I got lost again.

  By the time I finally found my way back to the fountain by the front gate the sun was only the barest sliver of reddish orange on the horizon.

  Cassie had of course beaten me there, likely by some time if the impatient foot-tapping and crossed arms were anything to go by.

  “You got lost, didn’t you.” She stated as I approached.

  I rubbed the back of my neck subconsciously. “It is a big place…”

  Cassie smirked. “Well, luckily for you it’s still technically sunset, so you’re fine.” She nodded to the dying light of the horizon. “Did you at least find your library?”

  “Yep. Found some good stuff, too. Oh, we might need to check out the Healer’s Guild when we make it to Meria.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged. “I was looking for some stuff about biology, for my…” I glanced in either direction to check if anyone was looking, before quickly flashing my eyes through a dozen colours. “Magic. Anyway, apparently the library wasn’t allowed to have much because the Healer’s Guild has it all.”

  By the time I was done with my explanation Cassie wasn’t even paying attention. Rather, she was completely focused on stifling laughter, to the extent that she had one hand raised in front of her mouth and her face had gone a little red.

  “What?” I asked, which finally broke the dam and had her laughing in the middle of the street, clutching my shoulder for support. We got more than a few looks from passers by, and one of the gate guards even turned to see what was so funny.

  “Oh, dear me. Honestly Lia…” Cassie gasped when she finally began to pull herself together. “Honey, I don’t think you could have looked more suspicious if you tried!”

  I thought back over my actions, flushing slightly as I realised what she meant. “Y-yeah? Well, I couldn’t exactly just say it, could I?”

  Cassie shook her head. “Why not? It’s not like anybody’s paying attention to our conversation specifically.” She looked around to see multiple people watching our conversation turn away suddenly. “Well, they weren’t.”

  “Maybe we should go somewhere else,” I suggested.

  Cassie perked up, grabbing my hand and striding off even as she spoke. “Oh yeah! I found this great place, you’ll love it!”

  The next several minutes saw Cassie drag me through increasingly disreputable parts of town, having had apparently the opposite journey to me as she progressed through Perch earlier today. The building grew smaller and yet more occupied, and seemed to be in worse condition too.

  I saw several people eye the two of us up as we walked, although for some reason their gazes lingered on Cassie. Not with greed or hunger, but… fear?

  What have you been up to Cass?

  Eventually Cassie took a sharp turn into a very dark, cramped alley. The light of the stars was completely blocked out by overhanging rooftops, and the alley itself was barely two people in width.

  A man walked out of the gloom, his hand on a small knife that hung clearly on his belt. He was a plain-looking man, like somebody had taken an average of all the men who lived in Perch and based him on the results. Nonetheless, he was plenty intimidating in this cramped alleyway. I gripped Cassie’s hand a little tighter.

  “Miss Cassandra. This way,” he grunted, before turning on his heel and sauntering back down the alley.

  “Thanks Roger!” Cassie chirped. She spoke like she was being served at a restaurant, not being lead down what had to be the most suspicious alley in the entire city.

  With Roger guiding us we made several more sudden twists and turns, enough that I doubted I could make it back alone. It somehow got even darker, to the extent that I was tempted to apply something I’d seen in my book about the eyes of some nocturnal monsters. I held off for now, mostly because I didn’t want to risk being blind if something happened.

  “Where are we going?” I whispered to Cassie.

  “I told you, I found us a place to stay. It’s free!” She added, as though that made this completely reasonable.

  “How did you even find this place? And who is that guy?”

  “That’s Roger. And I’ll tell you how it happened when we get there, it’s a bit of a story.”

  “Sum it up for me,” I hissed.

  “Alright, alright. No need to get impatient. Basically, some guy called Skinner tried to rob me.”

  I waited for Cassie to elaborate, but she said no more. I took it into my own hands. “And?”

