—Sally—

  It was the lighter that made me realise that I'd lost something else that made me special.

  I could hardly believe my eyes when the man used it to light the campfire, the English letters 'B-I-C' printed on the side of its plastic body. That destroyed any doubts that I might’ve had about its authenticity. I'd seen enough empty ones littered around my local train station to see them in my sleep.

  That was an honest-to-god lighter, from back home. So, if he was also from earth, then were all of those people from earth?

  That meant one less thing about me was fucking special. Right?

  I looked at him for some more clues about his origin, and while his naked body didn’t hold any clues, his clothes did. Metal zippers, plastic buttons, and generally high-quality machine stitches, all hinted at modern day human technology. And they had little tags with all of my favourite, overpriced hiking brands. There were too many coincidences for Orion to have come from anywhere other than earth.

  I looked at him again in disbelief, struggling to parse the fact that he was from the same planet as me. As I did, he met my gaze, the ranger raising an eyebrow at my staring. Only now that we were here in the firelight I'd noticed that his eyes had transformed.

  The colour hadn't changed much, still blue with a hint of green, but his pupils had changed shape, the modification much more obvious in the fire's light. While in the pitch dark, the pupils were mostly round, now the fire's light had forced them to contract into two cat-like slits. They were eerily similar to mine, and something that suited him surprisingly well. He went from looking wild and unkempt to animalistic. Inhuman.

  But after holding his gaze for ten seconds too long, I eventually remembered I was staring into his eyes and looked away.

  I curled up into a ball as I tried to fit this new information into my new world-view, that there were a bunch of people from earth. It was depressing that the story had changed again, that I’d lost another advantage I had against this world.

  But! It doesn't look like any of them had gotten reincarnated, so I've still got the hand of fate on my side. The spotlight was still on me rather than Orion.

  I returned my attention to him, and noticed that his hand had started to creep closer to me again.

  Immediately a growl rose up from my throat without a second thought, hackles raised as I realised that he was going to try and scratch my head again. I had very simple feelings about it.

  I hated it. I hate that it felt nice, and that I had no fucking agency over it. When he did it before, it immediately overtook me, forcing my mind into a state of drunken bliss and satisfaction. The closest human analogy I could come up with was being drunk or drugged.

  Horrifically drunk—where even if you wanted it to stop, you could stumble and lose the thought, becoming trapped in your own mind by the feelings and looseness forced on it. It could be nice, for the few people who like losing control under the right circumstances. I’m not that kind of person, nor is this the right kind of circumstance for that kind of shit.

  Though it seemed that the Ranger did not get the message.

  His hand kept getting closer, not even hesitating when I mimed biting him with my teeth. Eventually I was forced to lean away from the trespassing appendage, and I realised that I might have to actually bite him this time for him to understand my lack of consent.

  And so, when he pushed me even further, that’s what I did. My teeth easily and swiftly sunk into his flesh without much resistance. I was angry enough at him, that even when he gently tried to pull his hand away from me, he dragged me with him.

  When he lifted his hand up in an attempt to shake me off, easily lifting me as well. I just had to clench my jaw for it to support my body weight. In fact, I was almost enjoying myself, reaping some sort of schadenfreude when inflicting pain on my abductor.

  But eventually I had to let go, even my pride and wrath had to run out eventually. I dropped to the floor as Orion cradled his injured finger, the sight of him bleeding inspired some shame in me.

  I watched, first to see how badly I wounded him, then in awe as the injury rapidly closed. Over ten seconds the bite marks had shrunk, from gashes almost as long as the finger they were on, to cuts half the length.

  I moved closer to investigate, and watched in awe as the harm healed itself in record time, impossibly fast. I crept even closer, fascinated by the real-life time-lapse of his bite wound healing. I realised that he could be a good meat shield when I saw how fast his abdomen wound scabbed, but I could have never guessed that he’d be a magical meat shield. This is fantastic!

