When they reached the Village, night had fully settled over the landscape and their way was lit by stars and a handful of fires sparkling away in the center of the circle of large tent-like structures.
They weren't tents exactly but closer to oval yurts: wooden poles in a rough oval supported by cross members all covered in a strong fabric. Most of the structures, aside from a handful of the largest, were sunk halfway into the water along the shore's edge. Three colors were prominent for the cloth exteriors. Red, yellow, and pale pink. The colors were evident whenever the fires flared up in the odd spout of sparks. More smudges of grey smoke painted the darkness near the center of each home.
"Are they all made of silk?" Ashley wondered aloud.
Studying the nearest yurt, Chess noticed a glistening of the fabric in the firelight and nodded. "Yeah, I think they are," she agreed. That's a lot of silk, she decided after looking about again. Not that they didn't take their time to make the cloth.
"Focus," Lynn warned, bringing Chess’s attention back to the happenings in front of their small parade.
Three light-grey, stooped muskrat-kin had materialized and now stood waiting to greet the party near one of the large fires. Each sported an extensive collection of charms braided into their fur. It almost looked like a strange jacket before Chess started picking out the shapes of each. Chess studied these for a long moment finding wood, feathers, and various stones, but by far the most abundant were ivory white finger-sized figurines of more than a handful of different animals. Spiders, fish, some sort of feline with wings, squirrels, and a few more that Chess couldn’t place near anything she’d seen before.
Chess then focused on the middle figure,s ornately carved and figurine-adorned staff and was pleased with a window prompt.
Staff of Memory
Type: Astral Staff
Rarity: Tribal Artifact
Properties: Calcified memories spun into the approximation of the original Ancient dryad’s heartwood, Heliwr feather, and bone staff.
Durability: N/A
Minimum Requirements for enchantment activation:
Wearers must be full-blooded Muskrat-kin.
Natural willpower of 18
Natural Faith of 18
Must have the class Keeper of Memories.
Enchantments: Hidden.
Lynn gasped softly beside her, and Chess tilted her head in question at the skunkkin.
Lynn shook her head. "I'll explain later but the gist is that staff's enchantments were grown not created."
I'll have to ask her how she can see the enchantments when I can't.
Two of the elderly figures, both of which had fewer charms than the third and lacked staves took the trio’s escorts aside and started directing the dispersal of the spider parts they all carried.
That left the trio and Mikel to face the remaining intent elder in a bubble of calm that the elder's presence seemed to exude naturally. None of the busy creatures outside dared to interrupt. Or break the moment by walking between them.
The elder stood waiting for them with a slight tilt to its silver and grey-furred face. Their heavy gaze stopped to match each of their eyes in turn. Chess noted that the upper buck teeth that Mikel and the rest of the tribe had were significantly larger on this old Muskrat coming well down past the end of their chin. Maybe they are more like tusks?
The trio stopped a handful of feet in front of the figure and looked awkwardly at Mikel who'd stayed in step with the others. Now how do we do this exactly? Chess wondered, looking from Lynn to Ashley then back.
"Greetings honored elder," Lynn said and gave the figure a short bow. Chess and Ashley mimicked her a few seconds later.
Oh thank Freya, Chess let out a breath as she returned from the bow.
Mikel looked to Ashley who said a few tentative words. He nodded and turned to the elder before having a lengthy discussion with them.
"Think he might be embellishing things a little?" Chess said from the corner of her mouth after he continued for nearly a minute.
Lynn nodded but remained focused on the exchange. When Chess returned her head forward, she found the elder studying her more intently with a twinkle in their eye.
Then the elder, who Chess now suspected was the chief, held up a hand, clearly for Mikel to stop before gesturing him forward a step.
He nodded and untied the now significantly degraded heads of his friends from his belt holding them up for the elder to take. The elder accepted the burden with reverence before holding their free hand over each head. A small nimbus of blue light coalesced over each before fading. Then the elder took a small curved blade from their belt and bending to place the heads on the ground dug out the top two buck teeth from the heads. She tucked them into a pouch before cleaning and returning her blade to its sheath.
Standing the elder returned the heads to Mikel who nodded with tears in his eyes and retreated leaving the group alone with the elder. The other muskrats had all left on their errands.
“That didn’t look like when Ashley got her inheritance from her parents or her harvest ability,” Chess observed.
Lynn shook her head slowly, “No, the elder is much too old to inherit from anyone in this tribe without planning it. I suspect it’s something else entirely.”
