The Border
The world after the rain always feels wrong, like someone has washed the sky but left the ground filthy on purpose. I rose from where the corpses had cooled, mud still clinging to my knees, blood drying in thin rust streaks across my cowl. Master moved first, and the bond tugged me after him like a pulse in the dark.
We stepped through the ruined gate and into the marsh air. The storm had finally spent itself. The clouds drifted like torn velvet, soft at the edges, bruised at the centre.
Tamsin watched Master go, silent as some carved elf guardian, then followed at a measured distance, boots making no sound on the wet earth.
Master walked to the stone bridge that stretched over the dried river cut. The archway sagged slightly, its stones patched with moss and the ghosts of old floods. He stopped beneath its shadow, leaning back against the cool, damp wall as though it was a doorway in some forgotten city instead of a slab of a ruined fort. He let his breath run slow. Controlled. Thoughtful. A private ritual after chaos.
He pulled out the rations. Hard bread. Venison jerky. Boiled water sealed in iron canteens. The kind of meal that makes a lesser person think about quitting their life choices. He ate like a man reading an old case file, calm and unhurried, jaw steady. He looked out across the wilderness while chewing: the marsh grasses wavering in the weakening wind, the long silver sheen on the mudflats where the rain had painted everything with a thin gloss.
I trailed behind him, ears flattened from the lingering wet, tail dragging with a heavy slump. Every droplet clinging to my fur burned like humiliation. Water is a traitor. It clings with greed and then it stinks when it dries. My skin crawled at the thought of Master smelling even a hint of it.
So I dropped to all fours.
My palms hit the stone. My claws clicked once. Then I shook. Hard.
The movement rippled through me from shoulders to spine to tail. Water flung out in bright arcs across the courtyard entrance. My ears flicked, snapped, flared, shedding moisture in frantic little bursts. My tail whipped once, twice, shaking off the last clinging threads of damp before curling up behind me again. The smell sharpened back to clean fur, wild grass, iron, and blood. Mine. Not rain. Not shame.
I rose in one fluid motion, stretching my back until the vertebrae cracked pleasantly. My tail swayed, free again. My ears perked. The last hints of wet discomfort slid away from me like a breath I no longer needed.
Master stood beneath the bridge still, chewing slow, gaze fixed on the marsh horizon as if the world were a puzzle he had already solved but liked staring at anyway. The wind lifted the edges of his cloak. Water dripped from the underside of the stone above him in occasional soft taps, each drop catching a glint of fading light.
Tamsin lingered a few paces off, wiping her crossbow with a small cloth, pretending she was not watching us while very obviously watching us. Her posture was tense in that elf way, straight backed, chin slightly angled, as though embarrassed to be standing in a place where hours ago bodies had been piled like discarded tools.
The fort behind us loomed silent now. Its broken walls still glistened from the storm, torches smouldering in half drowned sconces. The scent of blood drifted from the battlements in a thin metallic thread. Crows circled overhead already, greedy little shadows waiting for permission to feast.
Master swallowed the last of the hard bread, wiped his thumb against his cloak with quiet precision, and kept staring into the wild like it was thinking back at him.
I stood near him, tail brushing his leg in slow, absent strokes, ears twitching at each distant rustle of reed or branch. The aftermath clung to the air. The quiet was too soft. Too hollow. But Master was here. Within reach. Inside the bond’s warmth again.
That turned the silence into something I could breathe.
The moment Master shifted, the moment his hand dipped back to the satchel, my ears snapped toward him like drawn bowstrings. Hunger struck me with a small, sharp ache just under the ribs. Catgirl biology is unfair. Double the nutrition needs, double the appetite, double the humiliating little growl my stomach made when Master reached for the rations.
He broke off another strip of venison jerky, then some of the rock hard travel bread. He extended one piece toward Tamsin without ceremony.
The elf blinked, just once, like she hadn’t expected generosity after watching me turn half the fort into a leaking art project. Still, she took the ration with a curt nod, her fingers brushing his palm only briefly before she stepped back to chew in that calm, ranger disciplined way.
Then he held out the rest.
To me.
