Eventually we found ourselves gathered around Noren, seated on logs that had been ‘mysteriously’ cut up and transported by him when nobody else was paying attention. No points for guessing how.

  The only one not sat with the group was Selene, who was sat away from everyone else doing… something.

  “So,” he began. “You may have noticed the manticore in the room, so to speak.”

  “What, the dragon thing? No, not at all,” I snarked. “In fact, I barely noticed being kidnapped by a living myth. Just another day in the life.”

  “Please calm yourself, Julie,” Noren insisted. “I am trying to explain the situation.”

  “Fine,” I bit out. My emotions were a bit of a mess anyway, and I needed time to sort through them, so Noren’s habit of rambling would work in my favour.

  On the one hand, I felt vindicated. Part of me had always had a feeling about Noren, and though I wouldn’t have guessed what he was, I knew he was something. I couldn’t help but be a little proud of my instincts for being right.

  On the other hand, however, I felt foolish. If I was going to feel vindicated, shouldn’t I also feel responsible? I mean, I believed something to be afoot and did nothing, and now we were in the middle of nowhere because of it.

  Then again, what was I to do? I didn’t know what he was, not even a little bit. Even if I had, I couldn’t have done anything about it. No one would have believed me if I had told them, except for Cassie, and she would have been more excited to see him.

  Sure enough, now that she’d gotten over her shock from being so high up -which I really needed to ask her about later- she was watching Noren with renewed interest. Honestly, there’s only room for one semi-secret magical being in this group, and that was me.

  “If you’re going to insist that I explain myself, which I am loathe to do, might I add, could you at least do me the courtesy of actually listening,” Noren asked, clearly aggrieved. I turned my attention back to the conversation and realised that we’d actually been getting somewhere. Well, everyone else had.

  “As I was saying,” Noren shot me a pointed glance. “I am indeed of the… draconic persuasion. That’s all there is to it, really. Now you know.”

  “That’s not all there is to it, though,” I argued. “Why did you make such a noisy entrance on the Fairworthy estate? Surely you could have been more discreet.”

  Noren grinned. “Of course I could have been more discreet. Who do you think I am, you? No, this was simply the most entertaining course of action.”

  “Most entertaining course of action? We could all be run out of the city for what you know! Who knows how many people saw us leave!?” I shouted, half standing. I couldn’t believe my ears. He was messing with our lives for entertainment, and acting like it was okay.

  “Come now, Julie. What did you expect when you asked me for help? Besides, I made arrangements in advance, we’ll be fine. Well, we three will. Your new friend there won’t be, but I can’t be blamed for that,” Noren reasoned.

  “No no,” Selene interrupted. “Don’t worry about me.”

  I couldn’t help but pause at his words. I couldn’t tell if he had a point or not. I did ask him for help, that was true. I did not ask him to ram himself head-first through a window on the first floor and then kidnap us though. I didn’t think I would need to specify that, believe it or not.

  “What’s it like?” Cassie broke the silence. “Being a dragon, I mean. Is it fun?”

  Noren shrugged. “It’s better than being in human form, that much I can guarantee. Honestly, how you lot deal with having only four limbs I do not understand. Especially you, Julie. I mean, you could have more. Trust me, it’s very freeing.”

  “Now is not the time to worry about how many limbs we all have!” I snapped, once again infuriated.

  Perhaps I was acting hastily. I was feeling very angry at the moment, almost violent. It was strange, but then again perhaps not. I’d been through a lot recently, so maybe I just needed release. A clear head, free of the fog of frustration.

  “I need some time,” I announced, standing up properly. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

  Without further word, I marched away from the group and towards the nearest treeline. I wasn’t sure why exactly, but I had a feeling I would find some kind of release there.

  “Lia!” Cassie called out from behind me. I looked over my shoulder to see her running after me. “What are you doing? What’s going on with you?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I just need some time to myself.”

  “Really? You’re fine, are you? You expect me to believe that?” She was pushing again.

  “Yes,” I stated. “Trust me, just give me an hour.”