The stooped elder started saying a few words at a time with a clear pause between each sentence to Chess and her companions. The elder very deliberately clutched a new charm hanging from her fur with each try.
On the fifth, Lynn grunted, “Siukilian,” then started haltingly in a tongue Chess could comprehend less than muskrat. It became obvious Lynn had a rudimentary grasp of the tongue herself.
The slow exchange continued for a long few minutes, with objects being pointed out and a steady flow of hand gestures, in which Chess grew more impatient and annoyed.
It took her a couple more to realize her anger stemmed from her inability to understand and because Lynn wasn't translating. It’s probably for the best, Lynn is the one who’s trained for this sort of thing, she reasoned with herself.
After a minute of this slow exchange, Lynn stopped to try a few different tongues of her own. One of which Chess recognized as Wood-elf and another that perked Ashley up a bit before the elder stopped her and launched into yet another with more confidence on both participants' sides.
Her mind drifted to her potential escape plan. The key is to get something up to the island and latch on if possible. Or worse case, a balloon? Fill it with this skystone enough to float the rope then drag it back and forth across the island until it catches firmly. Or a balloon big enough to lift us. Would take a lot of lift though. Especially if the cloth isn't very tight. If we could get a pair of ropes up I could make some sort of ascending device.
Her gaze drifted to where the bulks of the other much larger islands blotted out the startlingly bright stars. Maybe we can get above it and shoot something down onto it. Getting a view may be valuable either way. We need to find a way to secure a firm hold.
She broke the thought off when Lynn took a sudden step back and hissed through her teeth in alarm.
“What is it?” Chess prompted, her hand going to the handle of her hammer, while the skunk-kin woman got herself back under control and resumed the conversation.
Lynn paused for a second to say, “She’s a mind manipulator," with a snarl from the corner of her mouth. Chess watched as Lynn flexed her hand over her mace handle before she settled for clasping them behind her back instead.
Lynn’s voice became more clipped as she started to interrogate the elder. This didn’t seem to offend their potential host. On the contrary, Chess thought she caught another amused glint in her eye after the shift in Lynn’s tone.
“Oh?” Chess raised an eyebrow then turned to Ashley as though to ask what’s the deal, other than mind fuckery? Though that is a scary thought in itself.
“It’s the only banned form of magic. If anyone outside of the temple elite or royal family is found to possess such an ability they are executed immediately,” Ashley explained.
Chess frowned, an uneasiness settling in her gut as she thought about her charm ability. “Isn’t my Charm spell a form of mind manipulation?” she asked Ashley.
“Bards are different; you manipulate emotions or daze, but anyone with a strong enough will or mind can easily resist it, and it fades after your spell. Mind magic can change how someone thinks forever. It can change memories.” Ashley shivered and moved in to hug Chess’s side.
All we are is our memories, Chess thought. The idea made her focus once again on her new form. It's just me now, she thought while studying her slender and elegant hand.
Lynn let out an audible sigh of relief, freeing Chess from the rabbit hole. “It only works on the dead. That’s what the spell she used on Mikel’s dead companions was,” she explained in another break in the conversation.
Chess yawned wide behind a fist, and Ashley followed suit seconds later. Hopefully, it's time for bed soon.
With Ashley cuddled in next to her, Chess relaxed. The discussion between the chief and Lynn took another good twenty minutes of painful standing before a relaxed and smiling Lynn coughed, drawing Chess from her drifting thoughts.
The elder turned and strode off waving for them to follow. Her stone and bead-adorned staff tamped the counter rhythm to her steps.
"She'll show us our lodgings now, and we'll resume the negotiations in the morning," Lynn explained, following the elder.
The elder led them to one of the smaller tent homes near the perimeter of the small village. Holding the wood-framed silk door open, the elder motioned them in.
Inside they found a small fire burning merrily in a low stone fireplace in the center, casting light on the spare interior. A pair of low three-legged stools sat next to the fire, and only a few paces further out, three long bundles of fur suggested bedding. Other than an array of sturdy sticks over the fire with a small clay cookpot hanging down from another twisted branch over the flames from which a savory smell emanated, there was nothing to be seen.
Chess turned back to the door to find their guide had left.
She opened her mouth to speak but Lynn stopped her before she went to stand at the door for a moment. Nodding in satisfaction, Lynn turned back to Chess and Ashley.
"Okay, we're alone. I think," Lynn sighed then plopped down on one of the two stools. Leaning over the pot, she took a sharp sniff.