  Wait, the stomach wound, how was it looking now? To get a good view of it, I climbed up onto his thigh with my front legs. I closely inspected the wound in his side, and realised that it was almost fully healed. The scar tissue had shrunk and its angry red colour had calmed down, already starting to tan and blend with his natural skin colour. Which made no sense—we’re in a cave for fucks sake, and magical tanning is a tad bit of bullshit when I can’t even get the damn menu to work properly.

  I sighed—well, my drake-y version of it—and let my thoughts drift, wondering what the point was if Orion already had everything I want. He was also from earth, already this capable, with magic, skills, and a body capable of walking to boot, it made me think that he might be…Well he did have more skills and abilities than me, and therefore, held more potential to be the hero in a novel than I did.

  My head drifted downwards in despair, my eyes landing on—uh…

  Ooh…

  I slid off of his thigh and fell onto the stone floor, using the warmth to chase away the mental shock from what I saw. I… uh…

  But after a minute of listlessly looking into the fire, trying to chase away the cognito-hazard with better things, I felt a poke in my side. I turned my head to see Orion looking at me with what I could only assume was concern.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  I was slowly getting better at deciphering his facial expressions, but—to be blunt—the range of movement I’d seen on his face so far only between wet and dry cement.

  I suppose from the perspective of someone else, who’s probably assumed that I’m just a baby animal, it must've looked like I'd had a stroke or something. With a bit of mental gymnastics I decided to play nice for now, both to make sure he doesn’t think I’m sick or something, and to reinforce that [Soul Bond] magic. I need those buffs sooner rather than later.

  So all I did was look at him lazily, before casting my gaze back at the fire, both ignoring him and giving him tacit permission.

  After a few seconds of stillness, Orion began to cautiously scratch my back, rubbing the spine along my back. It was more manageable than the head—both less intense and not really any different to a back massage in intensity.

  So—like the gracious dragon I was—I let him continue, growls rumbling in my throat whenever he risked trespassing from the approved area. Though, something about a nice massage really made the mind wander.

  I remembered the fight with the Deer-woman, and how pathetically useless I was. I mean seriously, I couldn’t even be the sidekick in Orion’s action scene. But now even he has more magic than me, and healed faster than I could ever injure him.

  And how long would it take for me to grow enough to be able to do something? Currently biting is the best thing I’ve got attack-wise, and that barely marks Orion for a minute. [Soul Bond] isn’t helping me much either, and I didn't think it had given me any sort of buff. Even though it has already given Orion one, his eyes upgraded and probably the reason why he'd managed to get this far in the dark.

  Orion’s hand began to stray again, a finger trying to get underneath my wing. I cautiously let him do it, but it immediately started to be too much—too close to how it felt on my head. So I flicked my wing at him and gave him a glare. Without hesitation he accepted the message, backing away from ‘finger biting’ territory.

  Well, it’s nice that he’s taken to his role as servant so well, but I don’t know how this is going to go down once I figure out how to talk to him.

  ‘Hiiii Orion, yeah, I’m also from earth and a fully cognisant human being. Hmm? Oh the whole, climbing onto your head thing? And letting you pet me and scratch my back? Don’t worry I’m not gay or anything like that. I just… Enjoy letting a random stranger rub my back for me.’

  A growl left my throat at the thought of that conversation, and Orion's hand movements stopped immediately in response. I cast a curious gaze towards the man, and after looking into my eyes for a few seconds, resumed my back-rub.

  Huh, it only took a single bite for him to learn consent worked. He already seemed to be so much better at understanding when I wanted something, and what I hated. It didn't get rid of all of my fears, but seeing him be so willing to stop made me less worried he was going to force me to do something stupid.

  But with him carefully staying to my back, I decided to investigate something I’d forgotten to investigate earlier. To be fair, the magical item attaching itself to my throat took priority.

  My [Stats] were extremely low in some regards, but my [Soul] was so high that it had to be exploitable in some way. [Appraisal] should be able to get me the information I needed.

