly a testament to her experience as an immortal.
The only problem with demonic magic was the borderline ridiculous mana cost. I now understood perfectly why Sophia had waited as long as she had to teach it to me. Even though I had enough juice to run a normal spell for almost half an hour now, demonic magic would drain my entire pool dry in a matter of minutes. Seconds if I went full force the way I had the first time. It was pretty much perfect for training though, and I had hunted a decent number of beasts by staring at them, hitting them with my full powered Evil Eye, and while they were catatonic, just walking up and slitting their throats cleanly. That’s primarily how I had ended up training demonic magic, as after that first attempt, I didn’t want to risk putting Sophia through the horror that was my brain.
As I was wandering around, searching for the slightest hint of a worn path or even just tracks that might lead to town, I heard the sound of footfalls, snapping branches and scattering leaves. Remembering the last time I had met a group of people outside of town, I made sure to prepare myself properly this time. I used light magic to turn myself invisible, and gravity and wind magic to lift myself up and off the ground, ensuring I wouldn’t make any noise. I then flew silently towards the source of the noise.
In a break between the trees, I saw a group of three, two girls and a boy, all around 17-19 years old. One of the girls had large blue bird’s wings sprouting from her back, the boy had fox ears and a tail, and on the third girl, the holy grail of the fantasy genre, the pinnacle of all lifeforms: Cat ears. An actual, honest to god cat girl was in front of me. Jesus christ my life rocks. Almost in response to my appreciation of her ears, the girl in question snapped her head around and stared at me. No, not at me, she couldn’t see me because of the invisibility spell after all, just…around me. She knew I was here, just not my precise location.
Despite this being my first run in with beastkin, I didn’t get stupid, and made sure that my winged knives were ready at my waist, and my war scythe in hand. I then dropped the invisibility spell and returned the catgirl’s stare. We looked at each other for a few seconds before she yelled out, “I KNEW SOMEONE WAS THERE!!!”. Laughing, she started prancing towards me, explaining, “I could smell someone new nearby, but I couldn’t see you at all! That was super cool by the way. What’s your name Mr. Bear? You looking for town? We’re actually making our way back right now so you can come with us!”
Does this girl not possess a single suspicious bone in her body? I’m literally a strange man out on my own, and clearly strong enough to survive on my own. I appeared literally after thin air holding a weapon when they had no idea I was there, and yet this girl just straight up sauntered up to me, and grabbed me by the sleeve of my bearskin cloak, trying to bring me to her friends. I sighed, let go of my spear with my left hand, and gave the girl a solid flick to the forehead.
“Owwww! That hurt! What was that for??”
“It hurts a lot less than getting murdered dude, be smarter next time.”
She huffed in defiance at my claim. “No one would murder me! Look at me! I’m adorable!! Who could possibly have the heart to murder me?!”
I rubbed her head in a way that was now becoming habitual due to how much Sophia liked it. “You sure you and your friend there didn’t switch bodies? Cuz you’re acting hella cocky despite not having any feathers.” As I was rubbing her head, her ears twitched cutely, leading me to scratch behind them. I didn’t have the heart to inform her that her adorability would only make her a target for a different kind of attacker.
“You call me cocky, but you’re still petting my head, so who are you to talk!?” By this point, her two friends seemed to be confident that I wasn’t about to massacre them all, and walked over to us. As they got close, I decided to be a good samaritan and give them a little lesson in the world. Instantly two knives flashed out of my cloak and halted an inch from their throats. The two immediately paled and stumbled backwards, my knives pursuing, maintaining that one inch distance. I called out to them.
Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.
“If any of you had made one wrong move, I was perfectly ready to kill all three of you. This is your friend right? If you know she’s this naive you need to do a better job of looking out for her. That means don’t let her just walk up to every random stranger she sees.” I flew the knives back to my waistband, and looked down at the catgirl I was still petting. She seemed oddly unbothered by the fact that I had just threatened her friends.
She saw the confusion on my face and explained, “You didn’t smell like you were gonna kill them so I wasn’t worried.” Well, she tried to explain at least. I have no clue what it means to ‘smell like you’re gonna murder’. Is that a cat people thing? The other two seemed to be suitably freaked out so it wasn’t a beastkin thing. Or maybe this girl was just stupid. I was leaning towards the latter.
The boy asked, “why do you care?”. Not in a mean way, or like I caught him doing something wrong, but in a suspicious way. The kind of way you might ask if a stranger started petting your friend’s head and threatening you to take care of her better. Which all in all…yeah that’s fair.