"I'll try this pottage first. I have a much stronger stomach. If either of you is hungry, eat some of our stores," Lynn cautioned as she dug the ladle in and brought it to her mouth to blow on before taking a tentative sip.
"Don't trust them?" Ashley asked with a frown before turning away to inspect the tent further.
"I trust it's fine, but that doesn't mean they don't eat something that could be poisonous to us. Or the possibility they are waiting for us to drop our guards. Speaking of which, I'll take the first watch, you both look about ready to collapse," Lynn said before taking a bigger slurp of the pottage.
"Trust but verify?" Chess quipped.
"A very succinct way of putting it," Lynn nodded with approval.
Chess turned to find Ashley had moved over to the bedrolls and was dragging two of them together closer to the small fireplace. Chess smiled at the sight before shaking her head and letting what Lynn had been saying really sink in. We're still not somewhere safe.
Chess crawled into the readjusted bedroll and pounded the small fur that would serve as a pillow into submission. The short walk from the tunnel to the town had surprisingly tuckered her out, and sleep called. It didn't take long once Ashley crawled in beside her and cuddled up, starting her low rumbling purr.
----------------------------------------
They woke the next morning to the dappled pink light cast by the first rays of sun through the fabric of their lodgings and ate some of the pottage that Lynn now declared safe before stumbling out of the tent into the crisp morning light.
A handful of the muskrats were out and already hard at work. Most were hanging strips of spider meat over racks placed atop low burning and smoking fires. Another group worked to milk a handful of pintsized black goats into a large wooden bowl. Chess watched them work for a time but quickly lost interest and turned her gaze out to the falls in the distance and the sun rising over the tranquil lake.
It wasn't long before the same elder from the night before showed up and dragged Lynn off for 'negotiations' leaving Ashley and Chess to their own devices. Not even a guard, but I haven't seen any children yet, Chess noted.
By unspoken agreement, the pair returned to their tent after a few more minutes of watching the waterfall into the large lake.
Ashley quickly curled up in her furs to sleep, leaving Chess to fret over her life since coming to this fucked up world, her ability choices, and how to escape this strange island. She watched Ashley sleep and thought. Do I even want to leave? This place seems a mite less terrifying than the world outside with slavers, psychotic nobles, and bigoted clergy. I feel like I could get a handle on the dangers here. No, Chess you're wrong. Eventually, those delvers that fuck Graventy promised will show up and likely hurt Mikel's tribe before capturing us. No, it's best to get out and try to head them off somehow.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
She sighed, staring into the low coals in the fireplace. Time to get to work. But where to start? Gramps's voice flitted through her mind, 'At the start or with the simplest task. Failing that, do anything. Idle hands…'
"Are the devil's playthings," Chess finished the thought out loud.
I've been thinking about him a lot recently. She felt a pang of regret that she'd never been able to give a proper goodbye to the old man. Start with something I should do but will help me think.
Decision made, Chess summoned her vault and removed the last few untouched blocks of wood including one made of the same dark purple wood as her crossbow.
After summoning the remaining bits of ironwood from Ashley's bowie knife she set about carefully making another crossbow. She made sure to spread out the creation of the bearings and other detailed work as well as taking long breaks to think.
The whole time Chess worked Lynn never returned and her daughter remained asleep. Chess found her gaze drawn to Ashley for a moment and a smile touched her lips. She’s more tuckered out than the rest of us. It’s been a hard few weeks.
With the crossbow done and put aside, Chess took up a few of the small scraps of purple wood left from the work and studied them.
"What do you want to be?" she asked the largest, tracing a finger along its grains. For a moment Chess swore she could feel the shape of a falcon just waiting to be freed in its swirled grains. She almost dropped the bit of wood from the fervent surety of the feeling. She 'had' to follow it.
Led by her intuition, Chess flexed her magic, deftly removing chunks of wood, then strips, then grains until she held a remarkable lifelike diving peregrine falcon ready to skewer its prey with its plunging beak.
Chess sat blinking at the figurine for a long time, more exhausted from creating the small bird than the entire crossbow before it. The figure was no bigger than two of her fingers but exquisite and better than she thought she could create.
Chess gave herself a long time to rest before she summoned her vault and removed a few more items on a whim. A long spider's heart, a dose of harvest pyth that Ashley hadn't taken, a length of thin-smooth spider silk, and a handful of the remaining sweet berries.
I might as well try this totem pyth out now, she reasoned.
