I stood there for a long moment, staring at the scene in front of me while my brain tried to catch up with whatever had just happened.

  Mouthy sat buried deep in the [Cleric]’s throat, wiggling happily like a dog that had just caught the stick someone threw. The blade shifted slightly from side to side while a soft, wet chewing sound echoed in the quiet street.

  “Okay,” I said slowly to absolutely nobody. “That’s new.”

  Something shifted inside the wound, and the chewing sound changed into something softer. It took me a second to place it.

  The damn dagger was purring.

  A low vibrating rumble came from the blade where it sat lodged in the [Cleric]’s throat, the sound eerily similar to a cat that had just been given exactly what it wanted. The vibration hummed faintly through the metal.

  I stared at the dagger.

  The edge of the two mouths along the blade puckered slightly, like they were pleased with themselves.

  “Right,” I muttered. “We are going to have a very serious conversation later.”

  The [Cleric] wasn’t moving anymore. The street had gone completely silent again except for the quiet chewing noises coming from my weapon.

  I looked up and down the road.

  Still empty.

  Good. Explaining this situation to anyone felt like the kind of conversation that ended with me being arrested, stabbed, or recruited into something terrible.

  That left me with the immediate issue.

  I really did not want to pull Mouthy out of the body. The last thirty seconds had made it painfully clear that the dagger now had opinions, and those opinions seemed to involve stabbing people and eating them.

  Unfortunately, leaving a corpse in the middle of the street also seemed like a poor long-term strategy.

  So I sighed, grabbed the [Cleric] under the arms, and started dragging.

  Dragging a body turned out to be much harder than movies made it look. The robes snagged on the stones every few feet, the sword clattered along behind us like a very judgmental wind chime, and the entire walk felt like an hour even though it was probably closer to ten minutes.

  Mouthy stayed right where he was the entire time, occasionally wiggling like he was enjoying the ride. The purring eventually stopped and shifted back into quiet chewing.

  Great. Love that for me.

  Eventually I reached Old Garen’s property and shoved open the barn door with my shoulder.

  The lantern inside was already lit.

  Old Garen stood near the center of the barn with his arms crossed, watching me with the expression of a man who had predicted trouble and was deeply annoyed to be correct.

  His eyes dropped to the body I was dragging across the floor.

  Then they slowly lifted back to me.

  He scratched at his beard and sighed.

  “I’ve been waiting for the day you tried bringing a woman back here,” he grumbled.

  He looked down at the corpse again.

  “But I swear to the gods, boy, I didn’t expect you to screw it up quite this badly.”

  The dagger handle wiggled slightly and the soft purring started up again.

  “It’s not—” I started.

  Garen raised a hand and fixed me with a look that could sand paint off a wall.

  “Start at the beginning.”

  “…and that’s when my dagger jumped out of its sheath and stabbed the [Cleric]. Then I dragged the body here, and you were already waiting.”

  We ended up sitting on a couple of old crates in the barn while I finished explaining the night. By the time I was done, the lantern light had settled into a steady glow and the barn had gone back to its usual quiet.

  Except for the occasional chewing sound.

  I glanced over at the body again. The handle of the dagger was still wiggling. Mouthy had made decent progress. A good portion of the [Cleric]’s throat was simply gone now, and the blade had moved from the upper throat down toward the lower part of the neck.

  I watched it for a second as the dagger shifted, wiggled, and pushed itself deeper before resuming its chewing.

  Then I looked back at Old Garen.

  “But yeah,” I said, shrugging weakly, “I didn’t really have a plan. I just wanted to get the body out of the street and then figure things out from there.”

  Garen stared at me.

  He took a very long breath.

  Then he pinched the bridge of his nose like he was trying to manually shut off whatever part of his brain was responsible for listening to me.

  “Alright,” he muttered. “Most of that I expected. Including some floozy trying to kill you.”

  He pointed at the corpse.

  “What in the nine hells is going on with the dagger?”

  I sighed.

  “So… I leveled up [Magic Mouth] pretty high,” I said. “High enough that I could use it as a spell and cast it on something.”

  Garen didn’t blink.

  “And I may have accidentally done that to the dagger.”

