Nothing, aside from the flagship itself, was more intimidating than slowly drifting between over a dozen massive ships while the crew watched diligently without making a sound. Each of the ships was dead quiet, which was odd considering their massive size. Interestingly enough, I figured out that there were no lights on any of the ships at all. It seemed like I had some sort of improved night vision since the red moon didn’t give off enough light to see. On Top of my night vision, my normal vision was also way better which allowed me to clearly see the other bank of the river, which was at least as far away as Serias was wide.

As soon as we closed into the fleet we were inside the active range of whatever illusion magic was being used. From inside, I could see that not a single ship was actually a merchant ship. Each and every one of them were huge warships that were armed to the teeth in cannons and other naval weaponry that I didn’t know the name of.

The tech being used was pretty old compared to the stuff I had seen in the larger galaxy, but the technology here was also infused with magic which made it way stronger. Still, one well armed space cruiser could destroy the entire fleet in seconds without a hassle. Low-level magic could only go so far.

I say low level because I had found out over the two days of preparation before the heist that the average level of a peaceful class-such as [Cook] or [Seamstress]-civilian on this planet was twenty. Fifty with their class evolution was the maximum that most combat classes got to with the peak being closer to seventy. The highest for a normal sapient person was eighty, but that level was kept by the royals and their bloodlines. It supposedly had something to do with family techniques though I wasn’t sure if anything I heard about them was true. Level one hundred was held by the peak predators of the planet such as krakens and dragons.

Yes, there were dragons on this planet. Though, to be honest, being called dragons was a disgrace to actual dragons. The so-called dragons on this planet were wyverns, which were what ‘True Dragons’ called low level terrestrial creatures that imitated an actual dragon. A real dragon was off the charts in power strength being at least level one thousand. Just a single one of them would easily be able to destroy a planet in a day or two. Every ‘True Dragon’ was on par with a god, though they, aside from the celestial dragons, didn’t have divinity.

We rowed silent as a winter wind towards the imposing flagship of the fleet. The closer we got to it, the taller it appeared until the galleon was looming over us like an impenetrable fortress on the sea. From afar it already looked large, but from up close it appeared to be at least five stories tall with easily enough room for two hundred people. As I stared at the ship, one though repeated in my head: taking care of such a huge ship must be a huge problem. The amount of food for the ship alone would be likely to drive someone insane, let alone the rest of the logistics.

A shout arose from the top of the ship, shattering the eerie silence that had settled upon us. In no time at all, the boats around us burst into motion. Every single one of them except for the flagship started to turn back towards the ocean, most likely preparing to leave the gargantuan river. The flagship, unlike its naval brethren, didn’t turn around but instead lowered two ropes with hooks attached from the side down to us.

“Over there. Those have wenches connected to pull us up.” Randal directed me with his finger pointed towards the ropes.

“Ok.”

Seeing our destination in sight, I helped row towards the ropes. Not going to lie, by this point my arms were dying. I was more than happy to go the final stretch towards safety. It was a huge relief when we finally arrived under the ropes. Randal attached one of the hooks to a loop on his side of the ship, abd I quickly copiedhis actions, accidentally disturbing the sleeping Illway on my back in doing so, and attached the other hook to my side. In less than a minute, we were unsteadily rising into the air to the sound of wood swirling and rope creaking with tension.

The rope wasn’t the only thing filled with tension. The next two minutes would decide whether I lived or died since I wasn’t a hundred percent sure how these strangers would treat me so far from a city. Of course, I hoped for the best since me and Randal had worked together and I had helped in the rescue mission, but you could never tell with rich people. One might be the kindest and friendliest person ever whille also having a cellar full with skeletons.

Upon reaching the top, I was greeted with the vision of at least twenty heavily armed and armored elven guards watching us intently. As soon as they saw the little elf, whom was still taller than my short stature, sitting behind me they let out wild cheers. Almost as if that was the catalyst, the quiet peace that had settled upon the area was immediately shattered as hundreds of cheers spread out like a wave from the flagship to the others.

