"Is this going anywhere soon?" Blake said.

"Please, don't interrupt," Sophia said.

Sophia's story continued.

----------------------------------------

They managed to stay safe for the week it took for their uncle to return to town. And he was confused. Confused, angry, and sad. After he collected himself, he said he would bring them to the city and find them places to work. He did. And there, in the city, they lived together in a single borrowed room for two years.

Their jobs were not good. Nash was employed by a bar, clearing tables and washing dishes, and, eventually, gambling with the regulars. He was hardly protected, but his uncle kept his employer in check. Sophia, on the other hand, was forced into a job as a maid, cleaning up after a lazy, slothful, crooked businessman, one with a terrible drinking problem and several wolfling 'comfort Companions'. Their uncle was a drunkard. He would return home drunk every night, and complain about the people he'd interacted with for hours on end. Sophia and Nash could hardly sleep.

Every week, Sophia asked their uncle why Nash had to work. He said that they couldn't afford the room otherwise. She gritted her teeth. She swore to herself that one day, once she had skimmed enough money off of her paycheck, she would take Nash and run. This was not the sort of life they were meant to lead.

One day, their uncle didn't come home. Nor did he the next day. She did not go looking for him. But on the third day, the news of his death came to them. He had died in a barfight. A pitiful death, stabbed in the gut over a measly seven gold.

"Some Savant he was..." Sophia grumbled.

It wasn't clear what lead his life down this path, where he went wrong, or why. But it was too late now. All they could do was go on without him. Or so they hoped.

"I got rehired."

"What? By who!"

"The place next door."

"That dirty, stinky inn? Why!"

That inn was known for housing criminals and kidnapped Companions.

"I can talk to dogs. Their guard dogs needed training."

"You can..."

"The animals, I hear the voices when I'm dreaming. Er, I did, but now I hear them when I'm awake. And I can talk to them. They noticed, they made me train the dogs."

Sophia was at a loss for words. Using such powers to train guard dogs? Not even having the appropriate time or place to grow accustomed to them or practice with them safely? This was absurd. She had to get out of here with him as fast as she could, for his own safety. But the rent, when their uncle died, he couldn't pay his part of it any longer. Things were only more difficult in his absence.

The days went on. Nash was coming home later and later. Sophia started leaving work early, much to her employer's displeasure, to go look for him at the inn, to figure out what was going on. But she could never find him inside. There were very few places there that she was allowed to access, after all.

One day, when her employer was absent from her place of work, she left early once again, changing out of her uniform and into her usual cloak and dress. This day, surely, she might be able to figure out what was going on. But she learned something far worse.

"Sorry, little lady. Your brother's gone," the fat man said, sitting on a couch with several wolflng 'comfort Companions' beside him. At that dirty stinky inn. Drunk.

"What...?"

"I made him a Companion and sold him off to some thugs. Already left town. Thought it would take a load off your mind and get you back to work. Bahahaha!"

He laughed.

She was terrified. What was she going to do? Hunt Nash down? Across all of Icemarch, and Deltania, and Greenwood too?

This wasn't right. You can't play with people's lives like this.

Anger filled her eyes. Her calm, collected expression was replaced with a rage so pure that even a god would fear it.

"This isn't a joke."

"Huh? You say something?"

"This isn't a joke, you monster!"

She didn't know what had overtaken her. But it wasn't good.

Her right arm swung forwards. Not at her employer, but at the air, as though ripping through it and shoving it.

The Companions had already scrambled into the corners of the room.

What? She's not even encanting! her employer thought, jumping up and trying to dodge out of the way as fast as he could. But he was too slow. Too slow, too fat, too drunk. A wall of air smashed him into the wall, and he coughed up blood.

"Buhg! Y... You! You witch!"

"Call me what you want! It won't change your fate!"

She ripped through the air again. Vertically, this time. A blade of air rushed down on the man, slicing open his face and chest.

"Ghahwuayuwahaahh!"

He screamed a blood-curdled sound that the human body shouldn't have been able to create. It couldn't, after all. The man's entire throat and chest had been ripped open, along with his head and brain. Of course the sound was unnatural.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Blood everywhere.

Sophia panted heavily, slowly calming down.

"Witch, huh..."

She turned and left, her cloak fluttering in the residual wind left by her magic. A few people tried to stop her on the way out, but she pushed them aside, through force of air.

As she stepped through the inn's back door out into the city, slamming it behind her, a straw broom fell on her boots. It had been leaning against the inn's outer walls, and was knocked over by her slamming the door.

"How fitting. After all, I am a witch."

CLASS ACQUIRED

Witch

The broom entered her possession, and on the summer winds, she flew away. Far and wide she would search, across all the land, until they might one day be reunited.

----------------------------------------

"That, uh, sure was a story," Blake said.

"Well? Things make a bit more sense now?" Sophia said.

"I'm curious why you had to give me all that instead of just the fever dream part. I mean, I get that you cut a lot out and all but it was still kind of hard to keep track of what you were focusing on."

"I'm not sure 'he got trapped in a forest fire and started having dreams where animals made fun of him' would've sunken in for you. You kind of lack common sense, what's possible in 'this' world, what's not."

"I guess. That whole thing doesn't explain why I can understand the foxes though."

"Well, it's one step closer to the truth, at least. Oh, and they can only understand intelligent animals, like foxes, bears, or some birds. They're also whimsical and bad at remembering things, so it's not as useful a skill as you might imagine."

"Either way I'm going back to the contract idea. Makes more sense to me."

"Suit yourself. Not everyone has to accept reality."

