—Orion—

  I woke up much earlier than I usually would, the urge to sneeze was itchy enough to rouse me from sleep. I barely restrained the loud reflex before I could fully shake off the numbing effect of sleep—my trained reaction to waking up was pretending I was still asleep.

  But the carefully softened sound of reeds being ripped apart, and the dust that had coated my face were too hard to ignore to go back to sleep. It sounded like something was trying to get into our room by digging through the thatched roof, and at first I assumed it was a wild animal. The noise I heard reminded me of claws scratching at bark.

  I opened my eyes, moving slowly to avoid alerting any potential threats, and saw the roof above me swollen and weighed down. The thatching had gained a brand new dip in its shape right above my bed. I could see the tips of claws occasionally piercing through the layer of straw, and it was making quick progress.

  The monster had found us. About to attempt an ambush while we slept. I felt agitated that my prey was trying to reverse the situation on us—anything trying to hunt me really—but its sudden confidence concerned me more. It had spent the past couple of days fleeing from the very sight of us, why change tactics now? I was beginning to find that this creature’s unpredictable behaviour annoyed and worried me.

  I slipped out of bed and picked up my bow, stringing it while never taking my eyes off of the beast's rapid progress creating a breach in our roof. Once ready, I looked at Sally, who was currently sleeping on the table. After the events of yesterday, she'd made it clear that he wanted more space from me.

  I debated whether to arouse him, as he'd probably react loudly if I woke him up wrong. But he was very excited about hunting this monster, and he would be irritated if I fought it without him. Even if he still perplexed me daily, I knew that much for certain.

  I crept over to the cut cloth the dragon was sleeping on, and gently nudged his side. I had to resist the growing urge to poke him harder when he failed to wake up after the first few attempts. The cannibal was frustratingly close to breaking through, and I was losing time I couldn't afford to waste.

  When Sally eventually woke up, I panicked as he began to yawn, letting out a loud squeak. I quickly hushed him with my hands as he continued, but his half-conscious mind paid my panic no heed. So I grabbed his mouth and forced it shut with a couple of fingers, and the manhandling was enough to anger Sally into fully waking up.

  The noise was enough for the beast to pause its digging. That moment of hesitation almost led me to think that we had ruined the perfect opportunity to attack it. Both Sally and I froze as we waited for it to decide its next action, and I restrained the sigh of relief that wanted to seep out of me when it resumed its digging. But it was much slower and hesitant than before.

  I gestured with my head towards the source of the digging as I let go of Sally’s snout. After a few seconds of thinking, the dragonling silently nodded, thankfully understanding the situation without needing me to explain anything further—or rightfully getting annoyed with me for the sudden touching of his face.

  After waiting a short time for the situation to settle, I decided to continue with my original plan of attack and offered Sally my head. He paused for a second to stare at my face, and then took my offer—I couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking. Though that urge was nothing new. While I may have the assistance of the Path when it comes to his emotions, how he navigates them was still a mystery to me.

  I moved towards the entrance of the house. I had decided to shoot at it from outside of the cottage rather than the inside. While it may be simpler to wait inside and strike it when it pushes its way in, it would be hard to do anything productive when it crashes through and caves the roof in with it. Hard to attack anything with a bow in such close quarters, let alone with debris and large objects falling on you.

  Once at the front door, I attempted to carefully open it, but flinched when its hinges loudly squealed. It felt like a joke that I failed to understand, but I could still realise that it was meant to make people laugh at me. Every previous time I’d opened the door, it hadn't squeaked once, smooth and silent. The rusty metal hinge must only squeak if it’s rotated slowly.

  I burst out the rest of the way as fast as I could. The element of surprise was lost, so the best option I had left was attempting to attack before the wendigo could recover from its surprise. I took a few leaping steps out of the building before falling to a knee, getting the bare minimum distance I needed to see over the roof’s edge to spot the monster on top. My left shin was scraped raw as I used it to soften my landing, as the contact helped me turn and steady myself far faster than I could've done standing.

