“How is he?” Elisia asked, sitting in the church hallway, while the nuns rushed around to take care of the wounded.

  “Your brother will recover; he is strong. His arm might take some time to heal, but the fracture is not too severe, " the head nun replied, sitting next to Elisia.

  “And the others?”

  “One of the guards that was struck by the beast should thank that the kingdom does not cheap out on when it comes to armour quality. His chestplate took most of the impact, preventing the ragabarn’s tail spike from piercing through. Had he worn leather or mail, the strike would’ve been lethal.” The old woman paused, trying to mask her concern from the knight, but Elisia was quick to notice.

  “They are the otherworlders, aren’t they? Your prisoners?” The nun asked, closing her fingers around the symbol of the Blessed Mother.

  “Yes,” Elisia replied, waiting for the woman to compose herself.

  “Gods help us all.” Continued the nun, before taking a deep breath to steel her nerves.

  “Two of them were wounded. We cannot do much to help them. It seems they truly are unloved by mana.”

  “That they are. How badly are they wounded?” Elisia wanted to know, feeling herself losing patience. She worried they might be damaged far more than Filtz and the guard, something the elves of Vatur would not appreciate since they demanded the prisoners be in good condition for the execution.

  “Barely.” Stuttered the nun.

  “The large one, his leg wasn’t bleeding at all when he was brought in. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was like we were trying to stitch up wood or rock, not human flesh.”

  She took another deep breath.

  “The other one, he took the full force of the ragabarn’s tail straight to the torso and yet he only got off with a few bruised ribs and is already showing signs of quick recovery.”

  “The bas- ahem.” She stopped herself, knowing not to swear inside the holy building.

  “They are tough, yes.”

  “Tough?” The nun scoffed, looking at her with wide eyes full of bewilderment.

  “The man is barely over five feet tall, a strike like that should’ve killed him on the spot. It dented a steel chestplate for the love of Gods.”

  “How long before they are recovered enough to continue the journey?”

  “I’d say about a couple of days. A week at best.”

  Several nuns appeared from Filtz’s room, walking over to where the head nun and Elisia sat.

  “You’re free to see him now, Lady Elisia.”

  Elisia didn’t wait to be told twice, rising from her seat and heading towards the room. Her brother, the other guard and the three prisoners were all placed to rest in the rooms of the nunnery, attached to the back end of the church.

  As she rounded the corner and entered the room, Elisia stopped dead in her tracks, staring at the ragabarn’s face. The creature’s eyes were milky white at the point, tongue hanging out of its half-open jaw, and blood had long since stopped dripping from the neck where the sword struck it. The head was letting off a sickly, sweet smell, making her gag.

  The three prisoners stood around Filtz’s bed, Clyde being the one holding the creature’s severed head as if it were a trophy of sorts.

  “What is going on here?”

  Her voice hit Filtz’s ears like music; the young paladin turned as quickly as his body allowed in his bed.

  “Elisia!” He smiled.

  “I hope I haven’t scared you, sister.”

  The entire scene was made even more confusing for Elisia, as Filtz did not have a translator stone on him, meaning that the four men could not understand each other.

  “What are you doing in here?” She asked, glaring at the prisoners, unable to look away from the decapitated head in Clyde’s hands.

  “We agreed to give the head to your brother as a trophy,” Jeremy replied.

  “Kind of how rich hunters hang exotic animals on their wall.”

  Clyde walked over and placed what remained of the ragabarn in her brother’s lap. Filtz did not recoil, but was evidently disgusted by the offering, trying not to look into the lifeless eyes of the beast.

  “No!” Elisia rubbed her forehead in exasperation and stormed over to the bed, grabbing the trophy and shoving it back into Clyde’s arms.

  “Just get that smelly thing out of here.”

  “Well, boys. Back to the wagon.” Jeremy headed for the door, followed by the other two, when the knight stopped them.

  “No. The guards will accompany you to my mother’s house. You are to wait for my return there.” Her words surprised the otherworlders, but they did not argue and left the room with a simple nod.

  Once they were finally alone, Elisia pulled up a chair and sat beside Filtz.

  “Brother, what were you thinking? You could’ve gotten yourself killed.” She scolded him, more worried than angry.

  “I am sorry, Elisia. I acted before thinking. I should’ve woken you up first, but if I had, the beast would claim another victim.” Filtz replied, reaching out with his good hand and grasping hers.

  “Yes, that victim could’ve been you.” The knight sighed, realising there was no point in scolding him now.

  “What you did was brave, Filtz. Foolish, but brave. Father would.” She stopped, squeezing his hand.

  “No. I am proud of you. You proved, yet again, that your actions save lives.”