Amidst the screaming, an elf with black hair-the first I had ever seen- and wearing what I imagined I would see on a pirate captain walked up to the three of us and offered Illway a hand, “Welcome aboard Crown Princess. I’m glad to see that you are back in safe hands.”

Illway accepted his hand, being pulled off of the dangling rowboat and on to the flagship proper. With a slightly sad smile, she said, “Thank you Uncle Raven. Thank all of you for coming to save me.” That last part was announced to the rest of the ship and not just the captain.

While they were happily chatting on board the ship, I was sweating bullets. Not only was this an actual princess, but she was also a Crown princess. That meant she was next in line to rule for heaven’s sake!

“Nothing I wouldn’t do for you or your mother.” The Captain replied to her with a fond smile. He finally looked at me-which was kinda intimidating since he was at least twoand a half times my height- and Randal sitting in the boat. “Randal.” He nodded to the elf beside me. “And who is this little lass here? She a stow away?” That last part was supposed to be a joke… I think... I hope.

“Uncle, she was the one that saved me, so don’t be rude,” Illway explained to him, which brought no end of relief to me. From beside me, Randal huffed loudly. If I had to guess, he was aggravated about not getting any credit for the saving of his niece.

Captain Raven paused for a moment before bowing deeply to me, “Then I must thank you for saving my niece. Welcome aboard the Queen’s Arrow miss…?

Catching his prompt for my name, I told him, “Kali Vexia.” As soon as I said my last name, I knew I screwed up by the reactions of the people around me.

“Ohh, you have a last name. Are you a noble of some kind, Lady Vexia? And why didn’t you tell me?” Randal suspiciously asked from beside me.

“Where is your family from?” Crown Princess Illway asked a nanosecond after him, though she didn’t have the same suspicious tone that Randal did.

“Ah! Another noble aboard my fine vessel!” Captain Raven happily proclaimed over the two of them, announcing that I was a ‘noble’ to the rest of the crew. It wasn’t like I didn’t see their confusion. On most low tech planets only the rich or nobles had last names. The situation just sucked because I couldn’t exactly explain that I wasn't a noble and had a last name since I was from space.

As if she understood my discomfort, Illway came to my rescue, “How about we move to somewhere more private, Uncle Raven? I have nothing against your crew, but I haven’t sat down somewhere comfortable in a long time.”

Her mention towards her enslavement jolted the Captain into motion. He turned back to his crew and ordered loud enough to wake a giant, “All crew! Prepare for the return voyage! I expect smooth sailing with no problems! We are to return fast and swift like the wind! Someone send a message and have our escort ships join into the triangle form! If you need me, I will be in my cabin with Princess Illway.”

With his announcement came a flurry of motion as the surrounding crew jumped to tasks I couldn’t understand, mainly since I was from galactic planets with spaceships and not terrestrial boats. Half of them went to do something with the ropes while the other half ran around the place doing confusing tasks. The only action that I even slightly understood was the five guys pushing a round device in a circle. From the top of the device, a chain shot out and off to the side of the boat. Even for someone who wasn't terrestrial savy like me, I could tell they were obviously pulling up the anchor.

We followed the Captain through the crowd of crew members to the aft, or back, of the ship. The Captain would stop every few steps, rapid firing orders to various crewmembers before continuing on. It wasn’t long before we reached the other side of the ship. Instead of going up towards the helm to steer like a captain would, Raven led us underneath the helm and through a large ornate door emblazoned with a bird wreathed in fire. It looked like a pheonix due to the fire sourounding the main figure, but I wasn't sure..

The room on the other side of the fancy door was fairly spartan. While it was massive, only a few items took up space. In one corner was a small but cozy looking cot surrounded by a nightstand and a small dresser. Near the back wall- which was almost entirely made of glass viewing out onto the river and the fleet on top of it- sat a small desk filled with various documents and quills. The largest object taking up space was massive wood round table right in the middle of the quarters. Around the table were ten chairs, each made out of some kind of red wood. Directly in the middle of the table laid a map of the world a little like Randal’s, but way more filled in with information that I couldn't quite see from my angle.