  As I skidded to a stop, I raised my bow and willed an arrow onto its string. I drew the weapon back as I assessed my target. The monster was in the middle of reacting to our noisy charge out into the open, ripping its head out of the thick layer of thatching as it struggled to unsheathe its claws from the straw.

  In the split-second I took to observe it, I saw that it had grown to a truly terrifying size, its body had been stretched to eight—almost nine—feet tall. Most of that growth had manifested in its arms and legs, but not in the normal sense of the word 'grow'. It was like it'd been stretched on a medieval torture rack, a piece of cheese pulled until it's a long, thin string on the verge of snapping.

  The cloak that'd once been big enough to fully cover its body was now undersized. The swathes of cloth that'd once swamped its feet now couldn't even cover its shins, making it look like an adult wearing a child's cloak. The fabric couldn't cover its face fully either—which allowed me to see some puffs of a stained off-white material that lined the insides of its hood.

  But the head, it was utterly inhuman. With only the darkness of the hours preceding the return of the sun, I could make out its spindly snout, the snarling lips revealing a maw of messy fangs. The blackened and yellow teeth were so cramped in the undersized jaw they couldn't sit straight, instead jutting out at awkward angles that'd need decades of braces to fix.

  It had eerily yellow eyes that peered out from under its hood, glowing by themselves, given that there was no natural light nearby for them to reflect. Somehow—even with all of the victims I'd known it'd eaten—it still looked like a wild animal on the verge of perishing from starvation. A mangy wolf—a starving, half-dead, half-rotted, abomination of a wolf.

  But in the moment I didn't have nor spare the time needed to analyse its appearance, I was aiming for its chest and about to fire when it turned to look at me. However, as I released the bowstring, it began to flee, reacting to our presence in the opposite way I’d expected. I can admit that it was an educated guess that it would charge at us, but I had not considered that it would flee immediately. That line of thought was one based on experience and my observation of this creature’s behaviours, not an assumption. I still felt the need to explain myself, even if the person who had created that habit was no longer here.

  But that sudden change in its behaviour only would've meant that my arrow wouldn't hit the centre of its chest like I wanted. It still should've landed in its torso.

  Though, that was not the only thing to go wrong.

  During my wild dive into position, I'd forgotten about Sally. Even though the arrow was halfway through the process of being shot, the dragon's sudden slip off of my head and onto my face made it worse. The sudden distraction was enough to deviate the projectile's endpoint even more.

  I wasn't able to see it land, or watch the monster flee, but I heard both its roar of pain, and its scrabbling over the rooftops. But I was far more panicked by the sudden mass of clouds coating my vision and the claws scratching my face.

  "Soh-ry!" He whispered in my ear, his talons clinging to each corner of my face to avoid falling to the floor. His body and the puff of clouds covered my face completely.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  I pulled Sally off of my head and rubbed away the green-tinged mist that'd clung to my face like cobwebs. I plopped Sally down onto the floor next to me as I spotted the newly named Wendigo Walker flee over the roof-tops, my arrow firmly lodged in its upper right arm.

  With the threat dealt with for now, I allowed myself to relax, and immediately noticed how… limp I felt, both physically and mentally. As I realised that I had a strange litany of sensations travelling through me—one that’d originated from Sally—I noted that we would have to train sometime in the near future. Or at the very least discuss strategies, because another accident like this one could prove fatal.

  "What was in that cloud?" I asked, coughing out a few wisps of smoke as I wondered why I suddenly wanted to pick Sally up.

  "N-hew skill. It—uh, gives my other st-huff new effects." Sally stammered out, keeping a close eye on me as I looked at her. I felt a sensation come over me as I stared at her scales, the iridescent silver mirrors reflecting non-existent gold-tinged light.

  "L-het's go back inside." Sally interrupted my admiration of her treasure-covered body.

  I stood up and followed her—him back inside, and collapsed onto the bed the moment it was in sight. I wriggled into the bedsheets, burying myself into the blanket as I tried to recapture my yawns. Usually I would have to struggle much more to get back to sleep, but something about it only being an hour or two past midnight—and whatever Sally did to me—made it much easier to reclaim my drowsiness.