  “Well, it didn’t work. Obviously. Now he owes us, so he’s paying for our stay at the ‘safest place in town’. It is rather nice, in its own way. Real close-knit community.”

  Dear gods, she’s taking me to a criminal underworld.

  I sighed. “You’re sure it’s safe?”

  “Yep!” She grinned. “I made sure that Skinner knew exactly what would happen to him if he tried anything. We don’t have anything to worry about.”

  ...Nevermind, Cassie might be the scariest person here.

  We finally breached the gloom, light from several of this strange street lights washing over us. We appeared to be underground somehow, even though I didn’t remember going down at any point. I was hit by the sudden noise as the cramped pathway opened up into a bustling market that seemed far too active for the time of day (or night).

  There were shops, stalls and homes down here. I had been expecting some kind of underbelly of corruption or vicious criminal organisation, given that we’d gotten here by being lead through the darkest alley ever by a man with a knife.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Roger continued to lead us, now far less intimidating without the alley to hide his mundane appearance. I was sure that his dagger was smaller in the blue glow of the bustling marketplace.

  With Roger to clear a path through the crowds we made good time, eventually coming to a stop at a surprisingly well-kept establishment that was literally called the Safest Place in Town. Roger grunted and wandered off, his work done.

  “This… isn’t what I was expecting,” I admitted.

  “I know right? Who would’ve known all this was down here?” Cassie turned to me, her eyes glittering in the lights. “Isn’t it great?”

  “It’s certainly something,” I muttered. “Is this where we’re staying?”

  “Mhm!” Cassie started off towards The Safest Place in Town, dragging me along with her. I still wasn’t sure about this place, but at the very least it seemed like Cassie had it all in hand. I may not trust our surroundings, but I trusted her.

  Cassie pushed open the doors and we were greeted by a surprisingly low-energy inn. Once again my expectations had been subverted. I’d been thinking of bar-fights and a room full of drunk people. There were in reality maybe five other people here, including the bartender.

  Cassie bounced over to the bar and finally let go of my hand to place both on the counter-top. “Hey Ron. I’m back!” Somehow she made it sound like she’d been a regular here for years.

  Ron, a bald man in a casual outfit, was doing as all bartenders did when they spoke to customers and washing an already immaculate mug. “Miss Cassandra! I see you brought your friend with you.”

  “Hi,” I said simply. You couldn’t go wrong with ‘hi’, after all. Probably.

  “Could we have the key to our room please Ron?” Cassie asked.

  Ron placed down his mug and turned, trailing his fingers along a series of keys that hung on the wall behind him. Hanging right next to the keys was a worn broadsword, which sent a pretty clear message.

  Eventually he selected one from the rack, a small key that had the number ‘104’ engraved on it. He handed it to Cassie, who slipped it into a pocket without even looking.

  “Second door on your right, first floor. Have a nice night, you two.”

  “Thanks Ron!” Cassie responded, before wandering in the direction of the stairs.

  “Thank you, Ron.” I hesitated for a moment before following after Cassie. I couldn’t lie, I was more than a little tired after trying to gather so much information earlier.

  I trudged up the stairs, pausing at the top to take in the corridor. The hallway itself was quite cosy, although it was cast in the same blue light as the street, which made it seem a lot more mystical than it was. I was used to the orange light of a fire, so these blue lights were a little strange.

  I made my way about halfway down the hall to where Cassie had helpfully decided to leave the door to our room open. I staggered inside, closing the door as I went before collapsing on the nearest bed to the door.

  “Tired?” Cassie asked from behind me.

  “How did you know?” I mumbled into the mattress.

  I heard Cassie chuckle behind me. “All that reading was tough work then, was it?”

  I rolled onto my back to take a breath. “Uh huh. Densest book I’ve ever read. Worth it though. I have so many ideas.”

  Cassie sat on her own bed actually dressed for the occasion, unlike myself. I considered doing something about that, but elected to deal with the consequences in the morning. Now that I had an actual bed in reach it was dawning on me how tired I was.