My ears perked so fast my cowl almost shifted off. My tail curled in a slow question mark behind my legs, then flicked, then curled again around his calf with instinctive greed. I stepped closer before he even finished extending his hand, claws clicking softly on the stone, breath already warm with anticipation.
I took the ration from his fingers.
But not all at once.
I leaned in, brushing his knuckles with the bridge of my nose as I snatched the jerky, a little purr slipping out uninvited, too hungry to pretend otherwise. The moment the meat touched my tongue, my whole spine relaxed. Chewing felt like some sacred rite, each bite pulling me back down from the adrenaline edge.
Hot, smoky venison. Hard bread softened by the rain's humidity. The sort of meal that would break a lesser jaw if they weren’t prepared.
I devoured it like a creature starved of more than food.
I tore through the jerky with soft, quick snaps of my teeth, licking the salt from the corners of my mouth, ears tilted forward in greedy satisfaction. The bread, rough as it was, vanished soon after, softened just enough by steam from my breath and the last trickle of rain still dripping from the arch.
My tail thumped once against his boot when the last bite went down. A satisfied thump. A claimed thump. Then it lazily looped around his ankle, purring through contact.
Tamsin chewed neatly on her own ration, watching the two of us with that thin, guarded expression she uses when she thinks something is interesting but refuses to admit it out loud.
“You’re hungry,” she observed mildly, eyes flicking to the empty space in my hands.
I wiped crumbs off my lips with the back of my wrist and stared right back at her. “You would be too,” I said, “if you burned through half your day killing idiots and the other half fixing the world’s worst rain.”
Her brow lifted, unimpressed. She went back to eating.
Master leaned again against the stone, arms folded, the empty ration cloth tucked back into his satchel. His posture was steady. Predictable. Anchoring.
I moved closer until our sides brushed, until the bond hummed warm between us, and I could smell the faint trace of bread and venison still clinging to his breath. Satisfied. Fed. Close. My ears flicked in the settling quiet. My tail stayed wrapped around him.
The world felt survivable again.
His hand closed on the back of my neck with that slow, deliberate certainty that bypassed every thought I might have had. One heartbeat I was standing beside him, breath steady, tail curled in a lazy spiral around his ankle.
The next I melted... Like snow in the heat.
He pulled me in close, the movement quiet, unhurried, possessing. My body pressed against his without resistance. My ears tilted forward, then back, then forward again, confused only for the half breath before instinct swallowed everything else.
His fingers slipped under the edge of my cowl...
Found the place...
That spot...
That tiny strip of nerve right behind the base of my left ear, where touch does not just feel like touch but like someone pouring warm lightning directly into my spine. His nails grazed it and my knees gave out.
A clean, instinctive fold as though my body had been waiting all night for that precise signal. I caught myself on my palms before I fully collapsed, back arching, breath leaving me in a broken little gasp. My tail snapped upright in a stiff arc before curling tight around his leg, clinging with something almost desperate.
And then he said it.
“Who’s a good cat?”
My lungs collapsed around the sound.
Heat shot across my face so fast it felt like a fever. My ears flattened hard, trembling under his fingertips, my jaw tightening around a noise that wanted to spill out in a whimper but escaped instead as a low, helpless purr that vibrated through the stone beneath my hands.
I hated how strong it hit. I hated how my body reacted faster than my mind. I hated how the words tangled themselves into the bond and made every nerve flare wide open like I had been wired to respond to him and only him.
I loved it more.
My claws dug into the stone, not to attack, but to stay upright as the purr tore out of me, rolling and deep and unhidden. My tail wound higher up his leg, circling, squeezing, claiming. My chest pressed into his knee as I leaned into the scratch, nuzzling once, twice, unable to stop myself.
“I am,” I growled softly, voice cracked around the purr, unstable and possessive and trembling with pleasure, “I’m your good cat. Your only cat.”
The world blurred at the edges. The fort. The bodies. The mud. The fading rain. All irrelevant background noise to the singular gravity of his hand moving behind my ear, scratching that place that unmade me and rebuilt me in one slow stroke. And I pressed closer, purring louder, drowning in the bond’s warmth as if nothing existed except his touch and my need.