  "Sally?" I asked while face-down in my mattress. I turned to look at Sally, who had paused his own bedtime ritual at my muffled word.

  "Yes?"

  "Why did you give your cloud [Reduced Inhibitions], and… [Charmed], effects?" I asked while rereading the Path notification. I don't see why either effect would be beneficial against a giant beast. Unless you wished to lower its guard?

  "Oh… Ah… Well, I wanted to put s-homething else on it before I used it on the monst-her, but I haven't quite figured out contr-holling what effect." Sally said as she curled up, facing away from me and towards the wall.

  "Wait… Are you [Charmed] right now?" Sally asked, and I nodded.

  "Yes." I eventually answered aloud, realising after a few seconds that Sally wasn't looking at me. Which I… did not… I wanted to change that?

  "How?—no wait, what does it feel like?" Sally said after stuttering a few times.

  "I don't know. I don’t think I’m too different from normal?" I hesitantly answered, unsure about my own mental state. Though, that isn't unusual. But as I investigated my own murky feelings, I realised that my mind was more… intent on thinking about Sally than usual. While it was not operating differently than it typically did, it did seem that I was more focused on the things I tried to self-manage into ignoring.

  "Actually… Your scales are much… More noticeable." I barely managed to articulate, her iridescent scales were catching my attention every time I looked.

  "Oh? Tell me m-hore about. About the eff-hects!" Sally mumbled.

  "They're like... a pile silver. Shining, precious, priceless… Pretty. They make your wings beautiful too, I like watching them when you train your flying skill." I continued, spotting Sally shift and preen her wings at the compliment.

  "I guess it amplifies the things I… like—enjoy—no… Uhm… It’s hard to say… the things I already appreciated about you? It takes my mental image of you from just being… Sally, and makes me remember that you’re Sally the dragoness that's… pretty to look at. I guess. " I eventually said, struggling to verbalise what I’d noticed about the change in my thoughts. It did feel strange that my feelings were being manipulated, but I felt unable to care too much about the intoxication that the skill had given me.

  All the things I’d mentioned were aspects of Sally I’d appreciated before, but it was as if I was seeing it all again for the first time. The sparkly veneer of astonishment and amazement restored after being worn away by the past weeks of constant exposure to it.

  "Oh. That fucking—Orion, just… Just shut up." Sally growled, her sudden change in attitude confusing me.

  "Why-"

  "It's a trick your brain is playing on you Orion. Snap out of it. I'm not female, or beautiful, or anything else that fucking skill is making you believe. Stop fucking indulging it before you start believing its lies."

  "Okay…" I accepted. Unable to understand her-his demands to such a degree that I simply obeyed instead of trying to figure out why.

  "Sally?"

  "… Augh, Yes?" the dragon groaned.

  "Why do you not like getting scratched?" I eventually spilled. It was something that had been puzzling me for a while. He seemed to be capable of being two different people when it came to getting pet. I did not understand why. And I was very curious. And I did not see why I shouldn't ask in the moment.

  "Really Orion?" She scowled, the female dragon raising her head and turning it towards me. I almost mistook the flash of teeth that he showed me as a smile. But I quickly realised that it was the other—more typical for an animal—reason to show her fangs, a threat or warning.

  "I know you're not in your right mind, but it should be obvious why I don't like it. Even if my body enjoys it, I do not. And if I indulge it, then I’ll slowly be twisted by it even more, then I'll lose." He explained as she slowly laid her head back down on her blanket. I could grasp the need to win, but not enough to deny yourself so strongly.

  "I don't understand. How you could lose to your own body? Are you not your body?"

  "…" Sally raised his head back up again, and I tensed as I realised that I'd accidentally said my last thought aloud. But I relaxed as the instinctual fear was followed up by nothing, in fact, I couldn't even remember what it was that'd worried me.