  “No,” she rebuked. “I won’t. Whatever it is you need to do, we can do it together. I want to help.”

  “And if I need to be alone?” I asked.

  Cassie stopped, but I just kept walking. One benefit of knowing her for so long was that I knew all of her tricks. She would fold.

  Sure enough, she hurried to catch back up with me after a second. “Seriously, what’s up with you at the moment?”

  “Nothing is up. I’m fine, I just need some time alone,” I repeated.

  “Bullshit,” Cassie started.

  “Is it?” I whirled on her suddenly, causing her to take a step back as I interrupted her. “Is it so inconceivable that I could want one second to myself? Especially after what’s been going on recently. Is it so impossible for you to consider that maybe, just maybe, there might be something happening right now that means I need to calm myself down, make sure I’ve got a clear head!?”

  I felt bad the moment the words tore themselves free of me, but it was too late to take them back. I realised that I’d started growing spines along my joints at some point, as well as longer limbs, a denser bone structure to appear larger and a myriad of other small changes that made me appear more intimidating than I had any right to. I reverted the changes the moment I noticed them, but it was already too late.

  “I was only trying to help,” Cassie said eventually, her voice soft and her head hung low. “I can’t help if I don’t know what’s going on.”

  I sighed, although it came out harsh and forced. “You were trying to push. You always do. It's fine, just… give me an hour, okay? I know it’s sudden, but I think I need this.”

  I waited until I saw a small nod from her and turned without another word, striding into the treeline. She didn’t try to follow me this time. I wasn’t sure to be happy or sad about that fact.

  As I walked deeper into the trees, I worked to untangle the mess that were my emotions. I was already feeling guilty about what I’d said to Cassie, as well as snapping at Noren and breaking from the group and a dozen other things.

  I pushed the guilt down though, just for the time being. It wasn’t helpful, not right now. All it was doing was getting in the way. Instead, I decided to tackle everything one at a time, starting with my mood.

  I’d been in a bit of a weird place ever since my… episode, for lack of a better term, in Jenny’s lab. I still didn’t really know what had caused it, besides just having a bad experience. The same experience that I saw behind my eyes at night, and that I’d been convinced that I was reliving only a few days ago.

  It still felt foolish. I mean, Matthais was dead. I’d known him for a few minutes, he had cast a single spell on me and then died. That was it, and I knew that. Yet part of my mind just latched onto that brief time when I’d been trapped in the quickly rotting husk that was my body, a mouldering ruin of flesh and bone and-

  With some effort I forcefully turned the tracks of my thoughts away from that event, my heart pounding. Maybe it was better not to think about it. Just to be safe, I shut off a few of the connections in my brain that translated to ‘fear’, or as close to fear as you could get out of chemicals and electricity. I could practically feel myself calm.

  Instead of thinking about the event, I turned my focus to Noren. I didn’t linger for long, though. At the end of the day, somehow discovering that not only were dragons real but that I knew one wasn’t even near the top of the list for me in terms of importance. Besides, I was going to have to deal with him in person soon enough, so I could save it for then.

  Finally, there was Cassie. She was… a lot, even I would admit that. I loved her, that had been beyond denial for a while now, but that didn’t stop her from being a little bit overbearing. She always had been, to my memory, or at least she had ever since I’d considered us best friends, rather than just normal friends.

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  Normally, I could honestly say that I didn’t mind how pushy she could be sometimes. If anything, I rather liked it. It wasn’t exactly a rare occasion that I needed someone to push me, whether that be to incite a spur of the moment decision or to open up about something.

  Of course, I had been getting better at the whole ‘spontaneous’ thing recently, as evidenced by the fact that I had just randomly walked away from the group into the forest, but that was a gradual thing, and just because I was better didn’t mean I was good.

  Right now though, I had needed some time for myself and Cassie just hadn’t let up. That hadn’t really happened before. She had always been pushy, but normally it took some time. Not like what had just happened, where she wouldn’t let me go.

