I wake up in the morning and see that-

“Suu…”

-Shiona is still sleeping soundly…

I squeeze my head out of her wings and see that it’s still barely the break of dawn and yet I’m awake and feeling better than I’ve ever done in a morning before.

‘Forget feeling like I have a hangover, if this was caused by me using up my energy yesterday then I need to continue doing that from now on.’

I get my whole body out of the bed without waking up Shiona and take out the monster manual about the chimeras from the book which was laying on the floor.

‘Let’s see, wonder what’s actually different between lesser and greater pla- chimeras?’

I look at the table of contents of the manual.

‘Introduction sounds about right, now then…’

I flip the pages to where the introduction is.

‘ ‘Owning a pet monster can be tough and intimidating, that’s why this book was cre-’ blah blah blah, let’s see… this looks like the right part; ‘...Lesser chimeras will stay the way they’re born until they die while greater chimeras will grow into a form more suitable for battle, that’s why lesser chimeras are recommended if you’re looking for a pet, but make sure it’s female so it doesn’t have any poison…’ Well if this is a greater chimera like the shopkeeper said then that means it will grow up? But I can’t really imagine a platypus as a combat creature regardless of how big it is…’

I turn the pages back to the table of contents and quickly scour for anything that looks to be of immediate importance.

‘Uhm, ‘hatching’, ‘upbringing and growth’... these seem to be the most important…’

*flip flip*

‘ ‘A lesser chimera egg can be identified by their yellow leathery surface’, I guess that means it was pretty easy for the shopkeeper to tell it wasn’t a lesser chimera, ‘lesser chimera eggs can take about ten days to hatch after being laid. Greater chimera eggs are shaped more like traditional bird eggs and have the same colour, these can take up to a month to hatch from being laid by their mother.’ ‘

I hold up the egg and look at it.

‘But how do i know how long it’s been since this guy was laid then? I guess I’ll just have to hope it was about a month ago.’

I look down at the book again and flip the pages.

‘ ’A lesser-’ Let’s just skip the lesser chimera… ‘A greater chimera will look exactly the same as it’s lesser variety once it’s hatched but will soon grow and change in appearance, this process takes varying amounts of time depending on how well it was raised and fed.’ ‘

And apparently that was it, there weren’t any pictures of them or anything which made me feel like the book was a bit of a ripp-off.

‘Lizz?’

‘...’

*sigh*

‘... Cy?’

<... Yes...?>

‘How good are you at taking care of eggs?’

<... I’m adequate…>

‘Then could I ask you to take care of one for me?’

‘Okay?’

*sigh* ‘Fine. I’ll put the egg in the books inventory, please take care of it.’

And like I had told Cy I put the greater chimera egg inside the pouch and hear Cy confirm that she has gotten it.

*yawn*

“Good morn-”

With a big racket I’m interrupted when I try to greet Shiona as she starts struggling in the covers to get out as fast as possible, in the end she lays on the floor rolled up in the blankets.

“Are you okay!?”

“How are you up before me!?”

We talk for a bit before we hear a knock and a voice telling us breakfast will soon be ready.

Shiona puts on her clothes while I put the book on my back and we go down to the ground floor, greet the others and finish breakfast, we then join Cathy, Hugh and the pickits as we walk to the guild.

“By the way Charlie, how’ve things been going for you three since you came back?”

“It’s been going well, we’ve even done a few silver subjugation quests, though we’re not the best at foraging or deliveries I think we’ll do fine with just focusing on monsters.”

We then talk abit about what we had been doing since after we split up until we arrive at the guild.

Hugh is about to go up to his office when Shiona asks him a question.

“Hugh, any idea how long it’s going to take until your acquaintance finishes the light wand?”

“Can’t be more than a few days.”

He then hurries up the stairs not wanting to be interrupted again.

“By the way.” Starts Cathy. “Mind me asking what you two are planning on doing today? I thought you were doing the initiation quests?”

“There’s no point in not taking a few extra quests as well right?” Answers Shiona.

“I suppose, normally it would be but since you have someone who’s already joined I guess it’s fine. I’m on booth duty so just shout if you need me.”

We nod to her and she walks into the back room while we go to the quest boards and start perusing it.

“Do you have any plans on what quests you want to do?” Asks Shiona.

“Well I was thinking once with monsters we haven’t fought yet, wouldn’t be fun if we get attacked by something we’ve no idea how to handle in the future.”

Shiona picks me up and holds me in front of the subjugation board.

