The Afternoon before chaos
The hours slide past like slow-dripping tar, thick and quiet and strangely gentle in their heaviness. The goblins disperse upstairs to rest, the innkeeper goes back to pretending he is part of the furniture, and the world outside Grey Hollow continues rotting at its usual pace. None of it touches us.
He leads us back down the ladder into the cellar, the sandstone swallowing sound the moment the hatch closes overhead. The lantern burns low again, its glow steady but subdued, as though it remembers how the morning started and knows better than to flicker too loudly around me.
The air down here is cool and still. Grain sacks lean against the wall like tired old sentries. The bed roll waits exactly where we left it, creased and warm in the centre, carrying traces of our breathing, our bodies, our earlier closeness.
My tail flicks once, lazy but alert, as I pad across the stone floor. Hours, and yet the bond hums just as steady, just as taut as when dawn pried my eyes open.
My master sets down his gear, movements efficient, controlled, almost ritualistic in their precision. He checks bolts. Checks the crossbow’s tension. Checks the sword’s edge. That quiet focus radiates from him like a second lantern, one that warms instead of burns.
I settle closer, not pouncing, not clinging, just… orbiting him. Like a jealous moon that refuses to drift too far from its rightful pull. My ears twitch at every tiny scrape of metal against leather. My eyes track every angle of his posture. My tail taps the ground in slow, rhythmic beats.
There is no rush. There is no noise. Only preparation.
The scent of dried meat clings faintly to the air. The boiled water from earlier has cooled. The cellar holds us the way caves hold secrets: tight, silent, protective.
He lowers himself onto the bed roll for a moment, not lying down, just sitting with that weary decisiveness of a man who knows dusk will demand blood and precision in equal measure. I move to his side, sliding onto the floor beside him, tail curling around my legs, ears easing back into a calm, instinctive tilt.
The quiet isn’t oppressive. It isn’t tense.
It is the calm before the street turns red.
I rest my head against his shoulder, purring low, soft, steady. Not clingy, not frantic, not wild like this morning. This is the quiet purr, the one I only make when I know he isn’t going anywhere.
His presence settles my nerves like sand settling in water.
Above us, faint through the floorboards, the Black Fang shift and murmur, restless but obedient. The inn creaks. Someone coughs. The world outside Grey Hollow festers. But down here, in the cool stone half light, there is only preparation and the steady promise of him at my side.
The cellar feels smaller when preparation begins. Not cramped, not uncomfortable, just… tighter, as though the sandstone walls draw in a little closer when they sense the weight of what we are about to do. My tail sways slow behind me as he sets out his gear piece by piece, every movement deliberate, every item placed with that precise, methodical grace that only my master possesses.
I crouch beside him, watching, absorbing, drinking in the ritual of it. My claws flex once against the stone, more out of anticipation than nerves.
He starts with the armour.
The hardened leather, smoothed and shaped by long weeks in The West Forest, still carries the faint scent of pine resin and river fog when he lifts it. It is not noble armour nor poor-man’s scrap; it is the quiet, dangerous middle ground, the sort worn by men who do rather than posture. Light blue and white, the colours of The Kingdom of Alderia, The tiny Kingdom we're in.
It's stitched with subtle patterns that speak not of wealth but of someone who knows exactly what symbols people trust and fear. In Grey Hollow, these colours mark a man as educated, seasoned, and not to be trifled with. In Mire Point, they are a statement: the Lord Protector walks with no disguise.
He turns the chestpiece in his hands and the light catches the hardened ridges. This isn’t cheap leather boiled in a rush. This is high-grade, treated properly, toughened through days of drying beside steady campfires and reinforced with cross–stitching that he added himself when the forest winds wouldn’t stop snapping at our heels. The plate is flexible but unyielding, capable of taking a blade without splitting. Light enough for stealth, strong enough for combat.
And the colours… gods, the colours. The soft sky blue and crisp white echo across his cloak, his tunic, even the minute stitching at his cuffs. They frame him in a way that is unmistakable: a man of Alderia who no longer answers to any Alderians. A walking defiance wrapped in their finest cloth.