The purr was still vibrating through my ribs when a soft, very pointed throat-clearing came from somewhere to our right. Not the polite kind either.
More the I swear both of you are impossible kind.
Tamsin stepped out from behind the bridge’s supporting column, crossbow slung over her shoulder, a fistful of something dangling from her hand. A small burlap pouch. Heavy. Metal clinked inside it with that delicate, insulting ring that only coin makes.
She held it out toward Master.
“I took this off the fort’s leader,” she said, tone clipped, precise, hiding the edges of disapproval under a professional veneer. “Found his purse in the inner keep. Four silvers, some coppers, one odd token I’ll look at later. Consider it the ‘pay’ we came for.”
Her eyes flicked toward me. Not at my claws still curled into the stone. Not at my tail wrapped tight around Master’s leg. Not at the purr I couldn’t fully shut off but right behind my ears, where his hand was still resting.
The look she gave me was the same look an elf gives a wild animal that keeps demonstrating it can open doors.
Something like: I don’t trust that, but I don’t want to be close enough to explain why.
Master took the pouch with the same casual calm as before, thumb brushing the string, weighing it briefly. He didn’t move his other hand from behind my ear. And then he said it, voice low, steady, noir smooth.
“You can have the pay for the kill,” he murmured, eyes still on the wilderness instead of her. “But come now. Relax. It’s been a long few hours. We can’t always let those who think titles grant them power stress us.”
The words slipped through the air like smoke.
Tamsin stared at him for a long moment, jaw tight. Then her posture eased a fraction, shoulders shifting out of that rigid stronghold alignment. Something tired flickered across her face, barely visible in the fading rain light.
She exhaled, quiet, controlled, almost Alderian.
“You two are… something,” she muttered, rubbing a hand across her forehead. “Fine. I’ll… stop thinking about it for a minute.” Then she sat down on a chunk of fallen stone, legs stretched out, head tipped back like a ranger admitting temporary defeat to exhaustion rather than to either of us.
I stayed where I was. Pressed against Master’s leg. Tail still curled around him like a promise with claws under it. His hand still at my ear, touching that place that made my bones melt. And Tamsin, for once, said nothing. No commentary. No complaint.
Just quiet.
The kind of quiet that settles after violence. The kind that means the world will keep moving whether or not we ask it to. I leaned a little more into his hand. My purr deepened.
Soon we began to cross the bridge that we had crossed earlier. The marsh inlet was flowing under our feet but for once I didn't care about it. Our boots felt almost warm compared to the cold ruin behind us. The rain had eased into nothing, leaving the world washed clean except for the three of us.
We walked like it was nothing. Like the night had asked us politely to slaughter a fort and we’d done it as casually as tying our boots. My tail swayed loose behind me now, no longer bristled, no longer trembling from the bond snapping earlier. It curled once around Master’s wrist before drifting free again.
My ears flicked in small, content movements. Each step he took set the bond humming like a plucked string.
Tamsin walked ahead of us, posture relaxed, crossbow resting low in her hand. Even she felt the strange calm that follows chaos, when the storm has spent itself and the world pretends not to notice the bodies cooling behind you.
And then the House Serrean gatehouse rose into view. The sandstone. The heavy, arching frame. The broad doorway lit by two oil lamps with steady flames that did not flicker even in the breeze.
And standing in front of it. A line of guards.
Armoured from head to heel in polished blue plate that caught the lamplight like still water. Shields held steady but not raised. Posture sharp, disciplined. No slouching. No doubt. These weren’t the sloppy mercenary-larps from the fort. These were drilled. Hardened. Loyal to their noble house the way wolves are loyal to a scent.
One stood slightly forward of the others. Tall. Broad. Sword still sheathed but ready. His shield bore the twin-spear crest of House Serrean, painted crisp and unmarred. He looked like he could stand there for a thousand years and the wind would eventually give up trying to move him.
And we walked toward him like he wasn’t even real. Like we were the ones these walls should brace for.
Master walked as though the entire road belonged to him. Controlled. Calm. A noir detective in a medieval painting, unbothered by armoured statues blocking his path.