While I was inspecting the room, the three elves had walked over to the table and were already sitting down. Putting my thirty-two dexterity to good use, I quickly walked up and also took a seat between Randal and Raven. I didn't have anything against the Princess, but she had been litteraly breathing down my neck for the past couple of hours.

As we all sat there, nobody said a word. The Captain was looking around at the three of use. From the slight glow of his eye, he was probably using [Inspection] or some other kind of optical skill on us. Speaking of, I had reverted my [Falsification] back to how it actually was while we were rowing towards the fleet. It now read [3]

Princess Illway was quietly staring at the map, though her eyes looking completely unfocused like she was thinking about something. I couldn't blaim her for being distracted after what she had been through. I didn't exactly know everything that happened, but I did know that it couldn't hav been easy.

Randal happily leaned back and had his eyes closed, which made it look like he had fallen asleep, though I knew that he was actually paying hyper attention because his ears kept twitching. It was a habbit of his I had picked up on over our two days together pre-rescue.

The silence continued for a bit before Captain Raven ruined it, “'Aight, I guess we should start with Princess Illway. Lass, what happened to the diplomatic mission that you were sent on? What went wrong?”

Oh? This was knews to me. I had never heard of any diplomatic mission or anything like that. All I knew was that Princess Illway had been captured. Granted, I had never asked since I was trained to work under "don't ask, don't tell" rules when I was completing a job in preperation for when the scientists were finally ready to release me upon the galaxy.

“Well, for starters, the entire race of dryads had already been exterminated by the time we arrived.” The Princess said with tears brimming in her big green eyes.

Dryads? I had never heard of them on this planet, but they were quite famous in space. Not only were they extremely beautiful, they were typically amazing singers which led to more than one of them becoming stars.The galactic ones were probably different then the terrestrial ones here, but they most like shared a few similarities.

Both Randal and Raven jostled at that with shocked expressions. Randal was the first to react with words, “What?! How could the entire race be extinct? Dryads are immortal as long as their tree stays alive!”

“Were immortal Uncle, were immortal. The humans of Eratos had found a way to track where the dryads returned to after they died. They seemed to have used this to find and k-kill every last one of the dryads. By the time we arrived, our possible allies were already long dead and what awaited us was a trap.”

“How did they know you were coming though?” Captain Raven gravely questioned her.

A tear fell down Illway’s face as she responded, “At first I thought that one of the dryads had broken down and told, but then I found startling evidence. One of the things that was used to track the dryads down was the upper elvish [Elven Detect Life] magic. It seems that we have a t-traitor in the upper echolons of our race.”

At first it would seem like a jump to assume that the upper echolons of the race would have a traitor just based off of the magic used, but it all boiled down to the type of magic. Over my two days of freedom, I had very, very breifly investigated magic on this planet. Quality of life conduit magic, such as [Clean], [Cure Lesser Wounds], and [Purrify] was extremely abundant and one out of every ten adults knew how to use at least one of them. This was all well and good, but actualy semi-strong magic, such as [Elven Detect Life] and even [Fireball], were extremely rare since only a few were born with access to use them. Only the top of the top had access to speccific spells like those. Therefore, to use an elven race speciffic spell like [Elven Detect Life], it wasn't such a huge jump, or even step, to assume that their was a traitor in the upper echolons.

Both Randal and Raven looked shocked once again at this revelation. This time, it was Raven that reacted quickly. He pulled a whistle from his pocket and blew it hard. An extremely high pitched screeching came from the whistle, hurting my ears. I quickly reached up and covered them, only semi-succesfully blocking out the squeal.

