I stepped into the backyard of the boarding house having narrowly escaped a conversation with Mrs. Mole.

Why is she always in the hall? I wondered, failing to remember the last time I had crossed the second story landing and not seen her. When she had offered to kill any spiders that snuck up on me,It had taken me a moment to remember her fall. She seemed to be up and moving considerably more than what I would expect from someone showing their age like she was.

Arthur, waiting on the edge of the woods, threw a hand up and hurried me when he saw me coming down the stairs.

"You just missed Mr. Bill." Arthur said when I had almost reached him.

Thank the Mothers. I thought. "Oh, that's a shame."

"He said something about finding his birds, said he would be gone for a few days," He wore a heavy canvas jacket and pants that ran up to his chest and were suspended over his shoulders by straps that buttoned to the front. They looked ridiculous. "He reminds me of you, you know?"

I did not know that, in fact.

Did I look that fucking creepy?

I reached Arthur and began looking for the thing of mine that he had. "How is that?"

"Both of you seem like you never say what you're really thinking. I guess you aren't all that similar. I can ask Mr. Bill questions."

As soon as he had said the words, Arthur covered his mouth with his hand.

"Why can't you ask me questions?" I raised an eyebrow. He had absolutely not meant to say that..

Arthur shook his head and spoke, his voice muffled by his hand. "Anna made me promise not to and she made me promise to not tell you she made me promise."

I wondered if the said series of promises had been made before Anna knew about me or after, either way I was grateful. " I won't tell her you broke your promises."

Arthur dropped his hand, revealing his wide smile. "Promise? She can get violent."

“Can she,” I asked, patting the pockets of Arthur’s jacket, the ones at his hips, and checking his hood before taking the most direct option and asking. "Where is Sam?"

"I was gonna keep him on my head, because of the hood and all, but he kept shedding," Arthur said, a dusting of small blue hairs tangled within his own black hair. "I put him in here and he fell asleep."

The tall man opened the bib on the front of his strange pants and leaned down so I could see. My little blue familiar was curled in a ball, sound asleep, inside the large pocket. Even though I knew that the small creature could rattle the old boarding house down to its foundation with nothing but his voice and even though I had recently learned he was capable of pulling me into a space that he had sole control over with a single word, I had to admit that he looked cute.

After I had given Arthur my permission to bring Sam along, It had been like I had told him he could play with my favorite toy. He had bolted from the room so I could change before I could get another word in. So, I hadn't had the chance to ask my familiar the all important question of What the fuck do you think you are doing?

I had no reasonable clue to indicate why he would want to go. If he had been hungry, we had a decently well established agreement to fulfill that need. I had never seen him relieve himself. I didn’t think he had to. Even if he had, bound to my will or not, I couldn’t envision a world where he asked me for permission.

Maybe he had seen something out of the window.

Arthur leading again, we crossed the wood line at a much more manageable pace than the first time.

Sometime later, long past when I could turn back and see the boarding house between the trees, I decided to ask Arthur some questions. The remnants of my inexplicable high spirits had grown bored with the silence. "What are the clothes you are wearing called?"

"Overalls?" Arthur responded, sounding as if it was as obvious as the fact that the sky was blue. Which, if you knew things I knew and had seen the things I had seen, wasn't always true. Perhaps they were overalls, likely in fact, but somewhere else in the lands of known chaos they could be something entirely different.

"Are they warm?"

"Shit yeah! I could bake a pie here." Arthur said with a smile, pushing his thumbs underneath the straps and snapping them back to his shoulders.

"Where did you get them?" I asked, finding it all too easy to let the tall man’s constant cheerfulness draw me in.

"I found them in a closet downstairs. I think they were my dads."

There was Ms. Lao. She had birthed Anna and Arthur. I had never considered the other half of that equation. "Where is your dad?"

Without hesitation, Arthur answered. "Dead, in some military graveyard I haven't been to since I was a kid."

I focused my eyes on Arthur fully, ignoring the woods around us and the uneven ground we walked over. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know."

Arthur waved my apology off, not slowing down even a half step. "It's not like that. I never really knew him. He was gone all the time and died before I was old enough to remember him."

"Huh," I said, stepping over a fallen tree that had been rotting into the ground for so long I doubted it could be pulled up without crumbling. "Was he a warrior?"

"That sounds way too dramatic. He was a soldier." Arthur corrected..

Then, finding it frighteningly easy to divulge pieces of information about myself, I spoke. "Me too."

Arthur cocked an eyebrow at me. "You are a soldier?"

I laughed. "No, no. I meant that my father was a soldier and he died before I knew him."