  [Using [Appraisal – Lvl 1] on: [Stats]]

  [Your [Stats] define multiple important factors of your capabilities:

  Max [Health] is equal to double your [Constitution]

  Max [MP] is equal to your [Soul]

  The rest, [Strength], [Dexterity], [Intelligence], [Wisdom] and [Charisma] are used in everyday life and for items and abilities.]

  [Strength: The raw force behind your movements and the power of your blows. The theoretical maximum that you can achieve with your current body, the hardest you can hit, lift or push.]

  [Dexterity: The amount you can twist and move your body and the control you have over those movements. It represents the finest movement you can make with claws to the wildest acrobatics you can perform without injuring yourself.]

  [Constitution: The toughness of your body, how strong your bones are to the hardness of your scales. Constitution dictates how impervious you are to poisons, sickness and other conditions, including how much punishment you can take before you succumb to death.]

  [Intelligence: The speed at which you can learn new things, and the capabilities of your problem solving. It dictates the potential complexity of your magic and your general cleverness, the depth your pool of knowledge could reach.]

  [Wisdom: Your understanding of yourself and others, of your own soul and the nature of the world. It consists of your insights into the world and the underlying meaning to it all. In both a mathematical dissection of its function and an instinctual, emotional knowledge of its rhythm.

  This affects the kinds of magic that you can use and sense, and the flow of different essences that can be stored within your soul.]

  [Charisma: The allure you exude, the appeal others see when they look at you and hear your words. It’s your beauty and the attractiveness of your body to others, while this is often considered romantic in nature, it's more actually how much you attract and influence the positive attention of others.

  An important stat for those who rely on the strengths of others. Clerics, priests, warlocks, druids and many others rely on this statistic to borrow the powers of greater beings. Leaders rely on it too, to gather followers and gain their loyalty.]

  [Soul: A measure of the volume of your soul and the quality of it. It’s the source of your magic and dictates the potency of it, your soul gathers the magic and essence of the world and stores it in the form of ‘mana’ which is shown by the ‘MP’ value.

  The soul is the rawest form of you and is immutable, it contains the basis of your character and being, things like gender, character and potential. It’s shaped by the container it’s put in, which is also poorly summarised by your other stats. Your soul is a thing of complexity and vibrancy that can’t be described with mere numbers, but a measure of its simplest parts is shown by the ‘soul’ stat.]

  Now this is something I can work with, I must be a mage build in the making, I should've known that's what the high [Intelligence] and [Soul] were meant for. All this time I was worrying about how I was going to fight the wrong way.

  I didn't need to stress about how weak my bite was, I was never meant to bloody my teeth when I had far better options available.

  All I needed to do was find some magic to use—or cast, more accurately. Though if I manage to fix this system anytime soon, it might give me some spells for free. What kind of magic system would be used here? Do people have attributes? Or is it a free for all, where it's whoever can find the spells can use them? Maybe it's defined by class.

  Would I get some cool lightning magic? Ooh! Maybe some of that neat death magic, that'd be cool, necromancy and some instant-death spells would hit the spot.

  A maniacal giggle left my mouth as a vision for the future manifested in my mind. I could see myself flying high above, launching magic at everyone who crossed me far below.

  I heard Orion let out an awkward laugh in response to my chirping, and I looked at him, making me laugh even harder. He didn’t even know it yet, but he was going to be my meat shield, drawing aggro while I sniped enemies from behind him.

  He relaxed a bit, laughing along with me as he unknowingly walked towards a painful fate.

  I eventually stopped laughing, and resolved myself to stop getting so thrown by the smallest revelations in how the world worked. Now that I had some reassurances in the path laid out for me, and knew where it led, I could no longer let myself get distracted by things going wrong.

  Nobody ever said this would be easy, that it would be painless, but I’d let myself get distracted and became depressed whenever anything went wrong. You get stronger by overcoming adversity, not getting sad, ew.

  So no more getting depressed, I got spells waiting for me the moment I get over this rough patch with the system.

  I curled up, shuffling my limbs around until I found something somewhat comfortable, my head curled up onto my forelegs.

  Orion retracted his hand at some point, and I fell into a blissful sleep.

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