Briar had further decimated the beds in the room, and her little fortress was much more stable for it now. She wasn’t sure if those people from earlier would be sleeping in here tonight or not, seeing as how she had ruined the beds, but in case they were, she had expanded the fortress to make room for three more people.

She had finished her upgrades not that long after her questioning, and she had nothing left to do anymore. As she lay there, wondering what to do, she remembered that she had grabbed something from the dude she had killed. She didn’t know what it was, and she didn’t know what happened to it, seeing as she didn’t wake up with anything with her.

She tried to think about it. She had clearly gotten something from eating the dude’s brain, as evidenced by her new understanding of the language, and her urge to make stuff, but she didn’t know if that meant she had also gained his memories.

She tried and tried to think about what it was she had grabbed, but nothing came to mind. Her stomach rumbled. Not that surprising, as she hadn’t eaten for the entire day. Wait, she had. But it hadn’t been that filling. Still puzzling over what she had taken from the dude, she reached a hand out and pulled some beef jerky from the air.

She took a bite from it as she thought about it a bit more. Her mind was still drawing a blank on what she had gotten. Oh well. She finished eating the jerky before pulling a pencil from the air as well. With her mind back on the blacksmith, she wanted to design a weapon.

She approached the wall, and started to think, gnawing on the end of the pencil as she did so. It was a habit she had gained when in college, and many of her pencils were ruined because of it. She wound up having to switch to mechanical pencils after one shattered in her mouth.

Her mind drifted to a show she had seen once, and she remembered how one of the characters had a pair of daggers that could be locked together, and used as other weapons. That’d be nice. She pulled the pencil out of her mouth and started to sketch on the wall.

It was as she was debating on the locking mechanism when the pencil shattered. She had started chewing on it again, and bit down with a tad too much force. She was wrenched back to reality as a few splinters stabbed into her cheek. With a startled yelp, she tossed the pencil across the room.

As she sat there, staring at where she had tossed the pencil, her mind finally noticed the oddity of that. Where had she gotten a pencil from? And, before that, hadn’t she just gotten some jerky from nowhere too? What was up with that?

Is…is that what she had grabbed? Had she grabbed the dude’s spatial storage? How had she managed that? What was even in it? Obviously some food and a pencil. But what else? Now that she knew what to look for, she noticed it quite easily. She started searching through it, and everytime she stumbled upon something new, a little part of her mind filled in the blanks.

That is, until she found an ingot that was a bright turquoise, with speckles of crimson spattered throughout it. It looked pretty. All she could figure out about it was that it was something called thytriam. It was so pretty. She decided. This was what she’d make her weapon out of. She just needed a way to make the weapon. And to figure out what the heck thytriam was.

But, again, she was getting ahead of herself. She still had to design her weapon. She had long since forgotten about all the stuff in her new spatial storage. She wanted to create stuff. With her mind focused again, she pulled out another pencil.

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The sun had long since set before anybody came back into the room. It was the women from the group that had found her; Thea and the other two. Thea reached out and flicked a switch, filling the room with a bright light. Briar cried out.

Her eyes had long since adjusted to the darkness, and she could see just as clearly in the dark as she could in the light. Not that she had noticed. She was too focused. The pencil slipped from her grasp and hit the floor as she covered her eyes and fell to her knees.

“Oh shit, sorry Briar. I didn’t think you’d…still…be…” Thea paused mid sentence, as all three of them took in what Briar had done to the place. Her pillow fort was, naturally, bigger, the beds being no more than the faintest of memories at this point. In a corner was a small pile of shattered pencils, each with bite marks surrounding the shattered part. And covering the walls were drawings. Lots, and lots, of drawings.

At first, Briar had been sketching designs for her future weapon, but she had quickly gotten distracted. She had started drawing different weapons as well, such as a longsword, a bow, a crossbow, etc. She had then started to draw people wielding the weapons, and then monsters for them to fight against.

She had been in the process of drawing the background for each battle when they came in. Her doodles had stretched from the original wall to the other three walls. On the bright side, she had finished her design sketch for her weapon and erased them, so she had more room for drawing an army marching against a dragon.

“Uh, Briar, what happened?” Thea was the first to speak, though she was still looking at the walls instead of at Briar.

“I got bored.” Briar was still struggling to see, but she had uncovered her eyes, and was blinking rapidly. She turned to look at Thea, and only then noticed the other two people in the room. “Who are they?”

