The second that they entered the dungeon, however, Guin’s [Fear of the Depths] trait kicked in.

“Shit,” she muttered. “Hold on...”

“What’s wrong?” Ibraxis asked.

“Trait stuff, just give me a sec,” she told him, looking at her stat sheet with the 5% reduction across the board. Clicking her tongue, she looked up and went, “Liorax—Liorax?” She pat her head, but the cat spirit was missing. Confused, she looked at her status bar, but as she saw no buff or debuff from him, she spun around looking. “Liorax?”

Ibraxis was also looking back, his long serpentine tail flicking back and forth in an irritated manner. “What on Mother Mountain...?” he trailed off.

With green eyes glowing, the blue-grey cat was floating in the air, his tail puffed and stiff. “Something is here,” Liorax said slowly.

“Lots of things are here,” Guin told him, approaching him cautiously.

“I do not speak simply of the living or the dead, Che-child,” Liorax said with whiskers twitching. “Among the dust and among the bone, there is something here that does not belong. A powerful scent. A familiar scent. A scent, my human, very much like your own. The Che have overstepped their bounds; rampant runs the River of the Veil from a rift torn open by what can only be Corruption.”

“Corruption?” Ibraxis asked with a look of concern. “Here?”

There was a slight chill in the air as Guin exchanged a glance with Ibraxis. “What does that mean?”

Liorax looked oddly contemplative as he floated in the air. “Investigation is necessary to know,” he said. “Or not. The choice of discovery, half-Che, is yours; but know that the longer you stay here, the longer that you remain in the presence of this power, the more it shall become a part of you. For better, or for worse.”

<<>>

[The Lost Spirit (Fate Quest)]

This quest is optional. It can be skipped. (Difficulty: C)>>

<<>>

Guin looked over the quest that Liorax offered her with a great deal more apprehension than she thought she would have.

“I have not heard of any corruption in this area,” Ibraxis said, crossing his thick, lean arms. “Is it some kind of event? A quest?”

Inhaling through her teeth, Guin nodded. “Probably. My tutorial quest chain—which is where I got Liorax in the first place—was very focused on Corruption and my character background choices,” she explained, looking into the bright, wide eyes of the harbinger. “He’s giving me a quest for it now, but I’ve never seen Liorax act like this...”

“Do you accept, Candidate?” Liorax urged her, his voice strained.

“I’ll....,” she hesitated. Fate quests were a good deal more dangerous than most quests, and she already had one that was bound to make her miserable. But maybe it’s connected, she thought, or maybe it has something to do with the fox spirits... Maybe Gomi...

Guin had questions—many questions—for the fox spirit she knew as Gomi. The gumiho. Her kin. Amikavi, the great nine-tailed fox spirit had told, her that Gomi was the father of ‘Guin’, as well as the father of Tik-Tak, her good friend in the tutorial who had lost his life while she had been trying to defeat the Corruption of the forest in which they lived.

Memories of White Fox Forest rushed through her head, the brief time she had spent with Tik-Tak and his mother, Reili, Liorax, and the others. There was the Great Owl Wise, who had helped guide her, the Dragon King of the Mist Moon Mountains, who aided her, and Amikavi, who told her of her heritage, furthering a character quest line that she could only continue at level ten. There were also Pastor Jormund and Master Hunter Euen Dawl, who mentored her and found new roles of their own in saving their forest.

But Gomi himself never came.

Brushing her hand through the soft fur of the small fox that made the shoulder of her cloak—the cloak that Reili and Tik-Tak had left her after their bodies had been burned, purified of the Corruption that ate at them. Tik-Tak loved his father.

“I’ll do it,” she decided, looking straight at Liorax. “I’ll investigate. I’ll find out what they have sealed away in here.”

Liorax closed his eyes. “Truth,” he started. “Truth is a dangerous thing.” The cat’s eyes opened up and shifted to Ibraxis. His expression turning bright and bemused once again, he said, “In the end, truth is the only thing that matters, is it not?”

Ibraxis’s body went rigid, a low growl coming from deep within his chest. The air in the hall seemed to grow colder as Guin watched.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Oh!” she went, suddenly clapping her hands together. “Liorax! I wanted to know if you could do anything to offset my [Fear of the Depths] trait.”

With her abrupt change of subject, the tension between them mercifully dissipated. Breathing an internal sigh of relief, she watched the muscles in Ibraxis body loosen as he did a little shake, the feathers on his body rising and falling a few times.

Liorex, also turned his attention back to Guin and floated over, blinking his eyes with affection. “Ahh,” he went, circling around her head. “I suppose I can do a little something. Yes... I cannot remove it all, but let us see...” With that, he disappeared into a flash of light. When Guin checked the buff he had given her, he was able to cut the stat reduction by 2% for each, but there was still a hefty deduction. Her choice to join the party had been a good one.

As if on cue, a screen popped up with the displeased face of Athariel. “Where the hell are you guys?” she asked. “The mice we went through have already started respawning....”

“Sorry!” Guin apologized. “I had to set something up and it took longer than I thought. I held Ibraxis up too... You guys made it through okay?”