It wasn’t long until he stopped and I finally relaxed. I opened my eyes to see everyone staring at me, including a raven that had appeared out of nowhere on Raven’s shoulder. “What?” I asked.

The Captain answered with a question of his own, “How did you hear that? The magic was made so that only animals were supposed to be able to. And why were you covering the top of your head?”

Randal and Illway also looked curious, but Randal cut down any further questioning, at least momentarily, “We can ask about that later. Right now, we have more important things to do.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Right, right.” Raven got up and walked over to his desk. After jotting down a few things, he tied the small letter to the bird on his shoulder’s foot and threw it outside the window. He then quickly returned,”Alright, my familiar should get that letter to the queen in a few days. It will let her know to watch out for traitors and also that we have rescued you Princess. Now, please continue with the rest of your story.”

“Yes, thank your Uncle Raven. Right after we discovered the remnants of the elvish magic, we were ambushed by a strong force or humans from Eratros. M-my entourage managed to make enough time for my escape.” She tried to continue, but she broke down into tears every time. It took a few minutes until she was ready, then she continued, though she was still crying, “M-my entourage w-were all killed. Even T-terry.”

As that last name came out, I felt my hackles rise subconsiously. Thankfully, nobody noticed as they were deeply engrossed in hearing the rest of Illway’s story.

“I r-ran far away from where we were ambushed-” she stopped and choked back a sob, “But then I tripped and rolled down a hill into a river. I thought I was going to die, but I was spat out on a riverbank with no idea where I was. A group of slaver’s happened to pass by and they saw me, which led to my capture and eventual selling towards the judge in Serias a month after. Nobody but him wanted to buy me since I was extremely banged up from my tumble down the hill. He kept me locked up in the basement for another month until I was all healed up and ‘ready’. If the rescue had been even just a few days later, I shudder to think about what would’ve happened to me…” She stopped talking and just stared depressedly at the table.

A relieved sigh came out of Randal, “Then I’m glad I decided to trust my gut and recruit someone to help me instead of waiting for reinforcements.”

“Lass, speaking of reinfotcements, where is your noble family from Lady Vexia?” Raven asked me as he leaned forward unto the table.

Crap! Now I was under the spotlight! What do I say? That my family was wiped out and I’m the last of my name? That I was born of a rich family, but they were murderd, leaving me to spend their vast fortune to fight crime in a bat suit? Well, first off I should get them to just use Kali instead of Lady Vexia. It was extremely weird to hear someone refer to me as a ‘lady’.

If I recalled correctly, 'honesty was the best policy except for when it wasn't'. “Please, just call me Kali. I don’t know anything about my noble family since I woke up in the middle of the woods with no recollection of them.” There, not a complete lie but still not the exact truth.

Illway seemed to recover enough since she also pitched into question Kali time, “What are you then, Kali? I saw from when you rescued me that you had a wolf mask on and wolf ears, but you tied them into a bow. I’ve never seen another race with ears on top.”

I forgot that she had seen that. I was hoping it would be too dark. “I don’t know what you are talking about, I’m just a normal… dwarf. Yeah, a dwarf.” That was a terrible lie. Why did I have to say a dwarf?

“That was an obvious lie. Just tell us, we won’t hurt you or anything like that. In fact, the Queen would be immensely pleased to hear about another race on our planet.” Randal, the Queen’s brother, called me out.

What was the point in trying to hide anyways? All I was causing was extreme discomfort to myself. My tail had fallen asleep an hour ago, but it was still hurting terribly and my ears were aching from their tied up position.

If I couldn’t trust the elves, who apparently owned an entire continent based upon not having any holdups over race, then who could I trust? Definetely not the humans with their slavery. I didn’t even know where to find the other races, so they were out. The [Revenant] if he ever found me? Definitely not. For all I know, he would become obsessed and never leave me alone. His race was extremely weird after all.