He straps on the armour with clinical efficiency, adjusting buckles, tightening straps, testing mobility with quiet movements that speak louder than any boast. My tail coils around one ankle as he works, drawn too close to stay still.
Then comes the blade.
It rests in the corner until he retrieves it, the Clan Redstone noble sword taken from a corpse who had thought himself superior by birthright. My ears twitch at the memory. That steel gleamed like a threat when the noble first raised it… and like a reward when my master lowered it into the dirt beside the man’s cooling body.
That sword is a statement. A reminder. Steel is not common in these lands. Steel is hoarded by nobles, guarded like jewels, hidden behind politics and forged in fires reserved for those who think themselves eternal.
But this one sits in my master’s hand.
The blade is a pale, bright silver, honed to a razor’s whisper, finely balanced by artisans who believed they were crafting a weapon for a man born into power. Instead, it belongs to a man who took it because someone dared to stand above him.
The hilt glints with Redstone’s colours, crimson and black, though the blood that once stained it has long been cleaned away. The weight of the weapon shifts perfectly in his palm, no hesitation, no uncertainty. It belongs with him the way I do: not by permission, but by inevitability.
He sets the scabbard at his hip, leather straps crossing his belt, and there is a moment, a small, quiet one, where he rests his hand on the hilt as though reacquainting himself.
My tail flicks once. The dagger he once carried, the copper iron blade sharp enough for survival work, is gone now. Only steel sits in its place. A new declaration.
And then he turns to me.
My ears rise, my posture straightens, my chest tightens with that pride-ridden instinct that always surges when he looks at me with intention, not softness.
His eyes drift along my armour next, the matching set shaped in the same Alderian colours. Light blue. White. Hardened leather panels fitted for speed rather than bulk, reinforced at the joints for someone who moves faster than common sense allows.
It was crafted for him originally, but it fits me with a shocking, almost mocking precision. As though the forest meant for us to mirror each other.
The lines of my armour hug my frame, clean curves where leather moulds to body, rejecting the bulky, oversized pieces catgirls are often forced into. This is refined, sharp, competent. This is attire a rich merchant might wear if they were also a killer in disguise. I flex my shoulders, feeling the leather shift like a second skin.
My claws slide out and I test their edge against the plate along my forearm. The sound is a low scrape. My claws are not metal, not forged, not crafted but they are weapons all the same. They grow sharper the longer they’re used. They can snag cloth, split wood, and carve a throat if I drive hard enough. They are part of me.
And sometimes... watching my master prepare, I imagine him carving through the Fighters Guild while I carve alongside him, blade and claw in tandem.
My spear waits next.
Copper iron. Vanguard alloy. Not common, not cheap, not mere iron. This is the recipe the Oakwood Vanguard guards like treasure: harder than iron, lighter, able to hold an edge that doesn’t warp in wet marshland like softer metals do.
The head of the spear is dark, faintly reddish from the copper content, wickedly tapered to a point that can punch through armour if aimed right. It is balanced for throwing, but I never throw it. It remains in my hands, a direct extension of my rage, my devotion, my territorial fury.
The shaft is wrapped in pale leather, dyed to match the Alderian colours, but the wrapping is worn from my grip. My fingers have shaped indentations across it from the countless times I have planted it in the ground beside him when someone looked too long in his direction. It is not ceremonial. It is not symbolic. It is a killing tool.
And beside it rests the kite shield.
Copper iron reinforcement along the rim. A solid leather centre structured by boiled layers. Large enough to protect my torso when I crouch, light enough that I can leap with it strapped to my arm. When I raise it, the world narrows into a simple truth: whatever strikes it breaks before I do.
The shield bears faint scratches from past fights, Wolf fangs. Thorned arrows. A blade that once skimmed the surface when I dove in front of my master without thinking.
My tail flicks again.
I run a hand across the shield’s surface, feeling the warmth of old battles in the faint ridges. Then I reach up and adjust my hardened leather cowl.
Deep blue, green and crimson stitching, shaped by his hands, protected by his attention. The ear guards are soft, flexible, and they make the memory of rain less terrifying than it used to be. Even now, the faint scent of smoke and resin clings to it. I lower it snugly around the base of my ears, feeling that familiar comfort settle across my scalp.
