At my acceptance the man stood a little straighter and clapped his hands. “Oh, this is spectacular news! Oh, I simply must repay you. But what with…” He spoke almost to himself as he glance around, eyes lighting on the corpses at his feet that I had been trying not to think about. He let out a delighted gasp and began to rummage through the pockets of each body, only coming up with something from the leader.

  The man pulled a small bloodstained pouch from the body, opening it to spill out several coins into his palm. “Here,” he offered, the hand with the coins stretched out towards me.

  “Uh…” I hesitated, unsure.

  “Thanks!” chirped Cassie, who snatched the coins and squirrelled them away in her bag.

  “Wonderful! Well then, shall we be off?” Asked the man.

  “Listen… Actually, what’s even your name?”

  “Noren Foundling, at your service!” Answered the man, strangely excited for a man who had just killed five people.

  Foundling, huh? So he was an orphan?

  “Listen, Noren… Actually, Nevermind. Just don’t do anything untoward, yeah?”

  Noren actually gasped at this, like he was auditioning for a pantomime. “I would never! I said before, all I wish for is company. Oh these roads, ever so lonely…”

  I had to admit that at the very least, he was entertaining for a cold-blooded killer. Cassie must have agreed because she was stifling some giggles at the man’s dramatics.

  “Right. Well anyway, we should probably head off. I don’t know about you but I would rather not spend any more time around these guys,” I waved a hand at the dead bandits.

  “Hah! Quite, young lady. Ah, you do have me at a disadvantage now. You know my name, but I don’t know yours.” After speaking, he waited expectantly. Again I considered lying, but there wasn’t really much point. Cassie was many things, but subtle wasn’t one of them. One of us would slip up at some point, and if there was one thing I didn’t want to do it was upset the guy who was joking while surrounded by dead people.

  Damn, I am doing a terrible job of not thinking about the dead guys. There I go again!

  “You can call me Julie,” I said flatly. At the very least, I was keeping my full name and last name to myself.

  “Julie! A wonderful name. With that settled, I agree that we should be off. Shall we?” He made a sweeping gesture in the direction of Perch, before setting off confidently without even waiting for an answer.

  By the time we began to follow he had slowed his march slightly, just enough for us to catch up without having to jog to get there. Cassie fell into step beside him and began happily chatting away, but I kept a pace or two behind. I wanted to see if he was going to try anything.

  Now that I got a better look at him, I was rather intrigued. Physically wasn’t anything too special. Lean build, pale skin, mop of black hair. His clothes were finely made, but time on the road had lead to subtle wear on them. His green tunic was surprisingly vibrant, and showed the most damage, although it took a proper inspection to see. No, what had me intrigued was his vitae, which I was now close enough to sense.

  His vitae was everywhere. Normally, someone’s lifeforce was largely stored around their heart, with some following vaguely around the circulatory system. Mine was all stored around my heart with none in my veins, and it was stored more densely than anyone else that I had seen. Noren’s vitae was still stored vaguely around his heart, but it was also spread much more evenly throughout the rest of his body. He also had noticeably more of it than the average person, an example provided by Cassie in this scenario.

  Nonetheless, he didn’t seem to do anything untoward so after a couple of hours of walking I decided to stop watching him so intently. I kept a sliver of attention on him, but with Cassie occupied I didn’t have much to do for entertainment but practice. I didn’t want to let this guy in on the whole shapeshifting thing yet, so I ended up practising my illusions instead.

  I was in a weird place with my illusion magic. I enjoyed summoning them, but they just seemed less viable than something like shapeshifting or swordsmanship. Where my shapeshifting was constantly becoming more and more intuitive, my illusions still felt more like an external power that I was utilising. I suppose that made sense since my shapeshifting was supposed to be intrinsic to me, but it was still frustrating.

  I also wasn’t progressing anywhere near as quickly with my illusions as I was elsewhere, and I still couldn’t create a moving illusion larger than fist without total concentration. I could go bigger if it was static, but a completely static image had limited uses, and even then my size limit was about that of a person in height and the same in width. Anything beyond that got… slippery, and I couldn’t quite get the details to stay consistent.

  My practice consisted of me scooping up a rock from the road and mirroring it in my other hand, trying to keep the movements of the illusion identical to the movements of the real rock. It was surprisingly tricky without cheating and tying the two together. Although if I had done that then the illusion wouldn’t have sat in my hand properly, since it would be truly based on the movement of the real rock.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Over the next few hours I accomplished… very little. I got a bit more consistent with my illusions, but at the end of the day it was definitely slow going. By the time the three of us were setting up camp Cassie and Noren were fast friends. He wasn’t carrying anything with him, and if I was honest I was still a little uncomfortable leaving Cassie alone with him, so I sent him of to fetch some flammable material for the fire. I reckoned that it would take a bit longer than it took me, because we were securely out of the woodland now.

  “See? I told you he’d be fine,” Cassie said almost as soon as he was gone.

  I huffed. “it’s been a few hours. We still don’t know how this will end up.”

  Cassie stared into my eyes. “Huh. What’s dark green?”