And I, his most loyal cat, padded at his side, tail swaying in slow, dangerous contentment, ears relaxed but alert, purr still somewhere low in my ribs like a rumbling engine. Not submissive. Not threatened. Just there. Coiled. Watching. Always watching but at peace.
Tamsin didn’t even slow.
The cathedral quiet of our approach made the guards shift, just slightly. Their helmets turned. Their shoulders rolled back. No hands went to weapons, but caution tightened the air between us and them. The lamplight cast a soft gold around the three of us. The bridge stones glowed faintly from the wet. The marsh behind us was a dark smudge on the horizon, something forgotten.
Here, at the threshold carved in the colours of the vassaldom, we walked like a trio returning from an ordinary stroll. As if the world, in all its knives and titles, was very small.
And we were not.
As we got closer to the gatehouse, House Serrean never did anything halfway. Even their checkpoints looked like miniature fortresses: thick sandstone walls, a raised portcullis, iron lanterns burning cold white, and three guards posted in front with the stiff, controlled tension of people who actually trained for their jobs.
And then there was the Serrean inspector.
A man in full blue-steel plate, polished so clean the lamplight slid across him like water. His shield bore the twin-spear crest. His stance was disciplined, textbook perfect. The kind of posture that screamed: I do everything by the law because someone taught me the law with a stick.
He stepped forward as we neared the gate, planting his shield with a soft thud.
“State your business entering Grey Hollow” he barked, voice projecting that habitual authority Serrean officers can’t help but shape their vowels around. “All non pureblood subjects must present their identification.”
Non pureblood.
My fur lifted a fraction. My tail curled once behind Master’s leg, slow and warning. The collar under my cowl felt colder around my neck, the Alderian script etched into it prickling like a brand.
His visor shifted toward me first.
That was always a mistake...
Master didn’t slow. Didn’t stiffen. He walked as though this checkpoint were a bureaucratic formality beneath him, because it was. Noir calm. That dangerous stillness of a man who had already planned the conversation before it began.
Tamsin hung back a half step, her body angled so she saw the crossfire angles without looking like she saw them. Rainwater still dripped from her hood. She looked like a ranger who had been doing this long before Serrean ever cared about these roads.
The inspector lifted a hand. “Papers,” he demanded. And Master gave him something better. His Vanguard sigil.
The polished badge of Silverbrook and Grey Hollow combined, forged in copper iron with the guildmark etched deep. The kind that isn’t shown to guards so much as presented. Like evidence. Like a verdict.
The inspector froze mid-breath. A tiny, beautifully satisfying stutter in his posture. House Serrean’s alliance with the Oakwood Pact meant one thing: Vanguard outranks gate guards. Even Serrean ones.
Master didn’t speak first. He didn’t have to. The badge spoke for him. The officer straightened, tone abruptly more formal. “Apologies, Vanguard."
I purred quietly at the word, low enough only Master could hear. My tail tightened once around his wrist. He let me.
Tamsin finally stepped forward, producing her own Vanguard tag, smooth and deliberate. The guard nodded sharply. Then came the moment I had been waiting for.
His visor tilted toward me again.
“Identification for the catgirl,” he said. “Her collar must be verified with Redstone records”
My ears flicked back. My claws curled. My tail lashed once, a sharp movement that cracked the air. He took half a step back.
Good.
Master’s hand rose, not to calm me, but to cut the guard’s stupidity in half. He tapped two fingers against the metal plate of my Alderian collar.
“Registered in Marshgate. Border chip cleared. Property mark verified.”
The guard stiffened at the word property because coming from Master it was not an insult. It was a legal classification, the exact language Serrean bureaucracy wrote into their pet laws.
Perfect. Efficient. Weaponised.
I lifted my chin, letting the lamplight glint over the engraved words.
Master’s Property. The inspector swallowed once.
“You… may pass,” he said, stepping aside with stiff respect. “Grey Hollow welcomes registered Vanguard.”
His voice cracked just a little. The moment Master stopped. His boots stilled on the wet stone. His shoulders settled. His breath levelled into that calm-before-the-cut rhythm that always made my spine arch in anticipation.