That being said, I wouldn’t show everybody what I was. That would just be asking for problems to arise as soon as they saw someone that looked like nothing they had ever seen before. At the very least, I wouldn't mind being exposed to former comrades such as Randal. This ideal would change once I got to space since it wouldn't be a huge problem for a new race to pop out of knowhere. Once I reached space again, which I was still trying to figure out how to do, I could be free without too much worry.

“Fine, my race is a wolfkin.” I reached up and undid the bow holding my ears together, allowing them to flop around a bit before standing back up at attention. I then stood up and reached into my pants, surprising the three onlookers, and pulled out my tail from its captivity. Almost instantly, my tail felt extremely relieved to be free once more. With all of my extra appendages free, I sat back onto the chair, almost sitting on my tail as I did. I still wasn’t quite used to having it.

I looked up to see the three’s reactions. Illway looked extremely excited for some reason. She looked like she had just recieved a new toy and couldn't wait to play with it. Wait, did that make me the new toy? I wasn't sure if I liked that role.

Randal had a contemplative look in his eyes, but he didn't give much away. I realized a day ago that he was exceptionally good at hiding his expressions when he was actually trying.

Captain Raven looked completely indifferent, but I could see the twitching curiosity as he stared at my ears.

“Interesting, why have I never heard of a race like yours before?” Randal asked.

This time, I answered completely truthfully, “I think that I am the only one of my kind.” I guess you could say I was the Queen of the wolfkin then just like I was the Queen of the artificial fallen angels.

“What do you mean you think, lass? Shouldn’t you know this?” Raven inquired with exasperation.

“I mean that I have no idea if I really am the only one of my kind. I woke up in the middle of a clearing surrounded by wolves about a month ago. That was my earliest memory, so I have no idea if I really am the last of my kind or not.”

Randal was back up to bat, “What is your racial ability?”

Before I could answer, a knock sounded off of the cabin’s door and a voice called out through it, “Captain! We have left the river and are now on the open ocean. Estimated time of arrival is two months from now if the weather holds up.”

Captain Raven sighed and stood up from where he was, “As much as I would like to continue this conversation with miss one of a kind here-” Was he referring to me? “I need to actually go do my duties as a captain. I’m sure you three are tired, so why don’t you all go to sleep and we can continue this discussion in the morning. If you all want to wait here for a few minutes, I’ll send one of my crew members to take you to your quarters.” He looked at me and Illway, though his gaze was more directed towards my uncomfortable noble clothes and her maid disguise, “You should also take this opportunity to change into proper atire.”

Speaking of sleep, I felt the urge to yawn and proclaim my tiredness to the world. I had been pushing it off through will and adrenaline, but I was actually super tired. Me and Randal had been up the whole day checking our plans before the rescue. I would already be tired ready for sleep by night, but then adding up the fact that I was up all night, had an adrenaline filled mission, and had to row for a couple hours equaled me being wiped.

The Captain walked out of the cabin and back out onto the deck. Before the door closed fully, we could hear him shouting at the crew various commands. He was quieted down with the closing thump from the door. Unfortunately, with my hyper sensitive ears I could still hear his screaming voice along with the rest of the crew scrambling from place to place aboard the deck.

All that were left sitting in the room was me, Illway, and Randal. At first, there was blissful silence, but then the Princess went and ruined it, “Hey, so… would you mind if I slept with you Kali?”

I nearly choked on my own tongue in surprise from her upfront question. Literally nothing was holding her back. I mean, usually you would take a girl to dinner first before asking such things. If she did that though, she would also take my first date. What do I do?

Probably because she saw my “fish gasping for air” imitation, Illway quickly corrected what she said as her cheeks turned crimson, “Not in that way since you are a little girl! It's just... I don’t really want to be by myself and you are the only female I at least semi-know here. Please! You would be doing me a huge favor.”

I guess when she put it that way sleeping with her wasn’t so bad, as long as we slept and that was it. The gods knew that I wanted to have someone-other than Terry or any of his slaves-to hold during my long, sleepless nights of slavery. It helped to have someone around, or at least that was what I had been told. I never really had anyone other than me that I could trust. That's it! I found another goal for my new life: Find a trustworthy ally.