I shrugged in response, “What can I say, I’ve got a soft spot for innocent and naive kids like her.” The boy thought about that for a second, and apparently decided it made sense. Maybe he was in a party with her for a similar reason in the first place. The two of them got to their feet and we made our way to town, the bird girl far in the front, with the fox boy rushing to catch up to her, and the catgirl still grabbing me by the sleeve and dragging me after them. As we walked, she introduced herself as Ash. Apparently, the birdgirl was Elizabeth, and the fox boy was Michael. As she talked, I glanced down and noticed that behind her trailed not a cat’s tail as I had expected, but a fluffy dog’s tail. When I asked about it, an odd expression flitted across her face.
“My dad was a catkin, and my mom was a wolfkin. When they had me I ended up with a bit of both. People call us mixed beastkin mutts, and we’re not all that common, so it’s not too surprising that you’d be confused.” That just confused me more.
“Why aren’t they common?”
Ash screwed up her face around her nose in a rather cute way before explaining, “Mutts aren’t exactly well liked among beastkin. We tend to be very pack-centric, and try not to interfere too much with packs of different kinds. For a mutt to exist in the first place, that meant that both the mother and the father were kicked out of their packs, making the kid not a part of either. Though, it’s not all that bad, some people don’t mind bringing loners into their packs.” She said, with a rather entranced look in her eye as she looked far ahead of us.
I matched her gaze and saw the boy Michael tripping over his own feet trying to say something to Elizabeth. I looked back at Ash and commented, “Men are idiots huh?” She met my eyes in confusion, then when I nodded towards Michael stumbling back to his feet up ahead, a healthy blush filled her cheeks.
“Is it really that obvious?” She mumbled, embarrassed.
I shrugged, “If you take how much you look at me and Elizabeth, and combine those two times, it still wouldn’t be half as much as you stare at Michael.”
She let out a sigh and said, “That’s the problem, Mike only pays attention to Liz. She doesn’t like him, but he chases after her anyways. If I went and told him how I felt, I feel like he’d either turn me down and choose to wait for her, or agree to date me but would always have ‘until Liz says yes’ in his mind. I don’t know what to do.”
“Well as I said before,” I provided, “men are stupid creatures. We tend to give our loyalty to the first person who makes us feel wanted. If you want him, then just go for it, and show him. If he turns you down, then let it end there, and if he does get with you and leave you for Liz, then he was never really worth the loyalty you gave him anyway is he?”
Ash nodded, “Dang that actually makes a lotta sense. You sound so experienced, you got a girl too? If not, we could totally try and get you with Liz so that Mike stops trying with her.”
I scratched my head, knowing Sophia was most definitely listening intently now. I thought about it for a little, and decided to just come out with the full truth. 9 months was a short time when compared to eternity sure, but I had chickened out of this long enough. Time to take my own advice and lay down my hand, cards be what they may.
“Sort of. There’s a girl I really like, and I’m pretty sure she likes me back, but we haven’t taken that last step yet. I have this thing that makes it really difficult to tell how other people are feeling, so I can never be 100% sure she feels the same way. And what makes it worse is that she’s kinda the most important person in my life y’know? I’m terrified that if I make one wrong move because I misread the situation I’m not only gonna lose her that way, but also lose my best friend.”
Ash gave me a solemn look before saying, “If you tell her that, then I’ll tell Mike.”
I laughed awkwardly before admitting, “I kinda just did. She has a special kind of magic that lets us talk to each other no matter how far away we are, so she’s been listening this whole time. I guess I’ll get my answer tonight.”
The reason I hadn’t found the gate into town without help was for a very simple reason. This town was built by beastkin for beastkin. The primary founders happened to be related to rabbits and wolves. This leads us to one obvious conclusion: The town was located underground. Ironically, when my map said I was right on top of it, it was the truth, but only in a literal sense.
After we finally found the town, and passed through the gate, I agreed to meet up with Ash some time in the adventurer’s guild. We didn’t set a specific time, as if everything went well tonight, we’d hopefully both be busy for a little while. I couldn’t see anything due to the whole underground thing, but managed to find my way with light magic. I’d have to work out a better solution in the workshop. As I passed through a deserted alleyway, I bent down and stabbed the scouting spike into the ground. Instantly, my surroundings changed, and I looked up into Sophia’s face. She grabbed me by the front of my cloak, yanked me towards her, and said, inches away from my face,
“The next time someone asks if you have a woman you say yes, understood?”
I felt my face widen in a grin as I replied, “Yes Ma’am.”