The Serrean inspector lifted his shield a fraction, the metal catching the lamplight like a warning. He stood directly in front of Master, visor angled down, trying to loom with that overtrained posture of a man who had memorised intimidation from a handbook.
Master didn’t look away. He stared straight into the slit of that visor. Unblinking. Unhurried. Eyes sharp enough to make a better man rethink his life choices.
The guard’s stance faltered, just slightly. Not seen by most people. But I felt it in the bond, the way Master’s confidence slid under the man’s armour like a blade between ribs.
Then...
Master cleared his throat.
A single, quiet sound.
The bond pulsed in my skull at the same moment, a silent command sliding through me with the force of a heartbeat:
BADGE.
My breath caught. My tail curled around his leg with a pleased, anticipatory flick. My ears perked high under the cowl. My heartbeat quickened not in fear but in delight. He moved exactly when I felt he would.
And I reached into my cloak and withdrew my sigil. The Silverbrook badge, copper iron polished with the soft wear of long travel. And the Grey Hollow badge, darker, heavier, etched with deeper authority.
I held it up. The inspector stiffened. His shield dipped half an inch. A reflexive bow without actually bowing. And then I stepped forward until I was right beside Master, close enough that my shoulder brushed the edge of his cloak.
I tilted my head, ears up and forward, tail swaying in slow, deliberate arcs. I stared straight into the man’s visor with the full weight of my pupils blown wide, UNBLINKING, letting him see exactly what kind of creature stood at Master’s side.
No shame.
No fear.
No apology for being what I am.
Just that lazy, predatory indifference cats have when staring at something that thinks it’s dangerous. My voice slid out soft, purring around the edges.
“You see it. You heard him. Move.”
No threats needed. The bond already pulsed hot between us, my body coiled and ready, claws just a thought away from ripping that polished blue armour open like fruit.
The inspector swallowed. He stepped aside.
Behind us, Tamsin walked through last, silent as always, but I heard the tiny huff of a laugh she tried to hide.
The guard watched us go. And none of us looked back.
The inn rose out of Grey Hollow’s fog like an old tooth: crooked, stubborn, still standing because nothing had bothered to knock it down yet. Smoke curled lazy from the chimney, lanterns glowed in orange smudges behind thick glass, and the sign creaked on its iron hook as if grumbling at the weather.
We crossed the square without a word. Master walked like the world parted for him.
I drifted at his side, tail coiling and uncoiling around his arm in small, instinctive curls.
Tamsin followed a pace behind, hood up, steps quiet, eyes already scanning rooftops out of habit.
The town square well sat in the centre, stone rim worn smooth by a hundred hands and a hundred winters. The water inside glimmered dark, still reflecting the last scraps of moonlight that clung to the clouds. A rope, frayed but clean, dangled from the winch with a metal bucket attached.
Master knelt first, unfastening the straps on his iron canteen with that efficient noir precision of a man who never wastes movement. The bond pulsed steady, calm, the heat of it humming through my sternum like a hand pressed against my chest from the inside.
I watched him for half a heartbeat. Then I mirrored him.
I slipped to my knees beside him, claws clicking softly on the stone. My tail curled lightly around his back, not restraining him, just touching. Needing contact. Claiming space. Letting the world know exactly whose orbit I lived in and died for.
Master hauled the bucket up in one smooth motion. Water sloshed, cold and clean. He filled his canteen first, metal glugging softly as the fresh water ran in.
Then he handed me the bucket without even looking. He didn’t need to. The bond carried the intention, warm and quiet.
I took it, ears flicking in small, pleased arcs, and tipped the bucket over my own iron canteen. The water gushed in clean and cold, splashing onto my fingers, streaming down my wrist, dripping from the edge of my sleeve. I felt the sting of leftover rainwater in my fur, but shook it off with a small twitch, keeping the stink far away.
Tamsin stepped forward next, holding her own canteen out with a soft sigh that sounded like someone resigning themselves to routine. Master passed the bucket to her. She filled hers.
Simple. Efficient. Quiet.