  I was a bit surprised. This was a habit Cassie had gotten into all the way back when I had first started shifting unintentionally, where she would ask me what I was feeling to correlate what colour my eyes were. It had gotten me to be a bit more introspective, but it had been months since Cassie had needed to ask.

  I took stock of my feelings, especially those surrounding Noren. I didn’t like the guy, which was weird because he was a bit like a more violent version of Cassie. I mean, dragging someone into a confrontation and then effortlessly killing five people in front of them was certainly a first impression for the books.

  I got the feeling that there was more to it than that though. I was definitely frustrated about something, so I ran through what I could remember him doing. I had been annoyed when he called us out to use as a distraction, but I got it. I even understood why he killed those guys, even if he’d seemed a bit too excited to do it. That wasn’t what bothered me.

  I had been amused by his over-the-top dramatics, and he hadn’t done anything aggressive to warrant my dislike. No, all he’d done was talk incessantly with Cassie…

  Oh. is that jealousy? Why am I jealous?

  From a certain perspective I felt foolish. I mean, we were only going to know him for a few days, and then we’d be back to just us again. At the same time though, he truly was a lot like Cassie. Not as genuine, definitely colder than Cassie was. Still, they had a similar sense of humour, and they got on well, much better than Cassie and I had back when we’d first met all those years ago. It wasn’t like they hadn’t made a couple of attempts to include me on their conversation, but I still felt jealous anyway.

  Right, well this isn’t good. I don’t have any right to this jealousy, Cassie doesn’t even know how I feel. Hells, I barely know how I feel, this is all too new. At the very least, I’m certain that I can’t tell her.

  “It’s… it’s nothing, Cass. Don’t worry about it.” I made the conscious decision to shift my eyes as close to my old colour as I could remember to make it appear as though the emotion had passed. Even as I did so I felt guilty. I hated lying to Cassie, and I couldn’t help but notice the confused hurt in her eyes as she just huffed and turned away. I’d never refused to tell her what a colour meant, but I just didn’t know how to handle this.

  Great job genius. What, did you expect her to just be fine with you suddenly keeping things from her? whispered a little voice in the back of my head. It was the same voice wanted me to just tell her everything, even though I’d only been living with these feelings for less than a week.

  Yeah, sure. But what was I meant to do? I shouldn’t even be jealous, what would I have told her when she asked why?

  The voice stayed silent.

  That’s what I thought.

  With my internal conflict resolved, or at least silenced for now, I looked up to see that Noren was already back. He had constructed a frustratingly well-proportioned campfire, which Cassie was lighting with a stormy expression.

  I watched as she poured more magic than was really necessary into the cantrip, releasing a plume of flame into the logs that caught almost immediately. If she noticed the overuse then she didn’t show it, just casting her levitation spell and dragging over a rock from the other side of the road, placing it on the ground to use as a seat and opening up her spell guide. She didn’t even look at me.

  Shit. I really messed up, didn’t I. I can’t tell her though, I don’t have an answer for her. Not one that she can know.

  Noren walked over and tried to start a conversation with her, but even he could only take so many curt one word answers before giving up, so he ended up sitting by me instead. I was sat on a thick log which was close enough to the fire to feel its warmth, and unfortunately it was big enough to be sat on by two people.

  Noren said nothing for a while, before finally turning his head slightly to glance at me out of the corner of his eye. “So, what did you do?”

  I sighed. “Who says I did anything?”

  Noren shifted to face me head on. “Look, Julie. I am aware that I do not know you two well, but it is clear that you are close, yes? You are travelling together, clearly out of choice. Besides, many of Cassie’s tales included you, so you must be close.”

  I shrugged non-committally, even though inside I was perhaps undeservedly happy to hear that Cassie’s favourite stories included me.

  “I thought as much. Now, if something had happened that were not your fault, then you surely would be comforting her, being so close and all. Am I correct?”

  I shrugged again. I wasn’t really in the mood to get psychoanalysed by a murderer I’d met a few hours ago, but I tried to tamp down on my dislike of the man. Now that I knew where it was stemming from it felt… childish.

  “With that established I shall ask you again. What did you do?"

  I failed to meet his eyes, instead levelling a murderous glare at my feet. “I didn’t tell her something. Something she didn’t expect me to keep from her. Something I probably shouldn’t have.”

  Noren fell silent for a time, occasionally glancing between me and Cassie. “Julie, I am going to be honest with you here. I don’t know what’s going on with you two, not really. In the time we have to spend together, it is unlikely that I will. However, that doesn’t mean I want to spend the next several days playing messenger between you two. Sort it out. For your sakes and, more importantly, for mine.”

  With his piece said, Noren patted me lightly on the shoulder, which had me flinching lightly at the contact. He tilted his head at my reaction and stood, soon settling down again in a middle ground between the two of us, beginning to whittle of all things. The message in his placement was clear: ‘Don’t involve me’.

  I thought over his words and realised that he was right. Still, I had no idea what to tell her, or even how. After a while I just gave in and settled in to sleep against my log, the chill of the air a constant reminder of the distance between me and Cassie compared to how we had slept the night before.