  The words struck him like a bolt of lightning, his heart thumping in his chest.

  “Stop it. I just did what I thought was right.”

  “Hush. Accept the praise, you’ve earned it.” Elisia leaned forward and kissed her brother on the head.

  “You rest, I have to go and let mother know that visits are allowed.”

  ***

  “You know, this village looks exactly like I’d imagine a fantasy village to look,” Jeremy said to the others while they all sat in the kitchen of Tynaris’s house.

  “A tall wall of logs sharpened on one end that formed a circle, a single gate, the village inside the circle.”

  “Yeah. I mean, circles were the most common, most defendable shape, right?” Clyde added.

  “Ground-level houses. Many have little gardens. I could imagine a life like this.” Marcel sighed and sipped on his tea.

  Tynaris said nothing, still working on preparing the food while waiting for Elisia to arrive and listening to the prisoners chat. Despite being alone with the three men that wrestled a ragabarn mostly barehanded and half naked the previous night, she felt no fear that they might attack her. In her forty-five years of life, her gut never told her wrong about someone’s character.

  “I think they should make the fence higher if they have freaks like that prowling around. That bastard flew over from the back of the village, since it was unguarded.” The largest of the three men commented, while the other two nodded in agreement.

  “Ragabarns are very rare in these parts. The woods mostly belong to shimmer wolves, and those cannot fly.” Elisia’s mother said, joining in on the conversation.

  “Do you find those clothes comfortable? They are Filtz’s, sorry if they don’t fit.”

  Out of the three men, Clyde was the only one still without a proper shirt, simply wearing pants that he had on the entire time, a pair of the largest boots that Tynaris could find in the village and a long wool cloak to cover the naked upper half of his body, as nothing anyone had would fit him. Jeremy and Marcel wore clothes from Filtz’s closet that his mother gave them, and while on Jeremy they fit pretty nicely, on Marcel they looked hilarious, so much so that he rolled up the sleeves and pant legs and tied them with string so they’d stop falling.

  The front door swung open, and in walked Elisia with Layla in tow, with Mitsy sitting on the mage’s shoulder. They sit down at the table without a word as Tynaris clears her throat loudly.

  “Mother.” Elisia sighs, pointing with her hand at the prisoners and at Layla, but her mother doesn’t seem to care much about the image of the tough knight that her daughter is trying so hard to maintain.

  Reluctantly, the daughter gets up and begins helping Tynaris by setting up the table, bringing out decorated silver plates and cutlery.

  “We haven’t used those since we celebrated Filtz becoming an official paladin,” Tynaris tells the otherworlders with a smile.

  “Wooden plates would suffice.” Elisia groans, clearly not sharing her mother’s enthusiasm.

  “Hush. A ragabarn attacked the village, and both my children are alive and well after facing such a beast. That is cause enough to bring out the good plates.” Replied the woman while bringing out a large pot filled with a stew and a woven straw basket with freshly made bread.

  After the previous night, all three prisoners no longer had their cuffs on, Elisia now fully certain that they had no intention of trying to flee. Still, she wasn’t entirely relaxed in their presence.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  ***

  To Tynaris’s delight, the lunch was a great success; neither the stew nor the bread loaves remained after the meal. She brough out several bottles of wine from the pantry, high quality alcohol that was being saved for a day that the woman over time accepted would never come, that being Elisia’s wedding.

  They exchanged stories, mostly tales of Tynaris’s adventures while her husband was still alive and they were both young, before settling down in that village and starting a family. Alcohol loosened Elisia’s tongue, revealing the woman beneath the title of knight. Out of the otherworlders, the one that seemed most sober was Marcel.

  “Please forgive my incessant pestering, but I must know how you managed to survive the ragabarn,” Tynaris asked the men, leaning towards them from her seat at the end of the table.

  “Well… Warhounds are designed to be extremely durable.” Clyde replied boastfully.

  “Warhounds, I’ve heard you call yourselves that.” Elisia poured herself more wine, pointing the cup at Clyde.

  “It’s a fitting name considering your nature, but what does it mean? You seem different from us, despite apparently being humans.”

  The wine loosened both sides when it came to talking, and after a few glances at his comrades, Jeremy spoke up to answer.

  “Certain top soldiers across our world are selected and offered to take part in the Warhound program. If they accept, they join our organisation and undergo various… enhancement procedures.”

  “Are all three of you enhanced, as you say?” Elisia continued.

  “No. I am a regular guy. Clyde and Marcel are the ones who underwent the procedure.”

  The three women and the cat leaned closer, observing the two Warhounds with drunken precision.

  “How long have you three known each other?” Tynaris was next to ask a question, picking a more common one as opposed to her daughter.