“Let’s see, for ones I haven’t fought it would be kobolds- wait hang on- what are you-”

Suddenly Grizz had walked up and stood between us and the quest board, not letting us see anything.

“Calm down, I’m just adding some new quests now that winter is coming.”

For some reason Shiona chuckles when he says that and he soon finishes and walk back upstairs.

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I look at the quest board and see that some of the old quests had gone away while some new ones had appeared.

Treants, orcs and goblins had disappeared while various kinds of undead had appeared in their place.

“Spirits, shades, ghosts, haunts… What’s the difference? And ghouls and zombies? Witch trees? And three of them are silver quests!? And the proof of subjugation, three grade one charges for spirits? Three grade two for shades, grade three for ghosts, what the hell is this?”

Both shades, ghosts and haunts had silver scribbles in the corners of their quest notes and since neither of us two really knew how to react to all of these new monster we went to the booth and asked Cathy.

“Hey Cathy, how come there’s so many undead quests, and what’s up with the proof of subjugations? And… What is… That?”

On the desk in front of Cathy there was a machine.

“This? I can explain that in a bit, but regarding all the undead:” *cough* “You should understand that this city got its name from being near the Eastern lake right? Well in hat lake there’s a large island. With me so far?”

We both answer yes.

“Well that island has been home to a lot of bloody battles in the past, way too many to recount, and every winter a large number of them come back as spirits and possess things, if they possess human corpses they become zombies, if they possess a non-human corpse they become ghouls, if they’re strong enough to materialize without possessing anything they can become either ghosts, haunts or shades, and finally if they possess a dead tree they become a witch tree.”

She looks at us and the continues.

“We don’t know why they stay at the island, maybe they don’t like water or something, but they stay there until it becomes warmer during late spring and  they leave whatever they possessed. As for the proofs of subjugation, that has to do with this machine and these things.”

She motions to the machine which I had asked about earlier and picks up two glass spheres, on was clear while the other looked foggy, as for the machine it looked almost just like an old dial up telephone, it had the detachable {-shaped phone and dial and everything, though the dial had much more numbers than just zero through nine and there were two of them.

“Since spirits, haunts, ghosts and shades don’t have any real physical body they’re really annoying to deal with, physical attacks pass right through them and so does most magic, and even if you had a way to attack them and defeat them they don’t actually leave anything behind. That’s where these spheres come in, while an apparition is disappearing you can hold this thing inside of it and a part of its power will be absorbed, then we use this machine to transfer the apparitions power into a sphere of our own like this:”

She takes up the phone and puts it back on upside down, she then puts the foggy sphere where the microphone would’ve been and the clear one where the speaker would have.

When she out on the foggy orb the dials started moving on their own, one of them moved to the number one while the other moved to the number fourteen, the one that said fourteen then slowly goes down as the foggy orb becomes more and more clear while the see through one becomes dimmer and dimmer, when the dial finally hits zero so does the one that said one.

“This way you can have your sphere back and continue hunting while we can keep track of these, also these charges can be used to enchant objects which is why they’re very valuable, even the ones only at grade one.”

Shiona then voiced a question:

“Is there any way of telling if you have something that can touch the apparitions?”

“If only.” Answers Cathy. “I heard the capitals branch of the guild has some magic artifact that can summon temporary apparitions that you can test stuff on, but they only have one of them so there’s no way they’d send it here.”

Cathy sighs and we starts walking away while hearing her grumble and complain about how the capital doesn’t even have any undead or any reason to keep the artifact there.

“Say Shiona, if we have the time after we get the oily oranges and do the deliveries, could we take a look at the ghosts?”

“Sure, but won’t we need one of those glass balls? Maybe Rupert has them.”

We walk into Rupe’s shop, the bell on his door giving of a sound as we do so.

“Hey little guy.”

“Hey Rupe, we were wondering if you had any of those glass balls that you need to hunt apparitions.”

“Sure I do, just a moment-”

He then crouches down below the desk he was next to and we hear the creaking sound of wood and metal hinges, a few minutes he comes up with what we asked about.

“These en-gems are pretty expensive so excuse that, three gold please.”

I hand him the money and take the so called en-gem.

We then depart from the guild and decide we might as well do the deliveries first.

“It shouldn’t take long, I can fly you know?”

Saying that she took the off into the sky while saying we’ll meet up at the city exit so I start walking that way.

While sitting against the city wall and waiting for Shiona to finish I look around at the pedestrians, every so often seeing carriages come through the gates and going into the town.