Seeing the Princess’s hopeful expression pulled me out of my musings. I glanced over at Randal, but he was pretending to not be paying attention. I gave her a cold response, “I guess, but how do you know you can trust me? I could kill you while you slept.” I just wanted to remind her I was a stranger. It wasn’t like I would kill her since I felt no ill will to her. In fact, if anything I felt a strange sense of loyalty, which was weird considering I literally just met her.

“You could, but why would you go through all the effort of saving me just to kill me? It would make no sense.” Princess Illway instantly shot down my excuse.

I looked over at Randal for backup, but he was still pretending to absent mindedly staring out of the window without a clue of our conversation. As he stared, he was also flicking a dagger into circles and catching it, which was impressive since he wasn’t even looking in the right direction to see the dagger.

“I guess I could, but I don’t know if I would be a good person to rest next to. I’m an extremely sensitive sleeper.” Sadly, it was true. In the labs, I was trained to wake up at a moment’s notice or as soon as I heard or felt something change in my environment. This training was also the one of the main reasons why I felt fine with sleeping in the trees outside of Serias.

I don’t think she even heard me as she was busy nodding her head and skipping towards the door. As she was walking towards the door, I could hear heavy footsteps walking towards the cabin’s door. Reacting quickly, I shoved my tail back down my pants and used the muscles in my ears to hold them together. It wasn’t quite as effective as the string, but it worked fairly well. While I had shown the Captain and the other two what I was, I wasn’t quite sure if I wanted every elf in the fleet to know yet.

Right as she reached it, a man-surprisingly the first human I had seen on the Queen’s Bow- entered the room with a knock. He had black hair and warm brown eyes that gave off a feeling of subtle warmth. “I am Alfon, the cook and partial quarter-master of the Queen’s Bow. I was asked to lead you to rooms, so if you could please follow me.”

Randal and I both stood up at the same time and walked over towards where Alfon and Illway were waiting. As we neared them, Illway told Alfon, “Me and Kali will share a room if that’s alright?” Near the end, Illway’s statement turned into more of a question to Alfon.

“That’s fine as long as Captain Raven is okay with it. I’ll ask him on our way down. I see no reason why it would be a problem, but it is better to be safe than sorry.”

Alfon led us out of the cabin and back out onto the main deck of the ship. The deck was as busy as when we first went in. Various crew members were moving about doing their tasks, but I could see quite a few of them going below deck while other, fresher looking crew members came up to fill in the leavers positions. Looking past them, I saw the sun rising up above the ocean slowly but surely erasing the blissful darkness of the night.

After a short shout to the captain and hearing a shouted reply back, we headed down a set of stairs on the other side of the massive galleon. It was a tight squeeze with all of the traffic, but we weren’t on it long as we got off on the first flight floor.

We walked down the hallway until we stopped at the very end before a large door engraved with a crown. Alfron opened the door and motioned Illway and me inside, “This is where the queen would stay if she ever left the continent. Seeing as she isn’t here, Captain Raven had decided that you would stay here. The Queen had also sent some of your clothes in preparation for your successful rescue. They are in the armoire over there.” Without further adieu, he left with Randal back down the hall to another room.

Illway walked into the room, not waiting a second longer, and I quickly followed her. The room was, in a single word, spacious. Everything about it was big. Off to the side of the door, a massive bed sat. It was easily big enough to fit three or four people with room to spare. To the other side of the door was a large armoire filled with clothes. The opposite side from the door was a huge glass wall allowing a perfect view of the ocean. It was slightly tinted, possibly denoting that it was some kind of one way. Right next to the window was a wooden table a lot like the one in the Captain’s cabin but rectangular.

As I watched, Illway walked over to the door and grabbed out a gray set of green pajamas. She was just about to strip and change, but seemed to realize I was still there at the last second and stopped. With scarlet cheeks, she asked me, “Kali, can you turn around?”