"Wait, hold on a second, how come you didn't... That asshole's slaves, they—"

"It was murder. Dominion contracts only transfer to the owner's killer when the kill was clean and legal."

"I... See."

"Hey, that's cheating!" one of the kids said.

"Huh?" Nash said.

"You can't use magic like that!"

"Magic? What magic? This?"

Nash repeated what he was getting accused of. It was a complicated sleight-of-hand thing.

"Yeah, that! Not fair!"

"That's not magic..."

"If I can't do it, it doesn't count!"

Nash grumbled.

"They sure are having fun," Blake said.

----------------------------------------

Later that day, Riley overheard some strange gossip about monsters and dungeons. Her ears tended to pick up on this kind of thing without her control. Monsters meant stuff to kill, and killing was fun.

Then, at night, she and Blake sat around at the inn's bar. They were trying to decide how long to stay in Queensland. Riley was still nervous about Transporters, so she was was a bit hesitant to leave the country, at least so soon, but she wasn't sure how many weeks was right.

"Skeletons and zombies? In an old, cleared dungeon?"

"That's what they've been saying," Riley said.

"I haven't seen or heard anything about the undead since I got to this world. This is totally new. Did something happen? Wait, no this one time at the guild..."

Riley toyed with her hair. "They are new, after all. Nobody knows what's going on with them. But they're here, and they're hard to kill, since they're already dead."

A tall demon man with slicked-back silver hair and sunglasses walked up and sat down next to them at the bar. Riley watched.

"The dungeons they've been coming from were previously cleared during the revolutionary war, so the government is quite upset. They'd like any willing adventurers to clear them and stop any further undead from spawning," the demon man said, ordering a weak drink.

"What does clearing a dungeon mean? Like, I haven't even gone into one yet. Not even the front door. Do they have front doors?" Blake said.

"Oh? You looked like the dungeoning sort to me. Well, at the bottom or end of every dungeon, there's a boss monster and a treasure. That's the bare minimum. Defeating the boss and taking the treasure clears the dungeon, but you must do both, elsewise the other regenerates and the weaklings continue spawning. Of course, once the dungeon is cleared, all of its monsters die, even those that have left it behind. The dungeon acts as a power source, of sorts, or as a tether keeping the monsters bound to this world."

"Uh... If someone clears a dungeon, is that dungeon just like, dead? Forever? Nobody can ever do it again?" Riley asked.

"It will recover, but only if it's left alone for several months. If you, say, try to use it as a criminal hideout, or a frequently-accessed storage bunker, or you destroy it entirely, then it will slowly decay into normal land. New dungeons appear somewhat often, though, in magically appropriate places. Tombs, for example, or deep, tangled forests. Sometimes dungeon caves appear in marshes for the same reason. There seems to be a magical law of just the sort to keep dungeon activity possible, a conservation of the dungeon quantity of the land, though there are more in times of turmoil."

"I see. Yeah, makes sense, I guess. By the way, what's your name? And are you a dungeoner?" Blake said.

"Ah, my apologies. I am... Raha'enari. You might translate it as Arm-taker."

"That's a mouthful... Arm taker? Really?" Riley said.

"You may call me Rahi then."

"Sure thing, Rahi. I'm Blake. This is Riley," Blake said.

"Hey, Rahi. If we go dungeoning, me and Blake, would you come with us and show us what to do?"

"Wait, what?" Blake said.

Rahi smirked.

"Of course. Teaching dungeoning to newcomers is my passion."

"Are you sure about this, Riley?"

"Yeah. I really, really want to go. It sounds exciting."

"That much? I guess it'll be good experience, but... Wait, why did they leave the dungeons along long enough for them to recover? Isn't that just asking for trouble?"

"Ah—"

"Rahi, do you know anything about that?"

"They've been quite busy getting the country on its feet, I imagine," Rahi said.

"Right... And you're a dungeoner?" Blake said.

"Adventurers aren't around in large enough numbers to keep the dungeons all cleared, due to the local terrain. So it's up to us locals that are willing, and a lack of enough willing locals is why they've been lapsing."

"Right, it's all mountain."

Sophia and Nash got back from buying food and supplies.

"We're back! Oh, Blake, who's this?" Sophia said.

"Rahi, a new... Friend? Acquaintance, I guess."

"Hey, you're that guy that got me to use the meat sauce. Thanks," Nash said.

"It's my pleasure. It seems that Riley here is keen on having me take her and Blake dungeoning. Is that alright?"

"Why are you asking me? It's their own fault if they decide to do something dangerous and get hurt. As long as they don't die. Or run off with Nashie."

Rahi nodded.

"I see, so that's how it is. Don't worry, I will take very good care of them. They shan't suffer a scratch."

"Did you always talk like that?" Nash said.

"Oh, sorry, it's a bad habit. Someone I know speaks like that and it rubs off on me from time to time."

"Uh huh... Well, take care! We gotta go reorganize our room."

Nash and Sophia went off upstairs.

"Y'know, after hearing Sophia talk about the stuff she and Nash went through, I think I get why she's so protective of him, never even letting me think about bringing him on a dungeon dive. Experiencing that stuff must've been really traumatic," Blake said.

"Story? What do you mean?" Riley said.

"It's a long story, ask her yourself."

"I'm not that interested..."

"Then I guess it'll be a mystery forever."

"Uh huh."

"Hey, like, it's not my past."

"Well, I guess we've all got our secrets."

"Not me, er, unless I'm forgetting something really important about myself."

Rahi watched Blake and Riley have this back and forth and laughed. It was difficult for humans, let alone demihumans, to be forthright with one another, even when they're trying so very hard. These two were no exception.