The night settled around us, soft and low. A breeze brushed the well stones, carrying scents of hearth smoke, wet wood, and the lingering iron tang of travel. We stood.
The inn lantern flickered gold across Master’s cheekbones. My tail swayed behind me, loose, instinctively brushing his thigh every few steps. The square was still. Still enough that even the whisper of the well’s dripping rope sounded loud.
Master slid his canteen back into its strap. Tamsin capped hers and slung it over her shoulder. I tilted my head up at Master, pupils wide, ears high, the bond warm and steady and satisfied. We had water. We had shelter ten steps away.
We had each other.
And Grey Hollow, for this brief sliver of night, felt like a place that understood how we moved through the world. The Vanguard hall soon arrived.
In Grey Hollow breathed a different kind of atmosphere than the misty streets outside. As soon as the door swung inward, the air shifted. Warmer. Sharper. Filled with the faint smell of oiled leather, candle smoke, and the metallic tang of ink and weapons stored too close to parchment.
My tail curled around Master’s wrist the moment we stepped inside, ears tilting forward to drink in every detail.
The reception chamber opened before us like the belly of some carved wooden beast. The stone floor had been polished smooth by boots, but still held its rough, uneven texture beneath my steps. Torch sconces cast warm amber halos across the walls, their flames steady and controlled, reflecting in irregular glints off polished metal plates hung as decoration.
At the centre of the room stood the long Vanguard feast table, a dark slab of heavy wood ringed by ornate carvings of hunting wolves and swirling battle knots. Plates and tankards sat arranged around a single stub of a candle that flickered with a low golden light. It wasn’t set for a meal, just left that way, the kind of semi orderly chaos a guild falls into between contracts.
To the side, tucked against the far wall, waited the reception desk. A thick counter of reinforced wood, gouged with old dents from impatient rangers slamming down evidence or dropping weapons a little too hard. Behind it, a rack of scrolls and ledgers lay organised with military precision. A quill sat ready in its inkwell, gleaming like a tiny spear in the lamplight.
Tamsin stepped forward first, pulling her hood back, the wet strands of her hair dark against her face as she approached the counter. The clerk on duty, a sharp eyed woman in light chain and a half cloak, lifted her head. Recognition flickered across her expression the way it always does with returning operatives: relief tempered by the knowledge that something unpleasant probably happened.
Master followed with his usual quiet certainty, boots thudding once on the stone as he came to stand before the desk. The lamplight painted his features in warm gold and deep shadow, giving him that stark, noir silhouette that made every room feel like it belonged to him.
I came up beside him, staying close enough that my shoulder brushed his cloak. My tail looped lightly around the back of his leg, slow and possessive, my ears turning toward every tiny shift in the room.
The clerk produced the ledger without a word. Pages turned. Quill scratched. Tamsin signed first, handing over the token taken from the fort leader. Master placed the evidence he carried with the same careful precision he shows in everything. The clerk accepted it, weighed it in her hand, nodded once, and reached beneath the desk.
Then came the satisfying sound. The soft clink of metal reward placed discreetly upon the desk, sliding forward with the ease of a completed contract acknowledged. The three of us accepted our shares without ceremony. No boasting. No retelling. Just the quiet exchange of work done and compensation owed.
The candle at the centre of the table flickered gently, the little flame dancing in the still, warm air as though approving the transaction.
And for a brief moment, the Vanguard hall felt like a hearth after a storm. Warm. Steady. Familiar. The kind of place where operatives come back in different shapes than when they left, and no one asks too many questions because the work speaks louder.
Master tucked his payment away. Tamsin exhaled softly, shoulders loosening and I pressed closer to Master’s side, purring low in my chest, content, alert.
The stairs came next, they creaked under our boots as we climbed, the sound soft but steady, echoing faintly in the tight wooden shaft that wound upward from the reception floor. My tail brushed against Master’s coat the whole way, matching each step he took, my ears flicking at the shift in air pressure as the hall opened into a higher, quieter space.
At the top of the steps, the world changed. The Eternal Hero's chamber unfurled before us like a shrine carved out of old myth and new ambition.