“Now, how does Infuse Minor Totem work?” she asked the world, rocking back on her short stool as the information flowed into her. Oh, that’s interesting. It’s all about sacrifice. First things first, she sighed, I need an altar and shrine. This means I need some Freya-specific sacrifices.
Chess opened her vault and rummaged around. Pulling out some seeds from her old vines and original bramble bushes. A bit of wood which she spent an hour forming into a pair of cat figurines, a grisly boar with mean-looking tusks, then she contemplated her falcon but dismissed the idea on a whim, it didn’t feel right and instead made a few more of her rougher ones.
She pulled a few more spider hearts out and dumped everything into a pail before she turned to study Ashley’s still-sleeping form. It would be a shame to wake her, but she will be mad if I do this without her, she reasoned.
With a sigh, Chess leaned over and shook her daughter awake. “Hey sleepyhead,” she said when Ashley focused on her. “I’m going to dedicate a shrine to Freya so I can try out my Totem pyth, want to help me?”
Ashley nodded, her face splitting into a wide grin once she'd wiped the sleep from her eyes. “What sacrifices do you have so far?” Ashley asked, taking the pail to look inside when Chess indicated it.
“You should add some more Pyth to this and a gold coin or two,” Ashley suggested.
“Good idea. Which pyth though?” Chess queried as they headed for the door.
“I have a few doses of rot left in your vault,” Ashley offered.
“Okay, that leaves love and magic which we can capture with a song. How about that one we played together before? Think you can remember your part on the tambourine?” Chess asked pulling out the gold and pyth boxes to retrieve the items before returning them and bringing out the instrument for Ashley.
“You’re forgetting something important,” Ashley said seriously, once they’d adjusted to the light outside.
“I am?” Chess raised an eyebrow and looked over at her daughter as they walked.
“Permission,” Ashley returned the raised eyebrow.
“Right. Do you suppose Lynn’s done with her negotiations yet?” Chess asked and looked about the center of the village for any indication of where their wayward companion may be.
It took the pair a good half hour to track down Lynn and the Elder from the night before. The pair were lounging near the water's edge, a little way outside the village deep in conversation.
“Learn anything?” Chess asked Lynn with a smile when they’d gotten the attention of the pair.
“Lots,” Lynn nodded, returning the smile. "I'll fill you in later."
“We were wondering if it would be okay with the elder if we were to dedicate a shrine to Freya somewhere...hereabouts,” Chess cut to the chase finishing with a broad wave about.
“Might I ask why?” Lynn asked, sparing a glance at the elder beside her.
“I need an altar to test out my totem pyth. I wanted to know if I like it before I make any final decisions about my ability choices,” Chess explained.
“And to pray,” Ashley added with a grave nod.
"Alright, I'll ask," Lynn conceded before turning to speak to the elder. Chess noted that Lynn's confidence in their mutual language had increased, though the elder firmly clung to one of her charms as they spoke.
It took a few minutes of somewhat heated debate before Lynn turned back to address the mother-daughter duo. Chess's belly seized in advanced disappointment.
"She requires more information on your Goddess before she'll make a decision," Lynn explained, and Chess let out a whooshing breath then nodded.
"What does she want to know?" Chess asked. Lynn turned back to the elder and spoke.
"Is she a kind Goddess?" Lynn translated and all but rolled her eyes.
"Is any God nice? The best I'll say is she is kind to her followers. At least Ashley and I have benefited. That said she's a Goddess of life, war, and death, I think it's better to say she's like nature itself neither caring nor needlessly malicious. Just dangerous, but then you could say that of any of the Gods," Chess shrugged.
"An apt description," Lynn nodded with approval before translating for the elder muskrat.
The questions went on for a while, mostly about Freya's aspects and Chess and Ashley's experiences with Freya before they got grudging permission to set up a shrine over a mile from the village on a small bluff that overlooked the lake and the water dispensing islands above it.
They were almost directly across the lake from where the tunnels let out from another huge bluff that buffered the waterfall on either side.
"You have to admit it's a beautiful spot for a shrine," Ashley pointed out as the group, Lynn, Chess, with the elder, Chilkuy who Chess had learned was not the Chief but the tribe's Memory Keeper, which was both a class and a religious position in the tribe. She's like a Shaman, Chess thought.
They also had a Chief, but he and a small group of his fellow kin were away hunting the far reaches of the island for Heliwr. An animal they hunted for fur and feathers among other things, including something to do with marriage ceremonies. Chess wanted to get a look at one. Apparently, they were the source of the wonderful fur that a few of the bags they'd found in the Ghouls cave were made from.