A smirk rose to my lips as I looked at her, “Why? It isn’t anything I haven’t seen before. You didn’t have any second thoughts in that cell.”

I was a little worried that I had made a joke too soon when I saw her crestfallen face, but thankfully the sad look disappeared as her cheeks darkened to an even deeper shade of red though it appeared slightly forced. “Y-you could see that? It was nearly pitch black down there. I thought you couldn’t see anything…”

“I have a little bit of night vision. I could see down there almost as clear as in shade during the day.”

“Still, no reason to give you a second glance. Turn around, please.” She commanded instead of asking like she did previously.

“Fine, fine.” I over exaggeratedly turned around and put my back to her. I heard the rustling of clothes from behind me, notifying she had started changing. I honestly didn’t really care what she looked like, but being told not to look made me really want to look.

Before I could come to a definite decision, I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Are you going to change? Or do you plan to sleep in these clothes?”

“I don’t have any extra clothes, this pair, the maid pair, and a set of simple clothes are all that I own.” I replied, which went to remind me that I would also need proper equipment when I went to the elven continent. Rolling by with just my two out of shape daggers that I had scavenged wouldn’t do once I actually got into combat.

Illway took a speculative look to her face as she raised her hand to her chin, “Hmm… you could use one of mine, but you are a little small.” She wasn’t kidding, I was only a little taller than her hips.

“It’s fine. How about you turn around this time, and I’ll take care of it,” I had already long decided that I would sleep in my wolf form. While I was staying in the city, I had found that it was way more comfortable to sleep after I used [Shift].

Once the elf was turned around, I quickly stripped and used [Shift]. I had found out that my clothes and anything I had on at the time of using [Shift] would be shredded. Taking everything I had, I squeezed them into my bag, almost tearing it in the process. As my daggers sunk into the bag, a metallic clicking resonated extremely quietly forth, reminding me of the treasures I had found in the judge’s safe. I really wanted to test what I had found, but I figured sleeping first was a good idea.

In just a few thankfully painless seconds of using the ability, I was standing on all fours behind Princess Illway. Putting my black fur covered paws out in front of me, I bent backwards and stretched. Upon standing back up on all fours, I realized I was the exact same height as my human form. Standing on all fours I was just above the Princess’s hips.

My claws clinking against the wooden floor alerted Illway that something had changed. She whipped around, her nightgown flailing in a swoosh, and stared at me with a slight fear in her eyes, “K-kali?”

I nodded my fur covered head at her in an over exaggerated manner and walked up closer to her. She froze for a second before, much like the lost elf-Cassia, reaching her hand out slowly and petting my head. It felt so… good to have my head rubbed. Although I had only felt the blissful sensation once before, I could feel myself slowly becoming addicted.

Illway, seemingly forgetting that I was just a humanoid a minute ago, started to talk to me in the voice people make towards animals and babies, “Who’s a good gurl? That’s right, you’re a good gurl.”

She continued to pet me all over my body for a few minutes and likely would’ve for longer, but I wiggled out of her grasp when I saw her eyes starting to droop with sleepiness. Now that I thought of it, she was probably even more tired than me. It was extremely hard to have restful sleep when sleeping in a cage without enough food, though it seemed like she didn’t have that last problem since the judge wanted for her to keep her shape.

She frowned slightly and shot me a hurt look before jumping up onto the bed and worked her way underneath the covers. It took way longer that I thought it would, but that probably had more to do with her tired brain trying to process how covers worked. Once she was settled in, I jumped up on the bed beside her on top of the bed covers, and after a few times circling my spot, I laid down. I had found out that, unsurprisingly, it got really hot to be under covers while covered in fur.

As I laid there, I was about to mentally go over my plans, but I was distracted by Illway idly stroking my ears. Almost as if she was singing a lullaby, I fell asleep to the sweet sensation of head pats.