  “Marcel and I go way back. We met, what? Twenty or so years ago, when we joined the organisation.” Clyde answered, downing his wine and pouring another cup.

  “Is this fruit wine? I love fruit wine.”

  “And you?” Layla nodded at Jeremy.

  “I met Clyde and Marcel last year, when I joined the group that would cross through the portal gates.” He said with a smile.

  “I see. So, why did you cross over to this world?” The mage asked, but before she could get her answer, the cat hopped onto the table and rubbed against her arm, purring.

  “Oh! That thing again, I have to ask, what’s with the cat?” Clyde immediately jumped at the opportunity, the mystery of the feline being on his mind since they first met Perriman.

  “Nothing, it’s just a cat,” Layla replied, shifting her gaze from Jeremy to Mitsy and trying to remove her from the table hurriedly.

  This only set Clyde off further as the man found her sudden fidgetiness even more suspicious.

  “Nah, look at its eyes. It stares like it’s sentient or some shit.”

  “Come on, man, let it go. It’s just a cat wearing pants.” Jeremy sighed, annoyed that his comrade still clung to the idea that the cat was more than it seemed.

  “No. We’re not answering another question of theirs until they reveal what’s up with that pants-wearing skinwalker!” He shouted back, refusing to let the issue go.

  Jeremy rolled his eyes, trying to ignore him and answer Layla’s previous question, but Clyde slammed his hand on the table with such force that it threatened to break.

  “Fuck it, I’m pulling rank! Neither of you has the permission to speak, that’s an order.” He yelled in a drunken stupor.

  Marcel snorted and raised his hand to salute before laughing, while Clyde tried his best to appear as serious as possible.

  “They want us to be honest, they gotta be honest too.”

  Jeremy joined the short Warhound in failing to contain his laughter, leaning to the side, his face red from the wine, trying to stand up and salute without stumbling.

  “Yes, Sir!”

  “Wait, wait. Hold on, wait.” Elisia was baffled by the sudden revelation of hierarchy between the three otherworlders.

  “You are telling me that he outranks you two? Him?!”

  “Yeah. By a lot. At least in my case.” Jeremy answered.

  “And in your case?” She looked at Marcel.

  “Hey. No more questions until you’ve answered mine.” Clyde growled, locking eyes with Elisia as the two stared each other down.

  “Mitsy, do you want to show your special powers to the big Warhound?” Layla asked the cat in a mocking tone, looking at Clyde as if daring him to try something.

  Marcel leaned back in his seat, being the only sober individual present at the table, soaking up the chaos quickly escalating. The large man and the knight were practically seconds from flipping the table and starting a brawl in the kitchen.

  “Perhaps ya should calm down, man.”

  Clyde looked at Marcel over his shoulder and exhaled, slowly moving back into his chair, and Elisia had done the same. However, Clyde was far too drunk and far too stubborn to let the matter go. Mitsy, the poor feline, was too enamoured by the scratches she was receiving from Layla that she had no time to react when the mountain of a man lunged across the table with speed that left even Elisia shocked and grabbed the cat with his right hand in a vice-like grip.

  The animal hissed and meowed, squirming and trying to claw at his hand as he held the cat by the root of its tail.

  “Last chance. I’m throwing this fucker straight into the oven on the count of five. One!”

  “No, no, no! Have you lost your mind?!” Layla screamed, trying to jump across the table, but Elisia held her back, worrying the woman might get hurt.

  “We’re on the count of three now! FOUR!” Clyde shouted, raising the frantic cat and cocking his arm back, preparing to throw the animal into the fireplace. His muscles tensed evidently, making it visible to all that he wasn’t bluffing.

  “Five!” He swung, and to his surprise, the ones most shocked by the action were his comrades and Tynaris. Layla and Elisia, though faking panic, didn’t try to stop him. He may have been drunk, but he knew that the knight was fast enough to react, and Layla was a mage, both of them capable of stopping him with relative ease, yet they acted like panicked college girls.

  The cat was in the same boat as Jeremy, Marcel and Tynaris, fully falling for Clyde’s bluff that he would throw her into the fireplace. Mitsy hissed, thick vapour billowing from its body, burning so hot it made Clyde release her.

  “Shit!” He waved his right hand to quickly cool it down.

  Mitsura’s pissed of meows and hisses began sounding more and more like actual words as the cloud of smoke enveloped the feline’s entire body, hiding the change happening beneath.

  “Mrraooowww. Brrrrute! Bastard! You were going to throw me into the fire! I’ll gouge your fucking eyes out!”

