I blinked into the forest, but I didn't stop. I blinked again and again until I felt my head start to hurt. Then I stopped, dropped from the massive tree branch I was on, took a few unstable steps, fell to my knees, and began to cry.

  I shuddered and my mind raced with everything. It was all too much, but I couldn't let it show. I was a great ninja! I was trained by the Sword Master Ninja himself! I couldn't be weak. I had to show strength and positivity.

  I wiped my tears, attempting to stand up, only to fall again. My head spun. The revelations just kept coming and coming and coming. I was a princess?! I was royalty?! Saki, who had literally been trying to trick me into helping her, suddenly cares and is my best friend?

  I felt it inside my soul. It all felt so strange. What was going on? Sensei said the world would be hard and I would face a lot. But I had just started!

  Nobody seemed to realize I could hear them. I could hear Saki talking to Talia in the hallway. I saw the way the guild looked at me. I wasn't stupid! I was just... I was just... afraid.

  The word sunk in and I shook my head. NO, I wasn't afraid. Tama did not get afraid. she was the greatest ninja! The words felt hollow in my mind as I felt like I was going to throw up.

  After a moment, I pulled out the small shield and looked at its surface. I couldn't read what it actually said, but I knew anyway. "Fuyuki Tamaneko: Third Person Tempest." Third Person Tempest. I thought of those words over and over.

  Did Saki truly see me that way? I admit, I was a bit... rash in my actions sometimes. But I didn't think I was this tempest! A destructive force of nature? It was true, at the time I had accepted it. I felt... safe around Saki. Every single training instinct told me that Saki was dangerous, that she was going to stab me in the back.

  But something... deeper... told me she was trustworthy, at least to me. That I could trust her with my life. The conflict was hard to understand, but I needed... someone... to help me.

  So I chose her, and while she had lied to me and tricked me, she had only done so in a way to help me. She was right, I didn't want to be royalty... I sniffled as that whole thing reared its ugly head.

  I was a princess?! What kind of insanity was that? I was trained my entire life in a forest in seclusion to be a ninja, and before that... before that... I shook my head clear of the memories.

  I took a few deep calming breaths as I recalled Sensei's training. Putting myself into a meditative stance, I closed my eyes and felt nature around me. Deep, calm, endless. That was nature, that was life. A never-ending cycle, meant to be protected and harmonized with.

  I felt my anxiety fade and my fears simmer to a cool heat. They weren't gone, I knew I was going to have to face them at some point. But that day was not today.

  Sensei had warned me of letting emotions simmer instead of solving them. Perhaps he was right, but Sensei was not here to fix my problems. I had to fix them alone, and I didn't know how to do that.

  As I sat there, in slow, quiet breathing meditation, I heard it before I felt it. Growling, the almost silent sound of footsteps, pawed footsteps. I kept my eyes closed as I heard them surround me. They considered themselves stealthy.

  Nothing got past me though, ever. I heard the one on the right suddenly leap from the ground. In one swift motion, I unsheathed Serenity and stabbed forward in the direction.

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  I felt the impact and immediately swerved as I narrowly dodged the second creature. Eyes still closed, with a sharp jerk of Serenity, I felt the weight slip away as the corpse thudded to the ground.

  I ducked as the third one flew over my head and attached a water chain to my dagger before throwing it to the right at the approaching footsteps. The sound of a whine and a collapsing body signaled another down.

  Based on my estimations, three left. I jerked the water chain and the dagger flew back to me. I caught it as I swerved to the right, twisting as I stabbed down. I impacted something, another high-pitched whine and another body hitting the ground.

  Two. I summoned my veil right as one of the remaining managed to hit me from behind. I smiled as it made contact, simply spinning in a one-eighty arc and pushing my bare hand against its fur. A sharp dagger made of water formed out of my hand, impaling the creature in its chest.

  The water dagger faded right as I stepped back, ducking in time to dodge the last one as it flew over me. I put away my real dagger and grabbed Serenity in both hands again.

  Eyes still closed, I used a mixture of my wind and shot water into the air around me. I sped up the water to quicker and quicker speeds. I felt the whistling of the water as it sped around me at alarming speeds.

  Then I heard it, the sound of a body hitting the barrier and bouncing off. I dropped the barrier and slashed in the direction. I made contact and the slice was clean. The last body fell to the ground.

  I waited, perking my ears up. Tail on standby as I listened carefully for anything. Silence filled the forest, the predators that had attacked me having scared off the local wildlife.

  Slowly, I stood and sheathed Serenity, putting her back in her sheath before slowly opening my eyes. Around me, five wolves lay dead, each stabbed or cut by one of my blades. My eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  Wolves weren't normally in this part of the forest, unless I had gone deeper than I thought, which wasn't likely. Even in turmoil, I always knew my way around this forest. Massive though it was, it had been my home my entire life.

  I walked over to one of the wolves and looked closely at it. It looked hungry, like it had not eaten in weeks. I frowned at that. Normally the wolves were well fed by the local wildlife. Things were not adding up.

  I decided I should investigate. I looked at the wolves' corpses for a moment before shaking my head. I would have to come back later. If another carnivore got them first, well, it wasn't like I was overly hungry.

  I jumped into one of the trees' upper branches and began jumping from tree to tree, sprinting in the direction the wolves had come from originally.

  I didn't blink as I needed to keep my senses open. My ears remained perked up and my tail swayed in the breeze, helping me navigate better and keep my balance.

  I didn't get very far before the smell hit me. A stench so strong it made me scrunch my nose. It was so painful. It reminded me of... I tripped on a branch as my mother's dead eyes flashed into my vision and I fell from the tree, catching myself by stabbing my dagger into the tree. I climbed back up and sat there for a moment.

  It was undeniable… I knew that smell. That was the smell of the horrible things that had killed my family. My mother's dead eyes played in my head again, her face a picture of horror. Tears filled my eyes but I wiped them away.

  Rage filled me, but I calmed myself with deep breaths. This part of the forest was normally protected by my Sensei. It was the outer edge, but it was an area he patrolled regularly. Surely, he would have noticed this smell?

  This was all kinds of wrong on so many levels. There was no way Sensei would have been unaware. That made a shiver run down my spine. There were only three possibilities that Sensei wasn't here fixing this.

  The first was that he simply had been and it took time to heal. This one felt the least likely, and the most hopeful one I had.

  The second option was that he simply didn't think to fix the problem. This one was not only heavily unlikely, but extremely against my Sensei's nature.

  Which left the third option, and the one that I didn't even want to consider. That whatever had done this... NO. He wouldn't have died like this. That couldn't have happened.

  Even so, I had to admit it was the most likely scenario from a logical perspective. Sensei would have never let this happen if he were alive. Fear began to ebb into me at an alarming rate.

  I couldn't take it anymore. Sensei had told me to never return, but I had to know. Something was very wrong. I would just pop in for a quick look and leave before he noticed me. In and out! I could do it, right?