I clanged the stupid pans together as I left the bank, using one of three holes Gramma opened in the walls to allow us to escape. I had watched my brother lead the army of statue guys all the way from the temple, up the hill, and into the bank from my lookout spot on the second story. I was supposed to get their attention after they lost Kyle and lead them away, but I had to re-work the plan a little when I found out that the statue guys are strong enough to walk through brick walls. I had to run downstairs in a hurry and lead them off through the side exit. They were making so much noise that I almost missed the sound of my brother gasping for air like he had been drowning. I'm not sure if that was from fear, or he was just so out of shape that walking a few blocks winded him, but either way I intend to make fun of him for it next time I see him. What a wuss!

  Based on the loud explodey sound behind me and a cloud of dust covering everything, it looked like we were going to have to pick a new meeting place after this was over. By now, Gramma and Kumakros should be raiding the temple for everything it's got. I hope there's enough treasure to justify all this work. I can hear the buzzy things in the distance, even though my ears are ringing from all the noise. I knew Gramma's ears were going, but I was surprised that my hearing is so much better than Kyle's. He couldn't hear the buzzing until they were practically already biting him. I still have the bite from one of those things that chased me into the cupboard back at the inn.

  The statue guys are still behind me. I was hoping that a building falling on them would kill them, or at least break some of them, but they were still coming and there were still too many to count. Kumakros said that the temple on the other side of the river is where all the buzzing things come from, and that it was way too dangerous to go near it. I don't know about that. NPC's are always telling you to stay away from some place or other because that's where all the best loot is. Still, Gramma was really worried about us and Kumakros kept going over the heist plan with us, so I decided to stick to it. I headed the other way, downhill toward where the streets stopped and the open fields started. It was only about twenty blocks, it would have been a pretty short trip if I didn't have to wait for the statue guys. You'd think they'd be mad about being led around like this, but they never go any faster and their faces are always the same.

  The houses changed as I walked. The ones near the hill that used to have a bank on it were all pretty big and made of brick, except for the ones that fell over. Pretty soon though, the houses were all small and wooden, and they were almost all totally destroyed. I had been looking through them looking for things we can use all week, which was fun, even though most of it was really dirty or broken.

  The buzzing sound was getting worse. I wasn't expecting that, cuz Kumakros said they almost never come to this part of the city. That's why I was supposed to go this way, it's the part of town that's the least dangerous. I have my whole route worked out, plus a bunch of good places I can ditch the statues if I have to. So far, I couldn't see what the big deal was. The statue guys were huge chumps, and the buzzing things are just flying around in the sky, like they're scared of the statues, but want to see what they're doing. I wished that I was at the temple where all the cool stuff was happening.

  As I got further from the temple, the houses started to get further apart, and trees started popping up in the grassy places in between. After a while, I was walking past rotten old fences and little houses that used to be farms. The statues were making a real mess behind me. They almost never went around anything that was smaller than a house. Sometimes I would hear a loud crack behind me when a statue just bent a little tree over and crushed it underfoot, rather than just go around it. It was like I was leading a wrecking crew through town.

  Then, all at once, with no warning at all, the sound behind me quit.

  I kept walking for a little while, waiting for it to start back up. It's hard to stop walking when you have a good pace going, and Kumakros told me that I shouldn't stop for any reason. But the sound of a hundred stomping feet just stopped dead. I turned around.

  Every single statue was standing perfectly still. Some of them fell over, and then knocked more of them over like dominoes. I kept staring at them, wondering if they were trying to trick me or something. But if they were smart, they wouldn't have followed me all this way. It was creepy how quiet it was all of a sudden. Except for the buzzing sound.

  I dropped the pans, turned, and ran as fast as I could. The buzzing things that had been hovering nearby were now left with just one thing to focus on, and they were gathering together to hunt me down. I figured that I could run faster than they could fly with their little bug wings, but there was no way I could keep going long enough. I needed to find somewhere to hide.

  I was running through what used to be farmland, but the people had been gone so long that it was starting to turn back into forest. What I really needed was a place with really thick trees, so the buzzing things wouldn't be able use their wings. The last time we fought them, they weren't very scary once Kumakros knocked them down with his whirlwind. But that time, we had all been together, and I was alone this time. They seemed a lot more scary now.

  Running took a lot more out of me than walking, even over the same distance. I ran right past the place where I was supposed to ditch the statues. It was a big hole in the ground that Gramma called a quarry and Kumakros called a sriddel. It was about twenty feet deep, so all I had to do was run around it until all the statues fell in. Kumakros said they would be too big and heavy to climb out, and then I could just walk back. It didn't matter now, the buzzy things could fly right over it. There were at least six of them behind me now, and even though I was running as hard as I could, they were getting closer.

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  I spotted a farmhouse that seemed to still be standing. I headed toward it as fast as I could, hoping there would be somewhere in there I could hide until the buzzy things gave up and went home. I wanted to go home too. I missed my mom. And Netflix. And Youtube. and the Playstation, but mostly mom. The city full of dead people had been cool at first, but I didn't think we'd have to live there forever. Everything was broken and falling over and smelly, and so was this farmhouse.

  The door was open, which was good. It was also hanging on by one hinge, which wasn't. I didn't think the buzzy things could open doors, so if I could find one to hide behind I might be okay. If there was nowhere in the house I could hide...well, then this would be it. They would come in through all the doors and windows and bite me with their sucker-mouths until I died.