“Oh, right. Names. So, this person,” she gestured to the brunette, “is Yval. She’s a mage. And this person,” she swung her hand to point to the blond, “is Ciella. She’s our healer.” Yval was looking between the remains of the beds and Briar’s pillow fort, a touch of both joy and dread on her face.

“Now, Briar. We need to talk.” Uh oh. That was never a good sign of anything. Thea approached her, and crouched down in front of her. “The guild master wants us to take you back out to the forest with us on our jobs. We don’t particularly want to, but it’s not up to us.” She stopped for a moment, struggling with her words. “Now, we can’t just not take you, so we’ve decided to take on the easier jobs for a while, but I still want to hear your thoughts on the matter.”

Briar thought about it for a moment. Going out and hunting animals. The hunt. The thrill. The blood. The fun. Almost instinctively, she squashed that last thought. That last thought had been human.

She had always struggled with thoughts like that. Of course, she had been raised to ignore it. And then she had matured, and learned that laws were a thing. She wouldn’t break laws just for a bit of fun. She had more common sense than that.

So, over time, she had started to push those thoughts away. She knew they weren’t normal, and she wouldn’t gain anything from listening to it. Stop thinking about how to murder your neighbor. Don’t try and invent new torture methods. Ignore how much pain that knife would inflict. Don’t be yourself.

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She was about to respond, and say that she didn’t want to do it, when a stray thought crossed her mind. She was being asked if she wanted to hunt. She was going to be allowed to hunt. A grin started to form, but she quickly hid it.

But, a child expressing interest in hunting isn’t normal. So she can’t say she wants to. But she doesn’t not want to. Indifferent response? Hmm, that’ll be tough. Wait, she could go for acceptance. Acceptance works too.

“Okay.” She grinned up at Thea. Nailed it.

“Just…okay?” Thea frowned. Not that ‘upset’ frown, but more of that ‘I don’t get you’ frown. Fuck. Her face was asking for an explanation. She wasn’t supposed to question it. She was just supposed to accept it. A small little bubble of anger surfaced, but, again, she hid it.

Okay, how does she get out of this? Deflect? Nah, too obvious. Lie? It could work, but what would the lie be? The truth? No. This is one of the scenarios that the truth would be worse. Lie it is. But, a bit of the truth mixed in, to make it believable.

“It’s where I come from.” Technically. “And I’m used to hunting.” Also technically. Thea stared at her for a moment, thinking, before shrugging.

“Whatever you say kiddo.” She stared a bit more. “Alright, either way, you need clothes. Can’t have you walking around with nothing on under that bathrobe. Besides, I’m pretty sure Yval will want it back. We can do that tomorrow, before we head out. Shouldn’t take too long.”

“So, I hate to intrude on this lovely conversation you two seem to be having, but where exactly are we supposed to sleep?” Ciella was facing the wall, tracing her fingers along all of Briar’s doodles, not even turning around to ask. For some reason, a swell of excitement flooded through Briar at the question.

She quickly stood, bolted over to Ciella, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her towards the pillow fort. She let go of Ciella, and crawled into her little fortress. When she didn’t follow, Briar poked her head out and looked up.

“C’mon. You can choose which bed you want first. After me, of course.” She waited until Ciella had gotten down on all fours, before she ducked back into the fortress. Ciella crawled behind her, before they reached the inside of the fortress.

There was no spatial warping to make it bigger on the inside than it was on the outside, so it wasn’t actually all that big. There was enough room for four people to sleep, side by side, enough room for people to crouch comfortably, and not much else.

Though, noticeably, one of the pads was distinctly fluffier than the others. That was the one Briar had made a beeline for. She crawled on top of it, spun around twice, and then lay down facing Ciella.

Ciella was looking at everything with surprise etched on her face. It…was actually the first time Briar had seen emotion on her face. She was good at hiding it. Huh. They’d get along great.

She noticed Briar looking, and quickly schooled her face back to its impassive nature. She glanced at the pads. Questioning if they’d be comfortable or not. Apprehension. She wasn’t moving.

“Don’t worry, they’re comfy.” Disbelief. Not strong though. “Try them out.” Ciella slowly made her way over to the bed on Briar’s left, and lowered herself down. Her body relaxed, ever so slightly. “Told you.” She glanced over at Briar for a moment. Questioning. Not curiosity, or confusion. Easy to mix those up.