  That earned me a look. A long, tired look from a man trying to decide if the problem in front of him was stupidity, insanity, or both.

  “That,” he said slowly, pointing at the feasting dagger, “is not how [Magic Mouth] works.”

  “Well,” I hedged, “I might have used aluminum as the casting material.”

  The reaction was immediate.

  “You used aluminum?”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “Are you insane?”

  “How many coins?” he demanded. “Two? Three? Did you just stumble across a dead noble and strip the body?”

  “No,” I said carefully.

  He leaned forward.

  “How many?”

  “…a lot more than that.”

  He stared at me.

  “Like,” I continued, “a lot, lot more.”

  Silence filled the barn.

  “So,” I said, trying to soften the landing, “technically it was a full suit of aluminum armor.”

  More silence.

  “And there were some magic crystals involved.”

  Garen closed his eyes.

  He inhaled slowly.

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  Then he exhaled.

  The next thing I knew I was on the ground staring at the rafters.

  “Ah,” I said, grabbing my face.

  When my vision cleared I saw Garen pulling his fist back like nothing had happened.

  “Let’s go over that again,” he said calmly, sitting back down.

  “Right,” I muttered, rubbing my jaw.

  So I did. I told him about fighting the forest monster women, finding their trash heap, discovering the strange armor, the weird feeling it gave off, and experimenting with it until I accidentally cast [Magic Mouth].

  By the time I finished, Garen was staring at the floor.

  “What did the armor look like?” he asked finally.

  “Normal armor,” I said. “Except it had these designs carved into it. A bunch of trees and vines.”

  Garen looked up slowly. “Big jewel in the chest?”

  “Yes,” I said. “How did you know?”

  “So,” Garen said slowly, rubbing at his beard like it personally offended him, “about five years ago one of the Empire’s big shots went missing. Name was Hental. Class was [Witch Hunter].”

  I blinked. “[Witch Hunter]?” I asked. “Never heard of that class.”

  Garen snorted.

  “Of course you haven’t,” he said. “Its rare as hell. Anti-mage class. Magic barely works on them, and they’re almost as strong as a [Warrior]. Nasty combination if you’re on the wrong side of it.”

  He gave me a long look. “Very rare class,” he added. “Rarer than [Bard].”

  I chose not to rise to that bait.

  “Oh. So what happened to him?”

  “He disappeared,” Garen said flatly. “Came down this way hunting somebody and never came back.”

  He jerked his chin toward me.

  “And from the nonsense you just told me, I’m guessing he got on the wrong side of those Nymphs and you found his armor.”

  “Oh,” I said putting this together.

  “The [Emperor],” he said, rolling the word around in his mouth like it tasted bad, “has this habit of gifting special equipment to people he likes. Some speech about loyalty and legacy or whatever imperial drivel he was selling that year.”

  He scratched his beard again.

  “That suit had a jewel in it if I remember right. Power reservoir. Rare artifact. Something that gave the wearer damn near unlimited mana.”

  He looked at me carefully.

  “Now here’s the important bit. [Witch Hunter]s don’t usually have much mana. That’s the trade. They get magic resistance and brute strength, but their spell pool is garbage.”

  “That jewel fixed the weakness.”

  “Oh,” I said again.

  Garen scowled at me.

  “You say ‘oh’ one more time and I’m throwing you back out into the street.”

  “Right,” I said quickly.

  He pointed at the dagger again.

  “You should not have had the mana to burn that much aluminum as a casting component,” he continued. “Not even close. You’re limited by your mana pool, and unless you’ve been secretly leveling for the last hundred years you’re nowhere near that.”

  He leaned forward.

  “My guess? That jewel pulled power from the armor and shoved it straight through you while you were casting. Let you crank [Magic Mouth] up to a level it was never meant to reach.”

  He gestured at the dagger.

  “And you used it on a knife.”

  “Oh,” I said again before I could stop myself.

  Garen closed his eyes briefly like a man asking the universe for patience.

  “So what does that mean?” I asked quickly before he could hit me again. “I know I made something weird. I know it’s probably valuable. But what does that actually mean?”

  Garen didn’t answer immediately.

  Instead he stared at the dagger still happily wiggling in the corpse.