  The house had only one room. It had a dirt floor, a little brick fireplace that even I couldn't hide in, a window with no glass and no shutters, and a bed that looked like something had ripped open the mattress and pillows and thrown the stuffing all over. With nowhere else to hide and only a second or two before they caught me, I dove under the bed. I knew it would be the first place any smart person would look, but the buzzy things didn't seem much smarter than the statue guys. Besides, the space under the bed was blocked by smelly stuffing and pieces of blanket that had been ripped apart, so there was some cover. I pulled out the butcher knife that Gramma gave me to protect myself. She had shown me how to wrap it up in rags and tie it to a loop in my jeans. If the buzzy things followed me under the bed, I wasn't going to to give them an easy time.

  The buzzing things flew in and seemed to fill the room. They flew in and out, and I still couldn't tell how many there were. I slowly pushed myself back until I was tucked into the corner of the room. That way, they wouldn't be able to sneak up on me or surround me.

  They found me soon enough. I saw one of them bend down to look at me, and it just stared at me for a second with its ugly little green eyes. Then it made a hissing sound, and in a second three more were on the floor, looking at me and sticking out their hose-mouths at me. They wanted to come in and suck all the juice out of me, but they saw the knife, so they were being careful. They started spacing themselves out, looking for an opening in my defenses, but I waved the knife back forth to show that there weren't any. I hoped that they would give up and fly away. Instead, they decided to wait me out.

  I lay there for hours. They didn't give up. I had to keep wiping my eyes on my sleeve to keep my eyes clear. If I dropped my guard for a second, I knew they would take advantage. I hoped that Gramma or Kamakros would come and rescue me, even Kyle would have been better than nobody. I started to think that maybe they were waiting at the big pile of rubble for me to come back. They might have followed me all the way to the quarry, but from there they would have no idea where I went.

  This didn't feel like an adventure. I just felt tired and scared.

  After a while, the buzzers stopped trying to scare me with their little mouths, and started sitting on the ground instead. I thought they were probly waiting for me to go to sleep, so they could get the knife away from me and suck me dry without getting stabbed. I really wondered now how smart they actually were. Thank goodness the bed was too big and heavy for them. I was so tired that I might have gone to sleep, if I hadn't been so hungry. The light from the open window was starting to fade.

  I felt something in the distance. It was funny because I had never felt anything that wasn't touching me before. It was very big, and warm. I wanted to shut my eyes, but I knew the buzzers would kill me if I did, so I just tried to concentrate on the feeling. When I did, other feelings began to open up. It wasn't just big and warm. It was tired, just like I was. It was full, and I was hungry. It was frightened, because I was frightened, and it was feeling what I was feeling. It had never felt anything that wasn't touching it either. It was curious, and I felt curious because of it. I showed it where I was, under the bed. I showed it the buzzers staring at me, and I knew that it could see them now, because I was seeing them. It could smell them, and now I could too. They smelled terrible, like something rotten.

  I tried to ask it what it was, but I couldn't. A question was made of words, and it didn't have words, and it didn't need them. It had feelings, and sights, and smells. Especially smells. It inhaled through it's nostrils, and I could smell everything around it, the grass, the dirt under the grass, the buzzers, even me. I didn't smell good either. I decided I should probably brush my teeth.

  I looked through its eyes. The sun was setting behind the trees. There weren't any buzzers outside, there were just the four of them in here. They were still watching me, waiting patiently. I showed it how much I hated them, how vicious and cruel they were. I wanted them to die, and now it wanted them to die, too. It was walking toward the door on its big, soft feet, and I couldn't hear it coming, not with my ears. It could hear everything, even itself. It wanted to growl, but I concentrated on the idea of quiet, and I felt it understand. I sent it the idea of stillness, and it understood that too. I began banging the knife against the wooden bed above me, making noise like I had with the dogs and the statues. The buzzers stopped lounging and looked very intently at me. I made noise while it walking quietly through the door, but I knew better than to look at it. I kept moving around and making noise and I felt its big muscles tense, preparing itself to leap.

  It actually scared me when it pounced, even though I had set it up for the perfect attack. I tasted the nasty rotten flesh of those buzzers, felt their little bones crunch between powerful jaws. One tried to fly away, and a swat from one huge paw shattered its bones like glass. One was simply pinned under a paw, and it tried to bite, but its teeth were too small, and it couldn't get through the fur before being crushed.

  I crept out from under the bed and stared in awe at my rescuer. She (I could see now that she was a she) was about six feet long and four feet high, and there wasn't an inch of her that wasn't bulging with huge muscles. She had bright golden eyes and thick, brown fur with dark streaks running through it in a kind of pattern. She was definitely a cat, although I couldn't tell what kind. I sent the idea of happiness and gratitude to her, and she licked my face, which hurt a little. Her tongue was like sandpaper. She stopped when she felt the pain coming from me. I asked what her name was, but she could not understand the question. She had a scent, not a name. I decided to give a name. I told her her name was Cheeseburger. She didn't really understand, but then I thought of the taste of a cheeseburger and sent that to her. She liked that, but was disappointed when I told her I didn't know where to get one.

  I tried to send her images of my family and friends, and our home back in Vermont. She didn't seem to to understand what she was seeing, but she was interested and wanted to see more. We spent most of the night lounging on the bed, trading images and feelings back and forth, like a very personal version of texting. She showed me images of all the forest land around us, her favorite places to hunt deer and rabbits, the scary creatures that she avoided, her whole life. She showed me how she had found this house abandoned, and had made herself at home here. She told me that she would take me hunting, and help me get some meat.

  I was not actually surprised that I could communicate with her. When I had opened my character sheet in the Temple of Initiation, my goal had been to learn how to talk to animals. I asked the system query box how I could, and it had told me to open the Gate of Destiny, then to select Animism as my Magical Axiom, and then Beast Mastery as my Magical Art. I couldn't exactly talk to Cheeseburger, but feeling and seeing everything she thought and felt was actually better. I found that she liked being scratched behind her left ear. It was too dark to go back now, so I curled up with Cheeseburger and waited for morning.