Most of the wagons looked normal, simple wooden wagons with leather covers, most likely merchants from all the boxes which could be seen inside, but on the other hand there were a few gaudy carriages with large crests on their sides, three of which I recognised, two of them were from the two noble houses I’d done deliveries to before, the other though…

‘!’

The other was a large rusted metal carriage drawn by metal horses, undoubtedly elven, however I was made to scratch the back of my head when I saw that the carriage was completely identical to the one we’d ridden, except it wasn’t covered in large spikes.

I walk up to the carriage and try to look in from the front to see if it was indeed Fallis & Co, however what had been see through from the inside looked completely like normal metal from the outside.

So throwing caution to the wind I walk up behind the carriage, harden my claws and knock where I knew the door would open.

*knock knock*

However the carriage doesn’t open so I devise another plan.

“I have pizza!”

The carriage immediately stops, opens up the door and a ghostly white arms stretches out and pulls me inside.

“Plush?” I hear Fallis’s voice asking.

“Hello Fallis. Could you let go please?”

Fallis who was still holding me at that point then puts me down on the floor.

“Think we could stay somewhere near the gate? I’m supposed to meet up with Shiona there.”

“Sure, Shro, turn around as soon as you can.”

“Alright.” Answers Shro from the driver’s seat.

“Hey, where’s Rosh? And who’s that?” I asked when I saw that the third member of the crew was missing his only defining feature, his large white afro haircut.

“As much as I hate to say this.” Responds the new elf. “My son in law-”

Suddenly the elf stops talking and looks like he’s about to throw up.

“I’m sorry, I just can’t call him that. Rosh is home taking care of my daughter. I am Kosei, the chief of our village.”

As the new elf, Kosei, turns around I see that he looks just as thin, pale, malnourished and sickly as all the other elves, like someone who's been sitting inside for years doing nothing but play video games or build figurines.

“Hello Kosei, I’m Plush.” I try reaching out my arm to do a formal greeting however you have to understand the size difference; I am about a third the size of a normal human while they’re one and a half times as tall as the average man.

But it seems my intent still got across as he crouched down and shook my hand, he then Fallis asked:

“So onto business: Pizza?”

“...”

I wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to her.

“Fallis, our business here wasn't this so called pizza, our business is whether Plush here is a trustworthy individual or not.” Reminds Kosei.

“...Yes.” Says Fallis dejectedly

“But then how to do that? We came here to fast so I didn't get enough time to think about this…”

“Sir?” Asks Fallis “Could you not just follow Plush here around for today and then make your decision depending on how he acts?”

“Hmm… That is a good idea Fallis. Sure, let's do that.”

“Excuse me.”

“Yes?”

“I hope you don't take offense but, you elves really don't look like people who could hold their own in a fight, are you sure you'll be fine?”

“Though we elves may not have the physical prowess of some other species we more than make up for it with our machines and enchantments.” Kosei then walks into one of those enchanted doors. “I'll be out in a few minutes.”

While I'm waiting for Kosei to come back out I notice both Shro and Fallis staring at me.

Understanding why they're doing it I take out a few slices of pizza and put it on the table in the middle of the carriage.

They look down at the pizza, then back to me.

“... Your welcome?”

They then quickly grab a slice each and start eating like there’s no tomorrow until Kosei comes back outside, now wearing a very large bulky suit of armor, increasing his height even further to the point where he has to duck even in his own carriage as well as making him girthy enough to rival even Hugh.

“There we are, shall we depart?” Kosei’s voice could be heard from the openings in his helmet.

“Well I’m waiting for someone so it might be a few minutes before we’re ready, feel free to try some pizza in the meant time.”

“Oh. Alright.”

The chest of his armor then opens up to reveal his upper body, his head nowhere near where the helmet actually is and his hands hovering atop two glowing pieces of machinery, again nowhere near the arms of his armor.

He then sits down at the table and joins us in eating pizza.

“Hey, this is actually pretty good.”

A while later we hear some knocking on the carriages outside, Shro opens the door from the driver’s seat and we see Shiona standing coming inside and grabbing herself a slice of pizza, once she finishes a slice she clears her throat, greets Follis and Shro and introduces herself to Kosei.

“I almost didn’t recognise this thing because the spikes are gone.”

“Oh yeah, whatever happened to those?”

“Well we really didn’t think we’d be allowed inside the city with those things on so we used a different carriage, we didn’t really need it either way with Kosei here.”

“By the way, now that Shiona is here are we ready to depart?” Asks Kosei.

“Yup.” Since we’d finished the pizza everyone seemed pleased and we left the carriage and exited the city.