  “Night Cass,” I muttered.

  “Goodnight, Lia.”

  -----------------------------

  That morning I woke strangely rested. After a moment I registered that I was sleeping on a proper bed, not the cold ground. In fact, this bed was far nicer than the bed I had at home. It was genuinely soft, with a pillow full of feathers and a duvet I’d manoeuvred myself into at some point during the night.

  I just lay still, soaking in the creature comforts of our room until I heard the door open. I twisted around until the doorway was in view to reveal Cassie leant against the open door, a small smirk on her face.

  “Good sleep?” She asked.

  “Yep. I think I’ll stay here. You go off and be a big name adventurer or whatever, you’ll know where to find me.”

  I turned back over, snuggling back into the softness that surrounded me. After a few seconds I heard the creak of the floorboards as Cassie closed the distance. I could feel her presence, her warmth and life a beacon in my mind’s eye. She was clearly in a good mood, because she smelled like morning dew and sounded like the chirp of summer birds. The soothing sensation was almost enough to lull me back to sleep.

  Betrayal came without warning.

  Cassie yanked the duvet off my curled form, exposing me to the relative chill of the open air. My eyes shot open as I reactively grabbed the duvet, wresting it from Cassie’s grasp and hiding from the cruel bite of the morning.

  Cassie’s cruel cackle echoed through the room before it was cut off.

  “...Lia? What’s with the hand?”

  I reluctantly raised my head above the covers. “What do you mean?”

  Cassie just nodded to my right hand, the one that I’d grabbed the duvet with. Each finger was tipped with the same alabaster chitin as I’d used to extract the Gloom Stalker’s fangs, albeit in a different shape. Rather than thin and tapered, these protrusions were long, sharp and slightly curved. Notably weapons, rather than tools. Built for slicing things.

  “Huh,” was all I had to say. I hadn’t even noticed. Out of curiosity I pressed my new talons to the duvet, easily tearing a few holes in fabric. It felt strangely good, a primal kind of satisfaction akin to hitting something really hard.

  I shifted my fingers back to normal, before reverting back to claws again. The change was fast, a fraction of a second. Easily the quickest I’d shifted anything even nearly that size.

  I tilted my head in thought. I shifted the rest of my fingers to be covered in the same alabaster chitin, taking a few seconds to adapt the design of an arachne’s exoskeleton to the approximate shape of my fingers. It took a while, but nowhere near as long as I would have expected. Maybe fifteen seconds, including the new design.

  Okay, so I can confidently say I’m getting faster. More fluid too, I didn’t even realise my fingers were different.

  “You good? You’ve got your intense face on,” Cassie remarked.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah I’m fine. I’m quick, look!” I raised my hand and shifted my fingers back and forth between clawed and normal a few times in quick succession. Technically I was being a bit wasteful, since I was creating new mass and thus using some vitae here. It wasn’t much though, and I still had plenty from the Gloom Stalker.

  “Woah. You are fast. You’ll never be unarmed again.”

  I paused. “...Was that a hand pun?”

  “It was now,” Cassie retorted without missing a beat. She glanced out the window I had definitely noticed was there before this point. “Come on, we should probably get moving. We have to meet Skinner soon.”

  “Wait, Skinner? The guy who tried to rob you?”

  “Yeah he owes me now, remember? Try to keep up. Now come on. They have a bath here.”

  I shook my head and sighed. This was an unerringly Cassie thing to do. At least I could be clean while we met with the robber. “Coming, mother.”

  I looked back up to see Cassie standing in the doorway again, a supremely unimpressed look on her face.

  I winced. “Yeah, that may have been in bad taste. I’ll be down in a few. They do have a bath after all.”

  Cassie smirked and walked backwards out of the door, leaving me alone with my sins.

  Now, where to find a bathroom in this place.

  a lot more, so I hope you all look forward to that!