"It is pretty," Chess and Lynn agreed with Ashley on top of each other. Lynn gave Chess a wry grin then stepped back waving for her to proceed.
"Better by far than the last place," Chess murmured.
Chess started the process by spreading some seeds, including a fist-sized acorn from one of the giant red trees that Chilkuy insisted she use. The amusement Chess saw on the elder's face made her hesitate for a moment before digging a small hole for the large seed a dozen feet from the edge of the bluff. Fertility is fertility.
Chess had noticed the odd designs carved into many of these large trees on the way to the bluff. They hold some sort of significance to the tribe. Chess reasoned.
Stepping back Chess brushed the dirt from her hands and summoned her instrument, eliciting an approving look from the elder. Who stepped back with Lynn leaving her and Ashley with her tambourine to complete the ritual.
Chess proceeded much as she did the last time, the biggest difference being the tree she grew through the center of the altar. On a whim, she abandoned using her brambles and created the altar surface and bowl from the nook of a branch on the lakeside of the tree which she grew to about 20 feet tall and nearly 16 inches in diameter before the strain started to build in her shoulders and stopped her after growing it for about 20 minutes.
She and Ashley used the opportunity to practice their song as she worked to form the shrine tree.
Once it had formed fully they each approached to place offerings in the bowl.
Chess and Ashley emptied the contents of their pail then added a few odds and ends, a handful of seeds and spores from the plants she'd altered in the tunnels from Chess, and a bowl of amber sap from Ashley before stepping back and looking at each other.
Before they could start their song or speak both Lynn and Chilkuy stepped forward.
Lynn added the nobleman's rapier, after a heated protest from Chess, and one of the beautiful fur bags.
"It's a fop's weapon and not suitable for any of us even if we were to have it properly repaired. However, it is strictly for war or killing people, so it should satisfy her war aspect perfectly. Besides, it comes from my take, you have your hammer," Lynn said, finishing the argument before it started.
Chilkuy gently untied a pair of the small bone charms from the fur on her upper breast and laid them and a square of pink silk in the bowl. One a small cat with wings, ready to pounce, the other a bunched-up spider repelling down a line of silk. The twinkle never left her large expressive dark-brown eyes as she backed away to near the edge of the bluff.
Chess swallowed and faced the altar squarely.
"Freya, we offer you these sacrifices to sanctify this shrine in your honor," Chess announced with much more confidence and feeling a mite less silly than the last time before she took up her guitar and nodded to Ashley that she was ready to start the song.
This time there they waited but a handful of seconds before wisps of golden light started forming rings around the base of the tree before raising up the trunk in lazy undulations.
A large golden house cat with black striped ivory white wings glided around the crown of the tree a few times before it settled on a branch that overlooked the bowl. Reaching in with its head it tore into the spider's heart gobbling it up in mere moments before the cat settled to eyed each of them in turn while it licked the blood from its lips as the rest of the items in the bowl slowly faded into motes of rainbow-colored light.
"Ick spiders, I better not develop them as an aspect on this plane," the cat spoke before shaking as though removing water from her fur before focusing on Chess.
Everyone but Chess bowed low to the golden cat.
"You've grown," Freya observed, her distinct voice coming out. "This is a much more fitting place for a shrine."
"I'm pretty sure those are completely unrelated things," Chess observed, unsure what to say before studying her own lean but curvy body. She must mean mentally.
"Not in the least," Freya said before holding up a paw and turning to Ashley, giving her a wide feral smile.
"My valkyrie, there is but one body I will currently allow for your ability and only if he agrees as it suggests. If you and your mother think hard enough it will become obvious," she paused as though considering. "Not many have sent me prayers since Chess arrived and fewer still are shunned by their own gods. Once you escape this place, don't tarry in retrieving him. It doesn't do to have a soul linger for long with their abandoned flesh and the forest ever threatens to take his body. He yet waits for your blessing to ascend." She winked and waved Ashley back with a paw. "Now let me talk with your mother and friend."
“Mistress,” Ashley bowed low before she scurried back and joined Chilkuy.
"I could free you of your restraint if you were to provide an adequate sacrifice," Freya told Lynn with a mischievous smile once only the pair remained.
"Though tempting, your holiness, I'm afraid I will have to decline for now," Lynn said with another deep bow.