“You’re too obvious. You try to act like a blank slate, but that’ll never work. You need to hide behind emotions you aren’t feeling. They hide what you’re actually feeling. Being blank just makes them obvious.” Confusion. Curiosity. Oh, there they are. And…a bit of apprehension. Oh well. Briar mentally shrugged, and snuggled further into her bed of fluff.

She could deal with this tomorrow.

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Briar woke up feeling warm. Not uncomfortably warm, but a comfy warmth. Opening her eyes, she saw she was snuggled up next to Thea. Weird. She hated physical contact. Why would she move closer to a person?

Eh, her skin wasn’t crawling with uncomfortableness yet. She snuggled closer, and drifted off. She woke up intermittently every few minutes. One of the things she hated. No matter how much she loved sleep, or how tired she was, once she woke up, she would struggle to get back to sleep.

Eventually, she just couldn’t drift off again. She was beginning to get uncomfortable, and she wasn’t sure if it was because her touch aversion was finally kicking in, or because she had to pee. If she had to guess, it was a bit of both.

She wormed her way out of Thea’s embrace, and crawled out of her fortress. She padded over to the door, opening it and strolling out. There wasn’t a bathroom in the room, so she’d have to try and find it. Honestly, why wasn’t there a bathroom in the room?

She wandered, not seeing anything that looked like a bathroom for a while. She eventually reached a set of stairs going down, which, upon doing just that, led into an eating area. There weren’t many people around, and those that were mostly looked dead tired. It made sense, seeing as how the sun was just barely rising.

But, that one dude that looked so happy? He scared her. Nobody in their right mind would be happy getting up at this ungodly hour. She avoided making eye contact as she looked around. Still no sign of a bathroom. That door led outside; it was where she had been brought in the first time. That only leaves the hallway behind the desk.

Nobody paid her any attention, which she was thankful for. She still had nothing on under the bathrobe, that she was still wearing, and it was beginning to get to her. A small part of her was happy that they were going clothes shopping today, but the part that was dreading it was still in the majority.

She had looked into quite a few rooms before she found a bathroom. This time, the bathroom was in the bedroom. Why was there a bathroom in this bedroom, but not the one she had been in?

She quickly scampered into the bathroom, and relieved herself. Toilets and toilet paper, thankfully, existed here. That had been one of her biggest fears. Though going to the bathroom with a tail posed a problem, she managed.

It was after she left that she finally got a good look at the room. The room was filled with various decorations: paintings, pictures, a few taxidermied creatures, and a few quilts, to name a few.

Hell, there was even a picture of what looked like a dragon, a sword embedded in its skull. That same sword was mounted on the wall across the room, still in pristine condition. Just a glance showed that it was an incredible weapon. There was even an almost palpable feeling of energy coming from it.

She was reaching up to grab it when someone cleared their throat behind her. She spun around, surprised. Standing in the doorway was the old man who had questioned her. Finn, she believed was his name.

“I wouldn’t touch that if I were you. The amount of pure mana in that would rip anyone to shreds if they aren’t prepared. One of the downsides of using pure thytriam to forge a weapon.” Wait, that’s thytriam? She turned back to the sword, and noticed that it was the same turquoise as the ingots she had pulled out earlier. The only difference being that it didn’t have any of the crimson specks in it. Did the crimson make it impure? She needed to know more.

Turning back around, she made a face of confusion. Not too exaggerated, but still noticeable. Seeing her expression, Finn chuckled a bit.

“Thytriam is the rarest metal in the world, even more rare than orichulum. Some people say it’s so rare because it’s not actually a metal, and is instead mana, pure mana, that has taken solid shape. There have been attempts to create more, but they’ve all met with failure.

“This right here is probably the most thytriam in one place in the entire world. It would have bankrupted a country, if said country hadn’t just collapsed.” The hint of a smile flitted across his face. Was…was he the cause of the country’s collapse? That’s what he made it sound like. How strong was this dude?

The silence stretched on for a few more moments, before he seemed to come back to himself. “Well, I suppose you should be getting back to the gang. Last I saw, they were panicking when they couldn’t find you. Afraid you had run off again, I presume.” He chuckled. “I’ll walk you back.”

She nodded, thankful. She hadn’t been paying that much attention to the path she took to get here. She left the room first, but stopped when Finn didn’t take the lead. She glanced back, and Finna was standing in the doorway, looking back in the room with the barest trace of sorrow on his face.

He shook it off, and finished closing the door, before turning to her. “That’s the wrong way. The lobby is this way.” He strolled off, walking away from her, and she followed.