"Hey, look at that! We've got something else in common." Arthur stopped and held his hand up to me.

I took it in my own and we continued, holding hands. His hand was rough and enveloped my own, but his grip was gentle and warm.

Arthur chuckled and the stupidest grin I had ever seen on anyone spread across his face. "I was going for a high five, but this isn't bad either."

I pulled my hand from his. "What is a high five?"

"Dani, I'm starting to think you were homeschooled," Arthur said, grabbing my hand by the wrist and slapping it into his own. "That's a high five."

"I understand" I lied, not entirely understanding what the purpose was.

The day was short and by the time we had reached the same clearing we had gone to on the first hunt, the light in the woods had begun to darken and dim. The best I could tell, we sat down in nearly the same spot we had sat before and just like the last time, Arthur had brought rations. We each had two sandwiches that were both sweet and salty. We washed them down with a shared thermos of hot coffee. Stomachs full, we chatted idly about various things until our conversation led me to another question.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

"Why did you have to go to the city with Ms. Lao?"

The change that snapped across Arthur's face was immediate and it made me wish I had not spoken. His normally bright and cheery face, perpetually adorned with a warm grin darkened and he cast his eyes down to the ground. "My Ma is sick."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know." I apologized. I could feel the pain in his words.

"It's okay, she doesn't want anybody to know. That's why I moved back from school, we all thought she was getting better, but." He trailed off then and I could feel the pain in his words.

When someone takes that tone, it leaves little room to imagine that the worst outcome is not becoming reality. "Forgive me for prying, but what is wrong with her?"

"It's cancer. She's got it all over. The doctors said that there were things they could try, but she wouldn't agree to anything."

The cold pit in my stomach returned, sapping the last of my high spirits away.I been charming and stealing from Ms. Lao. I had been charming and stealing from Ms. Lao while she was actively dying. There seemed to be no end to the harm I had caused by being selfish enough to desire small freedoms.

I wanted to fix it. The time in which I could have left the old house as if I had never been there had long passed. I had caused too much damage to turn and leave it. But, what could I do? There were sorceresses whose memories I had viewed that had been hundreds of years old, surely there was something to be done about Ms. Lao’s mortal illness, but they were within Zenithcidel. Going there, going home, meant the end of it all

Before I could sink too deep into the pit of problems I had created, Evidently content with leaving our previous words where they lay, Arthur changed the subject. "Somebody is waking up, you know how I can tell?"

"How?"

"I've got little claws digging into my chest." Arthur laughed. He opened the large pocket on his overalls and pulled out the handful of blue kitten that had been baking there. A shower of hairs in every shade of blue cascaded down from my familiar as he moved into full body stretch, claws tipped with tiny amounts of blood.

I took him from Arthurs hands and scowled at him. "My apologies, he isn't the most considerate creature."

Was he always this heavy?

"A small price to pay," Arthur shrugged. "He makes thinking about the stuff with my mom not so bad."

Sam sunk his claws into my hand. I dropped him to the ground where he immediately started hunting the laces of Arthurs boots.

“What has gotten into you?”

The small remainder of the day was spent in that manner, Arthur and Sam playing and me watching. I wondered the entire time why Sam had wanted to come along. Memories I had seen made me question if Sam and I could learn how to speak into each other's minds, the way some of the other familiars had. When night had fallen, full and dark, Arthur moved to pull out his lantern, but a sound struck us still.

From the canopy of a nearby tree, a voice spoke. "This way. This way. This way," Arthurs jaw dropped and he shot to his feet, searching the dark woods for the speaker. "Hurry. Hurry. Hurry."

"Dani, do you hear it?" Arthur whispered, turning to the direction of the strange crystalline voice.

Triplets? Bell toned voice? I heard it, I knew what it was saying. The owl spirit, the same one that had warned me and the same one that I thought must be Arthur's ghost. It was speaking to us.

"This way. This way. This way. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry." It repeated. The faint glow of its ethereal body colored the woods just beyond the clearing.

Before I could realize what was happening and grab him, Sam's little blue body disappeared into the darkness beyond in the blink of an eye.

"Come back you stupid cat!" I yelled after him.

The spirit’s light grew brighter and stretched into a trail of motes that led away from the clearing and just like Sam, Arthur bolted. "Come on Dani, We've got to catch it!"

"Mothers give me guidance." I grunted, standing up as fast as I could. Suddenly, I had found myself left alone in the dark woods and I didn't intend to spend the rest of my night in that situation.

So, I ran blindly into the dark, after my familiar and my friend.