  “Does it listen to you?” he asked finally.

  “Yeah,” I said. “So far.”

  “Then stop gawking and go get it.”

  I walked over to the body and crouched down beside it. Mouthy was still happily chewing when I grabbed the handle.

  The moment my fingers touched it, the dagger paused.

  The feeling reminded me of petting a dog that was extremely focused on destroying a chew toy. It still wanted the toy, but it noticed you were there.

  I took a slow breath, and thought a command.

  Let go

  Then I pulled.

  The dagger resisted for a moment like it didn’t want to stop eating. Then it reluctantly slid free.

  As I lifted it into the lantern light, both tongues wrapped around the blade and began licking up the blood, slowly cleaning it.

  I carried it back to Garen carefully, holding it like someone walking with a candle they really did not want to spill.

  Garen leaned forward and inspected the blade from both sides, squinting at the mouths along the metal. After a moment he leaned back and reached into a satchel hanging from his belt. He pulled out what looked like a tightly rolled cigarette.

  Then he leaned forward and held it near the dagger. The paper suddenly flared bright blue, burned in a flash, and vanished.

  “Holy shit,” I said. “What was that?”

  “[Identify] scroll,” Garen grumbled.

  He flicked the empty ash away and scratched at his beard again.

  “Rare things,” he grumbled. “Single-use spell. Even idiots can use them.”

  He looked straight at me when he said that.

  “Hey—” I started.

  He squinted at me like a man deciding whether it was worth the effort to punch me again. I thought about finishing that sentence for exactly half a second before deciding my jaw was still sore enough for the night.

  “So what did [Identify] tell you?” I asked instead.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  I blinked.

  “Nothing?”

  “Well,” he amended with a dismissive wave of his hand, “it says it’s a Celestial Ivory dagger. Which is rare enough by itself.”

  I leaned forward a little.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Really?” I said. “It didn’t even show the [Magic Mouth]?”

  “Nope,” he said flatly.

  Garen scratched at his beard again, frowning harder now.

  “That’s the strange part,” he muttered. “That should absolutely show up.”

  He gave the dagger another annoyed look, like it had personally chosen to inconvenience him.

  “Stupid thing’s hiding something.”

  “So what does that mean?” I asked.

  Garen didn’t answer right away. He just stared at the dagger for a long moment, scratching at his beard like it had personally offended him.

  “Well,” he said finally, “if I didn’t know better, I’d say you’ve got yourself a mimic.”

  I blinked.

  “Really?”

  “Don’t get excited,” he grumbled. “Usually mimics try to kill anything that gets remotely close to them. If that thing was a normal mimic you’d have woken up one morning missing a hand… or a throat.”

  He jabbed a finger toward the dagger.

  “The fact that you’ve been carrying it around this long and you’re still breathing says something’s different.”

  He leaned back slightly, still studying it.

  “If I didn’t know better,” he continued, “I’d say it was something a [Beast Master] bonded with. Or maybe something another class managed to tame.”

  He waved a hand dismissively.

  “Though those situations usually apply to normal animals. Wolves. Lions. Things like that. A mimic would typically be considered too monstrous.”

  He pointed at the dagger again.

  “And in those cases you’d normally see the creature’s name and level floating over it. That’s not happening here.”

  Garen shifted his attention back to me.

  “You said you didn’t get any experience when the [Assassin] or the [Cleric] died?”

  I thought about it for a moment.

  “No,” I said. “Nothing.”

  “Hmmm,” Garen muttered.

  He looked back at the dagger again.

  “Sounds like it got those points. Means it's probably growing”

  “Crap,” I said. “What do I do?”

  Garen shrugged and turned toward the house.

  “Whatever you want,” he muttered. “It’s late. Past this old man’s bedtime.”

  He started toward the barn entrance.

  “Hold on,” I called after him. “Do I need to get rid of the dagger?”

  He waved a hand behind him without turning around.

  “The fact that it hasn’t killed you yet is a good sign,” he said. “Looks to me like you’ve got yourself a secret pet mimic.”

  He glanced back over his shoulder.

  “Congratulations.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  That sounded… concerning.

  I sighed and resigned myself to whatever that meant. Then I glanced over at the body.