  The smoke cleared in a fraction of a second, as clawed hands, followed by a wild-looking woman, appeared from the vapour, aimed directly at Clyde’s face.

  “What the fuck?!” The drunken man yelled, grabbing the plate in front of him as a makeshift shield to block his face.

  Claws struck silver, scratching the back of the plate as Tynaris gasped and jumped from her seat, grabbing the empty pot that once held the stew.

  “Not my good plates!” She brought the pot down on Clyde’s head with a hollow “bong” sound, while at the same time smacking Mitsura’s hands with the ladle.

  Jeremy felt like he was transported to a scene of a comedy sketch, his brain addled by the amount of wine in his system. The fruit wine was delicious, but it packed a punch, and he was never much of a drinker.

  “Radiance!” Layla shouted, creating a quick pulse of light that illuminated the entire interior of the house. The spell worked wonderfully, catching the entire table by surprise and ending the scuffle.

  Clyde had the biggest shit eating grin Jeremy had seen on his face in a long while. A kind of look a conspiracy theorist has when decades of psychotic ramblings finally turn out to be true.

  Mitsy was a woman, slightly shorter than Marcel, standing at about 5 feet tall according to Jeremy’s assessment. She looked to be in her late teens, with hair that was a chaotic blend of coal black and ash white. Her eyes were catlike, green and slitted, her teeth had fangs, and the most eye-catching detail of them all, she had a tail. Jeremy honestly expected her to have cat ears too, given how everything was unfolding, but her ears looked human, just slightly pointier, still nowhere near as pointy as elven ears or goblin ears.

  “I was fucking right. I told you, I told yoooouuuu.” Clyde gloated, poking Jeremy’s chest with his finger, while Tynaris sighed and began clearing up the table.

  “Fine, you got me, Colonel.” Jeremy chuckled, pushing Clyde’s hand away.

  “You were right.”

  The large Warhound gasped as if he had just received an epiphany.

  “This is how they alerted the Queen of what was going on in Perriman’s duchy. The cat, they sent the cat to deliver the message.”

  “Yes.” Layla sighed, sitting back down and pouring herself another cup of wine.

  “I am surprised you even suspected something like that.”

  “We knew that Perry must’ve had a rat or someone to snitch on what was going on the moment we arrived. We assumed it was probably you, which was correct, but only halfway. The cat was in on it, too!”

  Jeremy looked over to Mitsura, who stopped hissing and walked over to Layla, sitting in her lap despite no longer being in the form of a cat.

  “So, who is she? What is she?”

  “She is Lady Mitsura. The third of the three guards that protect and serve directly under Queen Kyara.” Elisia explained, leaning in her seat and trying to pet Mitsy, only for the cat woman to smack her hand away. Elisia gave Mitsura a sour look and huffed.

  “And as to what she is? She is a Wuthragg.” Layla continued to explain.

  “A what?” Jeremy leaned forward to hear her better.

  “Hold on, why are you speaking on her behalf? Let me guess, cat got her tongue?” Clyde slapped her knee and wheezed, while the three women across from him looked at him with pure disgust at the joke.

  “I have nothing to gain from idle chatter, especially not with your ilk,” Mitsura replied, hopping out of Layla’s lap and starting to smoke violently until she assumed her cat form once more. The overalls she wore seemed to automatically adjust their size depending on the form she took.

  “Wuthraggs are an extremely rare tribe of beastfolk. The only race, only tribe, capable of truly transforming their body.” Layla explained, unable to hide the fascination in her voice.

  “What, other races can’t transform? Mages can’t turn into birds or cats?” Clyde’s question seemed one of genuine curiosity.

  “No. Mortal mages cannot alter their physical form to such an extent. Most transformation magic is just illusion spells. Some shamans are known to transform into a beast form, but lose their sanity and ability to turn back more with each transformation.” The blonde mage explained, waving her hands around as if to add to the explanation, a bad habit left from her days at the academy.

  “That’s pretty cool. So, Mitsy is a spy.” Jeremy nodded, looking over at the cat that rested by the fireplace, as if to spite the man who had just threatened to throw her in a few moments ago.

  “Assassin, spy, informant.” Elisia corrected him, trying to scare them. The men seemed only mildly impressed.

  “Well, now that my question is answered, I can go and die. The elves can take me, my purpose to uncover the cat has been achieved.” Clyde grinned.

  Tynaris brought out smaller plates, on each was placed a slice of simple village cake. A simple thick biscuit base, submerged in milk until it was as soft as a sponge and finally topped off with honey.

  “I hope you like this one. I used to make it for Filtz all the time.”

  Elisia didn’t pay her mother and the cake much mind, focusing on bringing the conversation back to the topic before the cat fiasco.

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