“Yeah,” Ath said. “The mice aren’t much to worry about with us three. Do we need to come back for you guys?”

Looking down the hall, Guin asked, “It’s just mice?”

“Yeah. Hordes of them, but yeah.”

“Should be fine,” Guin told her with a shrug. “Mice are easy prey, and I have the healer, so...” She trailed off as she looked Ibraxis over. It dawned on her that not only had she forgotten that she—or rather, ‘Dassah’—should have been afraid of him, but that it hadn’t even registered with her that he was garuli at all. It’s like a video game race, her bemused inner voice said. Just like elves and dwarves and lizardmen. The garuli were kind of like lizardmen, weren’t they? Lizardmen in a video game. The image of a pixelated komodo dragon on its hind legs danced across her imagination. Li-zard, li-zard, li-zard. Clasping her mouth with her hand, she stifled a laugh.

Ibraxis looked at her with great curiosity, tilting his head with a raised brow.

“Guin?” Athariel’s voice called her back.

“S-Sorry,” Guin coughed. “You can probably keep going; I’m sure we’ll catch up. If we have a problem, we’ll contact you.”

“Ibraxis?” Ath asked.

The garule shrugged. “I am sure it will be fine,” he said. “I can usually solo the start of this dungeon without much issue, so it is no feathers off my tail.”

Ears perking up at his words, Guin leaned over to check his tail for said feathers. Sure enough, though his tail was longer and more snakelike, similar to Bahena’s there was evidence of a feathered tip, hidden, mostly, underneath some patterned cloth.

When she looked back up, Ibraxis was staring at her with an odd expression, causing her to blush and give a half-hearted chuckle.

“Do I make you nervous?” Ibraxis asked her with a bemused voice. “If you are honest, I promise I will not think anything of it. Unless you get us killed because of it. Then I will judge you,” he said, starting to walk down the hall. Figuring that she had missed Ath’s sign-out, she followed.

“Does it happen to you often?” she asked him. “People getting nervous around you?”

Scratching the feathers on the back of his neck, he said, “Fairly. I guess I have come to expect it at this point. Even among my own kind, I am considered a bit of a circus creature.”

“‘C-Circus creature’?” she blinked.

“Mhmm,” he went, then grinned and leaned over to her. “But since you don’t seem to know why, it makes things rather simpler between us, does it not? This world is such a magical creation.”

“I guess so...?”

As they walked, their conversation became more natural. They discussed their tactics and abilities amiably enough that Guin felt she could trust him, at least for combat’s sake.

It didn’t take long for the mice to appear. Ibraxis noticed them first, stopping her as he flicked his tongue out.

Guin cast [Spirit Shield] and shifted into her fox form. With the level gain for her [Fox Form] ability came a sharp improvement to her senses. The air was musty, but traces of incense were carried through, along with the smell of warmth and damn fur.

Like a lion stalking its prey, Ibraxis moved forward. His steps were silent, and he moved with power and precision that the beads and bones that covered him barely moved.

Moving alongside him—with much less grace, she was ashamed to admit—Guin’s ears twitched with the sounds of the crypt. Hollow sounds. Bright sounds. Chains clanking. Water dripping. Fire burning.

Small squeaks. The skittering of tiny claws against stone. Her sharp eyes fell upon them: writhing, black and brown bodies emerging, their eyes bright as they reflected the light of the torches lining the walls.

Exchanging a quick glance with Ibraxis, she shot off. Paws hitting the stone floor of the hall at a swift pace, the intense glee at the thought of ripping into their soft, crunchy bodies filled her with a thrill that was hard for her to grasp. She had the mind to blame Liorax’s haunting, but she relished the rush of the hunt.

And they stood no match for her as she dove into the horde, her [Fox Form] proving its worth as her heightened reflexes made the match terribly one-sided, even with the vast majority the mice possessed. Any who managed to escape her wrath were quickly met by Ibraxis’s claws.

Licking the blood off her muzzle, her tongue tingled with the familiar warm, metallic aftertaste of it as she watched the remains turn into bubbles and treasure boxes. She and Ibraxis split the loot, then moved on wordlessly.

Two more batches of mice later, the winding hall led to a large, square-shaped chamber with a high ceiling. Guin shifted back into human form.

Each wall of the chamber had a door, and each door had its own image.

On the right was a door with a red flower.

On the left was a door gilded in gold.

Going straight was a door made of bones.

“What do we do now?” she wondered aloud. “Just how far ahead could they have gotten?”

“They should not have gotten too far,” Ibraxis muttered, licking at the air again. She saw him pull up his map. “All evidence suggests they went that way,” he said, pointing in the direction of the door of bones. “The spawn rates down here are pretty fast since it is a starting zone; they may be moving at the same rate as we are.”

‘Follow the Bones.’ That was what the High Priest had told her. Guin pulled up her notepad and made a quick map and sketch of the area.

“Should we ask?” Guin asked.

Ibraxis shrugged. “Only if you want.”

Scrunching her nose, her eyes leveled with the door of bones. “Let’s just go. If we really run into trouble, then we can ask.”

The white garule nodded, and together, they pushed open the door of bones.