I stand there in the dim light, armour fitted, spear in hand, shield strapped, claws flexing, tail curling in slow patterns around my leg. He stands opposite me, dressed in the same colours, armour shining faintly, steel blade at his hip, posture grounded in dark certainty.
We look like a mirrored pair, one forged in logic, one forged in instinct, both bound by a thread deeper than any armour stitching.
In the quiet, the cellar feels like a sanctuary preparing to birth violence. His presence fills the space with command. Mine fills it with hunger. Together, we are not merely preparing for dusk. We are promising dusk something it cannot comprehend.
The cellar settles into a hush so thick it might as well be dust given weight. Lantern light bends across the sandstone walls, catching the frost still clinging to the pillar from my master’s spell, and for a long heartbeat the only sounds are our breathing and the slow drip of water somewhere deep in the stone. The air smells of old grain, cold metal and burnt silence, the perfect crucible for a morning shaped by discipline and danger.
My master stands across from me, crossbow still resting where he laid it, steel blade at his side, posture relaxed but never loose. He always looks like a man half in the present and half in some drafted plan the rest of us aren’t smart enough to see. I prowl the opposite side of the room, tail twitching, claws lightly scraping at the stone every few steps, energy still humming through my limbs from the duel and the ice bolt that shattered like a small winter thunderclap.
The training began with the bolts, of course. It always does. He treats the crossbow like a precision instrument; not a weapon, but a question he answers with movement. Every bolt he fired earlier had been deliberate. He didn’t just shoot, he corrected.
He weighed his stance against memory, checked distance with his breath, adjusted grip by feel alone. Each thud against the grain sacks had been a statement of inevitability. Even the way he’d loaded each bolt was careful, respectful, like the ritual of someone who knows weapons better than people.
Now, the three bolts still lodged in the sacks tilt at slightly differing angles, evidence of his fine-tuning. His mind works like that: details no one else sees. Lines no one else walks. Strategies no one else could assemble even if handed the pieces.
It makes my chest tighten in a way that feels too big, too wild. My tail gives an involuntary flick.
But it was the duel with the sword that changed the air.
He drew the Clan Redstone noble blade with that steady, grounded confidence, the steel whispering as though it recognised his hand. The weight of that weapon is not simply in its craftsmanship, nor in the fact it belonged to someone who displeased him enough to die for the mistake.
The weight is in what the blade means in Alderia: power, privilege, nobility. Symbols men bleed and bow for.
Yet here it rests in the hands of a man who owes fealty to no lord, who bends knee to none, and who carved his path through logic and violence rather than birthright. Every time he touches that sword, the world feels a little more correct to me.
When he stepped toward me with it, I felt the familiar electric shiver run down my spine.
Our duel was short, not because he is weak, he is anything but, but because my instincts devour the space between us. He fights with intelligence, with angles, with precision honed by years of calculated danger. He reads footwork like text. He predicts movement like weather.
But I move with HUNGER. My body reacts before thought. My tail guides balance, my ears triangulate sound, and my claws follow the scent of his strikes. I dodge not because I plan to but because the bond between us hums warnings faster than conscious thought.
He feinted left. I didn’t bite. He pivoted. I slid under. When he swung downward, I twisted past him and swept his legs, sending him down in a controlled fall that still made the floor grunt beneath him.
I pinned him in the next heartbeat, spear at his throat, grin wide and sharp, breath fast enough to blur the lanternlight in my vision.
It wasn’t the victory that satisfied me... though the smugness curled warmly in my stomach. It was the moment I saw his expression shift. Not anger. Not frustration.
But acceptance. That quiet, thoughtful nod of respect he gives only when a plan unfolds in a way he can analyse and appreciate.
My tail had wrapped itself around his leg during that moment, uninvited, possessive, instinctual. I didn’t apologise. I never apologise. The world should thank me for not tearing it apart every time someone dares stand between him and me.
But then… then he raised his hand.
The air changed instantly. My ears shot up, pupils narrowing to slits. The bond hummed in warning, not fear, but recognition, old, ancient recognition, of something powerful waking beneath his skin.