"Oh? Oh, I see," Freya's smile widened further before she spat out a rapid-fire string of foreign words that made Lynn stiffen up like Freya had rammed a sword through her stomach. She even doubled over in a bow that had her forehead touch the ground after a frozen second while nodding vigorously.
"What was that about?" Chess wondered when Lynn straightened and walked a dozen paces off to stand with her back to the others.
"That? Was none of your business," Freya said in English. "You should teach your children this language by the by," Freya suggested.
Children? As in plural? What the hell does she expect from me? No, I can just adopt more.
"Yes," Freya said with a firm nod. "Now I have less than a minute before your sacrifices run out of power, projecting myself into this pocket is difficult with such a young shrine. In case we don't talk again soon, try not to linger in Portheel for more than a couple of years. I suspect this shrine will satisfy the first year's quota." Pale yellow feline eyes glanced at the stooped form of the stooped elder behind Chess. "Fertile fields and all that. Find me another sixty followers before you leave the Heel, and we'll be square until you settle elsewhere for another pair of years,” Freya said.
"Do look into some proper training. Things won't continue to be this easy for you, I fear others have found my rift," Freya added more seriously.
"Okay, I can do that," Chess said with a nod before rubbing a hand over her face. Easy? Chess nearly choked on the idea before shaking it off. It was only a matter of time before she stressed the point of our deal. I'll need to learn to be a proper missionary. For a pagan Goddess...my Goddess. Chess didn't miss the absurdity.
I got lucky this time; finding the muskrats. Or did I? she thought, returning her attention to Freya only to discover the winged cat had frozen with its paws in the shrine's bowl much like the last one. Well damn, so much for hiding here, she thought, looking from the shrine and back over the large lake then to the islands floating in clouds above.
She studied the landscape for a long minute before turning back to the shrine. I have work to do, she told herself.
The tree had transformed now that Freya had departed. Where the other trees had tones of red to their dark bark the shrine's tree shone with a distinctive silky golden sheen. Its leaves now resembled whisper-thin sheets of milky white and red silk swaying lightly in the breeze off the lake.
Chess ran her fingers over the frozen figure of the cat and was surprised by the velvety feel of its fur.
"I want one!" Ashley declared after she startled Chess by petting the statue after Chess did.
"Want what?" Chess frowned down at her daughter.
"A flying cat!" Ashley grinned while giving Chess puppy dog eyes.
"Is that even a thing? She could've made it up?" Chess turned to Lynn as in question.
"In my experience, aside from their natural forms, the gods rarely take a form outside something they regularly receive as a sacrifice," Lynn explained with a shrug before turning to Chilkuy.
A brief exchange later Lynn nodded and turned back to Chess.
"They call them Heliwr and according to Chilkuy, they are very dangerous predators that hunt in packs. The tribe loses goats to them all the time. Much like lions I suppose," Lynn explained before asking Chilkuy another question.
"Yes, it's what her son, the chief, and the younger males are hunting at the moment near the island's edge. This time of year, the young male Heliwr are driven from their father's pride, and some come to this island. They are much safer to hunt alone. The tribe uses their fur and bones to make into bride's gifts," Lynn said pointing to the supple fur bag Ashley had tied to her belt.
"Oh," Chess said, eyeing the bag made from the fur of what was essentially a house cat. No, Chess corrected herself, they are wild animals and pests. The Aussies hunt actual feral house cats back on earth.
Chess hesitated then asked Lynn, "Do you think her binding would work on one?"
"If it's young," Lynn agreed with a slow nod.
"Yes!" Ashley crowed, pumping a fist into the air.
"You'll have to find and capture one first," Chess tempered. "If you can't come up with a reasonably safe way of doing it first and present it to Lynn or me, you are forbidden from trying. I've seen what a flightless cat can do to a person's face with its claws, and it was domesticated. If you do get one, it will be your responsibility," Chess said then stopped. I sound like Gran.
"But I have armor and healing," Ashley protested while giving Chess a stink eye.
"There is no reason to take unnecessary risks. You already have two significant scars from this adventure. A young lady like you can ill afford a scarred face as your mother suggested. Your helm doesn't protect it," Lynn said backing Chess up.
Ashley pouted for a minute before departing with a determined cast on her face.
Lynn chuckled and turned back to Chess, “I’m proud of you.”
“What? Why?” Chess asked, raising an eyebrow at her companion.
“Never mind, you have charms and decisions to make,” Lynn said with a wave while she departed, collecting the elder muskrat as she went, leaving Chess alone before the new shrine.