  “The body,” I said. “What should we do with that?”

  “Hmmm,” Garen replied.

  He stopped, turned, and reached into another pouch on his belt. A moment later he pulled out something that looked like a short wand.

  “Did you loot it yet?” he asked.

  That question hit me like a bucket of cold water.

  “Oh—shit.”

  I hurried over to the corpse. The [Cleric]’s eyes stared lifelessly upward, the majority of her throat missing thanks to Mouthy’s enthusiastic work. I tried not to think about that part while quickly patting her down.

  Coin purse.

  Something that felt like a folded wallet.

  Good enough.

  I grabbed them and stepped away.

  The moment I cleared the area, Garen lifted the wand and flicked it forward.

  A jet of flame burst from the tip and struck the body.

  The corpse ignited instantly and vanished in a violent poof of thick gray smoke that smelled like rotting garbage.

  “Ah—” I coughed, waving the smoke away. “Well. That’s convenient.”

  Garen grunted.

  “Anyway,” he said, already turning back toward the house. “Past my bedtime. And frankly I’m done thinking about this nonsense.”

  He paused at the door.

  “Anything else?”

  “…You okay with me still staying here?” I asked.

  He waved a hand dismissively.

  “Do what you want. I’m not stopping you.”

  With that he disappeared inside.

  I stood there for a moment, staring at the patch of ground where the body had been. A small scatter of ash was all that remained. He was a scary guy… but he still seemed to like me.

  That counted for something.

  I looked down at Mouthy and sighed. Then I gathered my things, slung the guitar over my back, and climbed up into the rafters where I had built my little sleeping area in the hay.

  I sat down. Lantern light from the street filtered through the cracks in the barn boards, casting long stripes across the beams.

  I set the dagger down in front of me and looked at it.

  “All right, Mouthy,” I said quietly. “I don’t know what you are. But you saved my life tonight.”

  The dagger sat there.

  “I don’t know how to repay you,” I continued. “But I think I want to keep you around.”

  I hesitated for a moment, then reached forward and gently patted the handle like I was petting a strange metal dog.

  The lips along the blade curled slightly.

  “I will try to look out for you and get whatever you need, as long as you try to do the same for me,” I said. “Deal?”

  I kept patting the handle and waited.

  Nothing happened. After another second I sighed.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s try that again, simpler.” I leaned forward slightly.

  “You be good to me, and I’ll be good to you. Okay?”

  Still nothing. I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting.

  I leaned back against the beam and sat there for a moment thinking. For some reason my hands drifted toward the guitar.

  I picked it up, rested it on my knee, and started strumming softly. The melody came back easily, an old favorite that had lived in my head for years.

  I found myself drifting into a slow, stripped-down acoustic version of the old disco song “Rasputin”. The original had been loud and ridiculous, full of energy and clapping and that infectious rhythm everyone knew. What I was playing was… not that.

  I slowed it way down.

  The chords were softer, the rhythm loose, and I leaned into the almost chant-like repetition of the chorus.

  Ra-Ra Rasputin…

  The words echoed quietly through the rafters while I strummed.

  Ra-Ra Rasputin…

  I stretched the lines longer than they were meant to be, letting the melody wander as my fingers moved across the strings. It wasn’t really about playing the song correctly anymore. It was just something familiar. Something steady. A way to settle my nerves and push the rest of the night out of my head.

  For a while the barn held nothing but the quiet guitar and my voice bouncing softly off the beams. Eventually the last chord faded.

  I sat there for a moment, letting the silence settle again before setting the guitar beside me.

  Then I glanced over at Mouthy. The dagger hadn’t moved.

  It just sat there on the plank in front of me like a perfectly normal knife that definitely had not spent the last hour eating someone’s throat.

  I smiled, just a gentle laugh at what this world is. I slid the guitar a little farther aside and started getting ready to lie down.

  That’s when I heard a sound like low wind coming through a straw. I glanced over and it was coming from the dagger.

  One of the small lips along the blade twitched.

  Then, in a faint whisper that sounded like someone figuring out how to use their voice for the first time, the word formed.

  “o…k…ey.”

  Yeah… Mouthy is basically a mimic.