He spoke words older than any living Alderian. Not elven. Not goblin. Something buried. Something outlawed. Something Alderia pretends never existed outside its old witch-hunt records.
Cold bled from his palm in a slow spread, like frost forming on glass at winter dawn. The temperature dropped enough to sting the tips of my ears. The lantern dimmed, halo shrinking as if fearing the magic taking shape in the centre of the room.
He released it.
The ice bolt snapped forward like a shard of winter spearing reality. It hit the sandstone pillar with a crack like breaking bone. Frost exploded outward, creeping in jagged patterns across the stone. The air vibrated with the aftershock, then stilled.
For a breath, neither of us moved.
Then I laughed.
Not a gentle laugh. Not a playful giggle. A full, broken, MANIC eruption of sound that scraped the lantern’s flame and rattled the dust in the rafters. My tail whipped behind me, ears flattened and rising again in a frantic rhythm.
“You show that in the streets,” I barked out between near-hysterical snickers, “and Alderia will empty every forgotten archive looking for instructions on how to burn you!”
I paced in a tight circle, half feral energy, half delighted panic, claws clicking on stone.
“They’d drag old witch-hunt manuals out of the catacombs. They’d rally priests who can’t even read anymore. They’d march torches down every alley and interrogate shadows as if they were suspects.”
My tail lashed again, a violent sweep of air.
“And then,” I added with a grin far too wide to be sane, “you would turn them all to frost before they managed to light a single pyre.”
The cellar swallowed the sound of my laughter as I approached him again, spear lowered, posture loose but eyes blazing with fervent, possessive pride. I stood close enough that our breath mingled, close enough to feel the cold still radiating from his fingers.
“You,” I murmured, voice soft but crawling with delight, “are a walking heresy.”
My claws traced the frost-cracked stone beside his head.
“And I am going to enjoy watching Alderia try to hunt a man they cannot understand, cannot predict, and cannot kill.”
The frost crackled quietly behind us, glowing faintly in the lantern glow. His presence filled the cellar with gravity. Mine filled it with hunger.
Outside, the world kept rotting.
But in here, in this quiet stone room where bolts fly true and magic breaks the rules of kingdoms.
The frost still clings to the sandstone pillar when her footsteps creak down the ladder. My ears snap backward the instant the hatch opens. My tail coils tight, defensive and irritated, because of course the elf decides to appear now, in the middle of the quiet aftermath of my master’s impossible spell.
Tamsin’s boots hit the cellar floor and she freezes half a step in, eyes going wide as she takes in the glittering frost spread across the stone.
“Why is it so wet down here?” she blurts, pushing stray hair behind her ear as though that will help her understand. “Upstairs is dry. Did you two spill a whole barrel of well water or something?”
Her nostrils flare. Confusion. Caution. That irritating, analytical ranger instinct trying to make sense of what she’s seeing.
Tamsin Perception: 12 + 4 = 16
Sixteen. Enough to know something is very wrong. Not enough to know what, thank the gods.
My tail lashes once, a warning snap. I step in front of my master without hesitation, claws half unsheathed, posture low and aggressive. She has just walked into a room full of impossible truth, and my first instinct is to bury her under silence before she can put anything together.
But she talks anyway.
“Seriously,” she continues, frowning at the frost-spiderwebbed stone, “did someone break a water barrel? That’s… cold water. Really cold. Why would.”
I cut her off without speaking at all.
I stroll toward her with that controlled, prowling glide that always tightens her shoulders. My tail flicks with irritation. My ears are angled sharply back. I smile, but only with my teeth. “Tamsin,” I purr, my voice soft and edged like a newly honed blade. “Your eyes are lying to you again.”
She stiffens. That always gets her.
I make a slow, small circle around her, forcing her to turn to keep me in her line of sight. My claws click lightly on the floor. Deliberate. Territorial. Protective. I don’t let her get close to the frost. I don’t let her get close to him either.
Behind me, the psychic bond hums warm and steady, and I stand between its secret and the ranger’s curiosity like a stone wall with fangs.
Tamsin looks from me to him to the frost again, frustration tightening her jaw. “There’s ice on the wall,” she mutters, narrowing her eyes. “What, did the temperature drop ten degrees the moment I walked in? Because it wasn’t this cold before.”
