The last chapter was a bit serious and tragic, so I want to change that in this one! Hopefully, Nyri will bring some poops and giggles to counter the stagnant, depressing mood our adventurers are currently in! Speaking of which, where is she?

“Shh!” Durand whispers to his water flask. The flask trembles in his hand.

Trodding ahead on the dirt road is Cenvin. The sun is blocked by the eternally dark sky(although it still lights up the land) like a blanket made out of the death of space itself. A glimmering white light shoots out of Durand’s flask into the air, creating a stark contrast with the inky backdrop. It splits into countless glowing orbs and those particles soar in circles around each other as if it’s a planet system, with each particle drawing each other in with its gravity. They melt together to form a glowing white object in the shape of an intercontinental missile, shooting directly toward Cenvin at Mach speed.

Before he can react, the missile is already up his nose. At the very last possible moment before impact, the missile turns into liquid, slamming Cenvin to the ground like a strong jet of water.

Glittering and levitating, the liquids form together into the solid shape of Nyri, who gracefully steps onto the ground. Durand is bent over with laughter. Cenvin, completely dry, looks as if he just had a brush with death. Quickly, humiliation turns into anger.

“Stupid cat!” Cenvin yells.

Pushing aside a still chuckling Durand, he draws his dagger and throws it at Nyri. She turns into her liquid form and the dagger goes through her like chopping water. She solidifies herself and shakes her head, as if disappointed at Cenvin. He gets pissed even more. He draws his shortswords and dashes for a series of quick attacks.

“Dumb,”

Nyri dodges.

“Idiotic,”

A shortsword misses its mark and embeds itself into the dirt. Cenvin screams in infuriating.

“ABSOLUTELY UNBALANCED,”

His attack goes through Nyri, who had once again turned into liquid-

“DOGS ARE SO MUCH BETTER-”

Nyri sniffs. She dodges Cenvin’s next attack and evaporates. He looks around in confusion.

“She left! Gone!” Durand yells. “Now where’s our guide? How are we going to Italica City to save Brett?”

“Don’t need her!” attests Cenvin.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

A luminescent cloud begins forming around Cenvin’s head. He begins yelling curses. Durand watches as the cloud turns translucent to near-solid, and then it hits him.

“Don’t choke him!” he hurries to detach Nyri from Cenvins head. Cenvin gradually becomes silent and drops to his knees. Nyri reluctantly returns to her cat form under the pressure of Durand’s chiding.

Durand and Cenvin lay on the dirt, breathing heavily. Nyri looks at them both unimpressed. She meows and begins walking along the road.

“Wait, wait for us!” Durand catches his breath and stands up. Cenvin stares at the black veil overlaying the sky for a bit. Eventually, Durand hurries back to find he has entered yet another coma.

At Nighttime, Nyri purrs and wakes up from her secluded bed of grass, a good distance from the still-sleeping Cenvin and Durand. She raises her tail and quietly steps into the nearby field of tall grass. Wading through the leaves and branches, silent as a… cat.

She halts. Concentrating, a small particle detaches from her tail, floating into the air, shedding light among the tall grass like a spotlight. It slowly dissipates into much smaller steamlike particles. These minuscule molecules fly north, fireflies dancing across the dark heavens. A few miles later, these particles stop on top of a hill and begin forming distinct shapes to the silhouette of an old man.

Nyri, now somewhat noticeably smaller, stealthily skates back to her sleeping spot.

“I swear she’s smaller!”

“She’s normal as always, friend. Good old Nyri.”

“Who knows what a magic sentient glowing cat that can vaporize herself can do?”

“Why don’t you want to trust her? She’s our guide. She can save Brett. Forgot?”

“What I mean is,” Cenvin breathes in and out, “She isn’t a stupid animal. She has intelligence. She can think for herself. She doesn’t answer to us, she answers to that ugly old man, a Wandering, as it called itself.”

“She’s our supernatural help. It’s an essential part of the hero’s journey.”

“‘Supernatural help’ this, ‘supernatural help’ that, first you say it for Thalia, and now you repeat yourself for an Otherworld creature. Have you not seen what these things are capable of?”

“But-”

“I don’t want to hear it!”

Cenvin and Durand stare each other down, teeth gritted, ready to battle. Nyri turns onto her back and purrs pitifully like a kitten, her clawless paw patting her smooth stomach. Durand steps back.

“Whether you want her out of the party or not, surely you still have the kindness to feed a living thing,” he says. “As a ranger, it’s my duty.”

Cenvin groans.

“Fine. What does she eat anyway?” he looks curiously at the shriveling Nyri.

Durand kneels and presents a handful of berries.

“Poor thing probably shrunk due to lack of nourishment. You eat these delicious berries, right?” Nyri shakes her head. Durand turns and searches in his backpack to extract a handful of dried fish. She looks away in disgust. Cenvin throws her a piece of chicken. She lets it land in the dirt. Instantly, the chicken gets pulled under the dirt by something, to Cenvin’s horror.

“My chicken…” he mourns. “Thanks a lot, cat.” he spits on the ground and goes away to look in his backpack.

Nyri lets out a series of giggles(as close as possible to a human giggle) and jumps onto her feet. She strides triumphantly around Durand’s scraps of food and kicks them into a patch of dirt, where something(a creature probably) drags them under. Cenvin watches, and then it clicks.

“She doesn’t need to friggin’ eat!”

Durand silently accepts the joke with a grin. Cenvin sits down on a comfy-looking patch of grass but then immediately leaps up as if burned, clutching his ripped pants and frantically looking for something to block his bottom with.

Nyri meows apologetically and flies onto Durand’s shoulder. She points her tail at a hidden trail away from the road concealed by massive shrubs.

“Shortcut?” Durand asks her. She affirms. “Shortcut. Here we go!”

The party then proceeds to get ambushed by a thousand massive tendrils sprouting from the ground and they all die a terrible death. Just kidding. That is what would have happened if Nyri hadn’t purposefully avoided the trap set on the road ahead by going into a hidden path.