The first thing my eyes locked onto was the statue at the centre of the long pink carpet. A woman cast in cold, proud stone. Alderian features sharp and idealised, chin lifted, armour sculpted with precision no artisan in this marsh town could ever replicate. She had a sword raised, but not in triumph. More like judgement. Or expectation. Something stern and ancient. Something that didn’t blink.
Two lanterns flanked her like kneeling guardians, their warm, amber glow bathing the chiselled contours of her armour and casting long, deep shadows across the patterned floor. The whole room looked like a memory someone had tried very hard to preserve in stone and light.
The carpet beneath our feet was soft, a muted rose colour that felt almost wrong in a place owned by a mercenary guild. Its fibres showed the faint wear of many boots passing, but not enough to dull the words stitched across it:
ETERNAL HERO
My ears flicked back as I passed over those embroidered letters, the bond humming faintly at the edges of my ribs as though tasting the air. Even Tamsin slowed. She always slowed here, her steps quieter, posture straighter, like even an elf didn’t want to disrespect a room that pretended to hold history.
Master walked with the same calm, unaffected gait he had downstairs. But I felt something subtle shift through the bond, like a small, thoughtful note tucked behind his eyes. He looked at the statue only once, briefly, as though evaluating a witness in an unsolved case rather than venerating a legend.
The room’s floors were laid in dark green patterned tiles, repeating geometric shapes interlocked like quiet clockwork. The walls curved with wooden supports, smooth and varnished, holding the chamber in a gentle cradle of structure and ritual.
We didn't stay long, instead heading into the lounge where our journey had begun earlier. The lounge breathed that warm, low lit comfort the moment we stepped inside, the kind of room that tried very hard to pretend mercenaries ever relaxed.
Cushioned couches lined the far wall, lanterns glowed like slow drifting embers, and the long central table still held the scattered papers and half burned wax from earlier contracts.
Then the scent hit me first. Fresh. Hot. Bitter as scorched pine resin.
Embercrack tea.
Before the thought even fully formed, my body moved. I launched onto one of the crimson couches. Not leaping like a polite creature, but like a starving jungle thing that had just spotted prey. My boots barely touched the patterned floor before my hands hit the low couch. My tail whipped high, ears flicking forward, pupils sharp and hungry.
The teapot sat there smugly on its little stand near the cushions. Steam curled off its spout in thin white ribbons, carrying that jagged, metallic spice Embercrack miners swear keeps them awake long enough to kill something twice their size.
My claws darted out, snatching the handle before anyone could even breathe “careful”. The ceramic hissed against my palms, heat biting, but I didn’t care. A purr tore out of my throat, rough and greedy, vibrating through the bond like a pulse of feral delight.
Master stepped in behind me, boots soft on the rug, his presence sliding through the bond like cool fingers over the back of my mind. Calm. Watching. Amused.
Tamsin followed less gracefully, her expression flat with that quiet elf judgement she pretended wasn’t judgement. Her boots left faint water prints on the tiles as she shook rain from her cloak.
I curled myself onto the couch with the teapot clutched protectively to my chest, tail wrapped tight around Master’s leg even from this twisted perch. My ears twitched, catching every sound, every breath, every shift in the room.
The steam brushed my cheeks.
My pupils widened.
“That’s the good stuff,” I purred, nose brushing the lid, voice low and shameless. “The kind that tastes like someone boiled regret and spite into a drink.”
Tamsin rolled her eyes as she moved toward the job board, scanning the contracts still tacked in neat rows. “Try not to die of heart failure,” she muttered.
“Try not to exist loudly,” I sang back, sipping the air above the pot, already intoxicated by the scent alone.
Master moved closer, the quiet creak of the bench under him as he sat beside me grounding the entire room. My body shifted instantly, pulling toward him even while guarding the teapot with a territorial curl. Warmth from the ceramic seeped through my gloves, through my chest, through the bond itself.
The perfect room. The perfect moment. The perfect ending to a bloody night.
@Senar2020 5:49:55 PM 14/11/2025
Impressive writing. Where else do you post your writing?
Thank you :) This was my first attempt because of the November challenge but I'm going to keep it up on here and Royal Road because it's fun to turn the stories from my world into this.