Her hand moves toward the frost, cautious, investigative.
I swat her wrist away with a sharp, reflexive movement, not hard, but fast enough to jolt her.
“Don’t touch,” I hiss, stepping even closer, the lantern’s dim glow catching on my eyes in a sharp gleam. “You don’t know what caused it.”
My tail wraps around my master’s leg behind me, protective, anchoring, unwilling to let space form between us and her questions. Tamsin bristles, annoyed but not suicidal. She takes a half-step back, adjusting her stance in that ranger way that says she’s ready to pivot or dodge.
Tamsin Insight: Roll: 7 + 3 = 10
Her instincts twitch, but she understands nothing. Only that I don’t want her near the frost.
“Fine,” she says, though the confusion leaks through her voice. “But… whatever this is, you two should clean it up before the innkeeper comes down here. Someone’s going to think you cracked a pipe or smashed a barrel.”
My laugh rolls out sharp and manic, echoing faintly off the cellar walls. I step close enough that she must tilt her chin up to keep my gaze.
“Let them think whatever they want,” I whisper, pupils narrowing, voice trembling with delighted menace. “The truth isn’t theirs to touch.”
Behind me, I feel my master’s calm like a silent gravity. Above us, the inn creaks as the Black Fang shift in their sleep. And between us, the frost on the stone gleams like a secret waiting for the next fool to die for it.
The frost still clings to the pillar like a frozen wound when he rises from the floor. The lantern throws long shadows across his coat as he stands, brushing the dust from his trousers, movements precise and quiet, the way a man moves when he already knows exactly what comes next and no longer has the patience to pretend otherwise.
He looks at Tamsin with that sharp, pale focus of his, the kind that strips excuses down to bone. “So, Tamsin,” he says, voice flat as a whetstone, “you finally arrive.” The words land heavy in the cold air. Not mocking. Not angry. Just… assessing. Like he’s weighing her against the evening to come.
Tamsin shifts her grip on the ladder rail behind her, shoulders tense beneath the ranger’s leather. She looks from the frost to him to me, confusion mixing with the kind of caution that sits behind the eyes of soldiers who know they’ve stepped into a story they might not survive.
She clears her throat once, soft but sharp around the edges.
“I’ve been thinking,” she says carefully. Her voice cracks slightly on the last syllable, just enough for my ears to flick forward and catch it. “I’m… not sure if I want to do this.”
The words drop like a misfired arrow. My tail snaps up in a quick arc of irritation. I’m on her in two steps, circling, assessing, testing the cracks in her conviction. The air thickens with the sound of my claws brushing stone.
But my master doesn’t move. He doesn’t flinch. He just watches her with the quiet, tired cynicism of a man who’s seen this hesitation in every war, in every mercenary, in every coward wrapped in moral philosophy.
Tamsin keeps talking, her hands tightening on the strap of her quiver.
“I know what the Fighters Guild has done,” she says, voice rising, shaking in a way that betrays more heart than she likes anyone to notice. “I know they’ve hurt people, extorted whoever they want, taken bribes, beaten travellers, and worse. I know they deserve”
She stops, jaw clenching, breath stuttering. Her eyes flick to the frost again, as if afraid it might answer her.
“But going in there tonight…” She shakes her head once, sharply. “We’re not arresting anyone. We’re not confronting them. We’re… we’re wiping an entire bloody building off the map.”
My tail coils against the floor. Her fear spills off her like heat. It irritates me. It fascinates me. It tastes wrong in the cellar air.
She swallows, stepping closer to the centre of the room, boots crunching on frost cracked pebble. “I don’t know if I can stomach that,” she admits, quieter now. “I don’t know if I want to be the kind of person who can.”
I move before my mind even shapes the thought. My body is faster than my patience. My claws tap the stone rhythmically as I circle behind her, eyes narrowing, tail twitching in fast, warning flicks.
“You think your hands are clean,” I whisper, low enough to make her spine stiffen. “You think you’re made of something purer than the rest of us.”
She doesn’t turn. She knows better. She keeps her eyes on him. Only him.