  "I don't know which rock you grew up under, but blindly following your every impulse is how you end up isolated and bullied. Or in prison." Sally snarled. I nodded as I finally got an explanation I understood, one that echoed my own experiences with the Party.

  "I grew up in an isolated forest, not underneath a rock." I answered, correcting Sally's misconception. Unless she meant caves, then I would've debatably spent many nights 'growing up under a rock'.

  "I think that's one of the first jokes I’ve heard you make." Sally laughed, her–his mood improving.

  "I wasn't?" I responded, attempting to gesture with a hand, but it ended up flopping back and forth.

  "Oh. You grew up alone then?" Sally grunted, his eyes locking onto my flailing limb with an intense concentration, the action reminded me of… something.

  "Mostly, I only had Father." I sighed, the answers slipping out of my mouth with a faint sense of rising nausea.

  "No friends? Ever?" Sally continued to ask. I could feel a rising sense of mischief, and mirth appear through [Animal Companionship], her need to tease me manifesting inside the skill. It was fascinating that such a childish response could be considered Sally’s ‘biggest need’ at any moment.

  "No. Except..." I considered, eyeing the dragon in front of me as I finally recalled what her reaction to the erratic movements of my hand reminded me of.

  "You? Are you my friend, Sally?" I couldn't stop myself from asking.

  "… Maybe? I guess you did save my life. Anyone should be friends after that." Sally eventually answered, filling me with a mix of hope and heartache.

  "But, if you don't start acting normal again soon, then I’ll have to revoke it." She continued, her tone entering a sweet, swinging, sing-song cadence.

  I suddenly felt a vague sense of worry and trepidation, my stomach rolling before it settled. I felt… confident, [Animal companionship] made me confident that it wasn't just a threat. Emboldened by my knowledge of Sally's mood, I decided to engage with her game, feeling carefree enough to return the favour.

  I began moving my hand wildly, tapping my fingers erratically as I ignored the possible consequences of my actions.

  Sally's eyes locked onto the collection of wriggling members of my hand, the action just as innocent and lively as the first time I saw it.

  "I… uh." Sally mumbled as I continued. I found a unique sort of joy from it, a sensation I’d never properly indulged before. I never thought I would enjoy messing with Sally in the same way that she did to me, but there was enjoyment to be found in irritating her.

  "O-Orion…" She tried to speak again, her body caught between its desire to attack the facsimile of wounded prey, and her own will. I found enjoyment in watching her tail rise, and her wings spread as she prepared to pounce.

  "Orion, Stop!" She shouted, her eyes breaking away from my hand as she was overcome with rage. The sudden flip in sensations from [Animal Companionship] scaring me.

  "Fucking act like a normal human being, please? My magic clouds aren't an excuse for shitty behaviour." She—He chastised me, filling me with an overwhelming sense of regret as I realised what I’d done.

  "Sorry." I immediately apologised, tucking my hand beneath the blanket as Sally's scornful feelings were pushed into me. A dull, wet ache formed behind my eyes, the knowledge that I’d made such a mistake had left me feeling like crying.

  "For the love of fucking... I thought it would be fucking obvious that I hate it when you force a reaction through my… faulty body. Only a moron would struggle to put that together. So… stop being weird.

  “What happened to the Ranger who'd got us through the tunnels? The person who found this town? Go back to being a well-adjusted adult, okay?" He finished asking with a snarl. I rolled over as I nodded, making sure that he couldn't see my face. Or its deterioration into messy tears.

  I felt the wave of worries and concerns that'd been absent for the past ten minutes return in full force, leaving me with an extreme sense of nausea and regret. I glanced back at Sally for a moment, her-his eyes filled with… Oh. I see.

  That's what disgust looks like.

  "The smoke wore off."

  "Are you in control of yourself now?" Sally asked, and I guiltily nodded.

  "Now, Let's. Go. To. Bed." He instructed through gritted fangs.

  "I think I might throw up." I burped. I got up and rushed out of the house, both to purge my stomach and release my emotions where I wouldn't bother Sally.