I couldn't risk manifesting my aura so I could see. I had barely survived Anna finding out about me and I was unwilling to start the whole process over with Arthur although I thought he would take it better.

Through the trees I went, catching momentary glimpses of what I thought to be the spirit or Arthur's lantern.

"Sam?" I called, finding a through line that ran between several trees. I took the opportunity to gain ground and hurried my steps.

Because of the dark, I didn't see the ground drop out from under me into one of the deep gullies that littered the woods.

I fell, hard, and slid down the gully into a tight cluster of massive trees.

Several moments passed and I eventually managed to pull myself onto my feet, dirty and scrapped, but relatively uninjured.

Four silver eyes slowly opened in front of me. They shone in the near total darkness of the tight cluster of trees I had fallen into. Just like when my own eyes had blushed Anna's face red, the four eyes that I had seen during my first ghost hunt highlighted me in a cold pale light. Arthur. I thought, wondering how far he had ran in pursuit of the spirit as a low and rumbling growl rose from the unfamiliar familiar. I had been at some distance from it the first night it had showed itself to me, but as it took another tense step closer, I realized that its lowered head still came up to my torso. The sharp toothed canine was the size of a small horse and it was close enough that I had very little chance of keeping my flesh unpunctured if it decided to pounce.

I didn't move, if the familiar was not as articulate as my own or the others I had seen in memories, a single motion could be enough to provoke it.

The first time I had seen the familiar, I had been perfectly aware of my powerlessness. In the time since what had seemed like only a few days ago, things had changed. The familiar was terrifying but I had seen a horror much greater than it, both through the eyes of another and my own. The Mother's seal still blocked my natural channel but through a series of events I still didn't understand, the channel in my right palm had opened. Even with no practice or familiarity with using my power through it, it was better than not being able to manifest my aura at all.

So, while I didn't move, I did focus my aura. Not channeling it yet, I held it just below the surface and spoke. "State thy name and master. What are thine intentions in these woods?"

The familiar stopped growling long enough to say. "Behind."

Then, its growling rose back up as it slowly advanced.

"Your name is Behind," I asked, confused. I was expecting something way more intimidating or mystical than that. "Silver fang? Four moons? That's just off the top of my head and I don't even know you. Behind? You can do better than that."

Behind's growl burst into a single bark. "Get behind."

"That's even worse!" I said.

Get Behind lunged towards me.

During the time I had spent criticizing the familiar's name, I had been constantly focusing as much of my aura as I could hold beneath my right palm. When Get Behind lunged, I channeled it and manifested it into a wave of colorless light. I made it flash, four eyes meant twice the blindness I hoped, and sent it sailing towards my attacker.

The silver eyed canine jumped over me and my counterattack and landed at my back. The wave of my aura crashed through the branches of the surrounding trees before breaking through and fading in the night sky above. I whirled around, feeling a layer of sweat coat my body despite the frigid air of the woods. I had never been in shape, magically, but spending that amount of my aura had taken a heavier toll than I had hoped.

"Stay behind." The familiar growled, and I realized it had not been sharing its name. It had been giving me commands.

My eyes searched where the silver eye-light of the unfamiliar familiar gazed. First, the disturbed leaf cover of the ground. Second, the tangled mess of close knit branches. Third, the mass that was hanging from the trees not a foot behind where I had been standing.

As soon as the light hit it, it fell from the branches, landing in a heap just before the four eyed wolf.

It unfolded. Two decrepit hands, each large enough to grasp me fully, unfurled. Black nailed fingers stretched and flexed as if they had been held in a fist for much too long. The massive hands were attached by way of jointless appendaged to the back of the blackened shape of a man. He had no legs and his rib cage was exposed, each rib being made of a smaller appendage and hand. The black nails of the largest hands dug into the soft soil of the woods and it lifted itself off the ground, turning its featureless face up to me. It looked as if someone had grafted a mask of ruined skin over the thing's face as tight as they could pull it without tearing. When its eyeless face looked at me, each finger of the cage below its chest writhed and the arms that made it turned open.

I have been watching you, child. The memory of the lich's voice sounded in my mind. The thing had been why I had felt like I had been being watched, not the spirit or the familiar. Arthur. I thought. He was still in the woods, running blindly through the trees with no knowledge of the horror that lurked within it. What if he had run into it and not me?

What if there were more?

The creature began to finger walk towards me like some kind of nightmarish spider.

Then, feeling like a memory in my mind but unable to be one, I heard the lich.

Allow it to take you, child. It shall bring you to me.

Sea salt, wild flower blossoms, sun warmed grass, A flurry of scents filled my nose and under it all was the sickly cloying scent of death.