“But you kill,” I continue, stepping beside her with feline silence. “You track. You ambush. You spill blood when it suits your little missions.”
My master lifts a hand faintly, not commanding me to stop, just acknowledging my presence, and Tamsin inhales like she might drown in the cold air.
He steps closer, boots soundless on the stone. His voice is a low current, steady and cynical, no judgement, just fact.
“Then don’t.”
The words strike harder than any threat.
Tamsin blinks, caught between relief and confusion.
He continues, tone growing sharper at the edges.
“If you don’t want to come, then don’t. I’m not dragging you into the dark by your hair. I won’t force you to kill for something you don’t believe in.”
She exhales shakily. It’s almost a sigh of relief. Almost.
“But,” he says, and the word is a blade sliding into the calm, “if you decide to come with us tonight… then you stand by it. You don’t flinch. You don’t pretend. You don’t hide behind some moral mask because the world likes pretty faces on ugly decisions.”
Tamsin’s breath catches.
He steps once more into the lantern’s light, the frost gleaming behind him like a ghost.
“You own your stance,” he says. “You look the truth in the eyes and decide who you are without lying about it.”
Her throat moves as she swallows.
“You’re asking me to be a monster,” she mutters.
I laugh. A BROKEN, delighted, MANIC ripple of sound. It bounces off the stone like something alive.
“No,” I purr, tail curling around my master’s leg, brushing his calf like a chain of devotion. “He’s asking you to stop pretending you aren’t already one.”
Tamsin rounds on me, anger flashing hot and clumsy. “I’m not like you.”
I tilt my head. Smile. Not kind.
“Good. The world couldn’t survive another me.”
He raises a hand, not to silence, but to guide the conversation like smoke between fingers.
“This isn’t about who you are,” he says. “It’s about what happens if we leave the Fighters Guild standing.”
He gestures toward the ceiling, where the muffled breaths of goblins shift in sleep.
“They’ll go after the Black Fang. They’ll go after Mire caravans. They’ll extort the Oakwood merchants. They’ll shake down every traveller on the road. And one day, they’ll pick the wrong person.”
A pause. Heavy. Sharp.
“And the corpse won’t be theirs.”
The cellar goes still. The frost on the stone seems to lean in toward his voice.
Tamsin’s eyes drop to her boots, her breath uneven. She’s thinking... and thinking is the most dangerous thing a ranger does. They follow their morals until they get lost in them. They follow their guilt until they drown in it.
I step into her space, close enough that she can feel my breath against her ear.
“You want to be good,” I whisper. “But goodness doesn’t keep anyone alive.”
My master speaks again, and even I fall quiet.
“Everyone wears masks,” he says, voice cold and tired. “Nobles. Mercenaries. Rangers. Guildmasters. Even you. The entire god damn world is one big falsehood. No one is real especially not those, upper classes at the top."
He steps past Tamsin, toward the frost, examining it with the same detached curiosity he applies to murder scenes and political ruptures.
“The only difference,” he murmurs, “is that I don’t.”
Tamsin lifts her eyes to him. Something in her expression cracks open, fear, respect, doubt, all bleeding together into something raw.
“And you want me to be like that?” she asks softly.
He turns, his coat shifting like a shadow sliding across old stone.
“No, I'm long broken, broken by a system claiming to be otherwise” he says. “I want you to choose. Not hide behind choice.”
The cellar holds its breath.
Tamsin stands very still, eyes flicking between him and the frost and the shadows curling behind my claws. Minutes pass. Maybe a lifetime. Then she exhales, a slow, trembling breath that sounds like a bowstring finally releasing.
She meets his gaze squarely, shoulders lifting, setting, bracing.
“I’ll come,” she says at last. “But only because you’re right. No masks. No pretending.”
My tail curls tight around my master’s leg, pleased, territorial, possessive.
He nods once. A small motion. But enough to reshape the room.
“Then armour up,” he says. “Dusk is waiting”
And in the cold cellar, with frost cracking the stone and the world trembling unseen above us, Tamsin accepts the monster she will have to be.
While I, always the blade at his heel, purr in quiet, dangerous approval.