  For all her talk about not letting our relationship change how we acted, I think she was changing too. I couldn’t say I didn’t understand the impulse, of course. I had convinced myself that she had been better off not going to the Fairworthy estate just because I wanted to keep her safe, and I imagined that this was something similar. She had said that she’d just wanted to help, and I believed her.

  I just wished that sometimes she’d be a little less stubborn. I mean, I felt like I’d spent the last month learning more and more things about her I’d never known, and I could barely think of anything she didn’t know about me. A big part of me liked that, liked knowing I had someone I could always rely on to understand what I was going through, to understand me.

  Yet another part whispered that I deserved some secrets too. It mustered itself from the deepest recesses of my soul, pointing out that the moment I had tried to go it alone she had chased after me, demanded to know what I was doing like a child to be controlled.

  I knew that voice was being uncharitable, of course. It wasn’t a demand, it was just hasty concern unexpectedly brought to the foreground. Besides, I had never really needed secrets from her, for as long as I’d known her. Despite any recent quarrels, I trusted her judgement equally or more than my own, and if I knew something then I would probably be happy to share it with her. In my own time, at least. The issue was that sometimes I felt she didn’t feel the same.

  The answer, I deduced, was compromise. My mother had drilled it into me that when I found that ‘special someone’ – always accompanied by a wink that I only now understood – that the answer to most issues was to compromise. Disagreement over something important? Compromise. Arguing over something trivial? Compromise. In almost every case, she had always said that the answer was compromise. I wasn’t quite sure how she knew that, but it sounded right, so I trusted in her advice.

  With that decided, I pushed that issue to the side too. I couldn’t compromise alone, after all. As per usual, I felt the subtle sense of relief from coming to a decision about the problems currently plaguing me. Now I had time to make sure I was in a proper state of mind for when I got back to the others, so that I didn’t need another walk in the woods.

  Fortunately enough, my walk was unsurprisingly soothing. It reminded me of a time before Meria, before Noren and Neil and the Adventurer’s Guild and the Fey. Before Cassie decided that we should become adventurers, before I was eaten alive by wolves and started to become… this.

  I was forced to attention all of a sudden, my eyes tracking a flash of dull orange in the undergrowth with ease. It was just a fox ferreting about in the brush, nothing to be worried about. All the same I slowed my walk, waiting for it to pass. Then I had a better idea.

  My steps light, I made my way closer to the fox. I wove a quick illusion around myself to conceal my approach. It wasn’t anything complicated, but it made me harder to spot amongst the grass and leaves. I still wasn’t quite there with my illusions, but I could accomplish that.

  I crept closer still, getting closer to the floor and reaching out with my hands. I watched carefully as the fox froze, clearly noticing that something was up. I saw its muscles bunch beneath its fur, preparing it to escape. It was too late for that, though.

  With a burst of speed I dashed forward and grabbed the fox, holding it by the back of the head and the lower body, so that it couldn’t bite me. Even so, it did its best to writhe and wriggle, almost escaping my grip. It clearly thought that it was going to die, and I felt a bit bad for that.

  Rather than kill the creature, I swept my vitae through its body and did my best to memorise the details of its form. I knew that I technically didn’t need to: after all, my body and vitae could both do so faster than my mind. Yet I didn’t like relying on my automatic reactions as much as I did. I wanted to understand what my body was doing.

  After a short while of intense examination, I gently put the fox back and let it scurry away. I probably terrified the poor thing, but if my idea for relief was to work I needed to be sure of what I was doing.

  My plan, as far as it could be a plan with only two steps, was to immerse myself in the hunt. It had always calmed me down when I had done so as a human, so even if I had more tools I didn’t see why it wouldn’t do so now.

  Of course, I couldn’t just go for it as a human. I didn’t have any equipment, nor did I know the area. For all I knew, this whole forest was littered with the kind of monster that loved hunting humans. That was admittedly unlikely, since we probably weren’t even a day’s travel from Meria, but it could happen.

  With that in mind, I would hunt as something beneath the notice of most creatures large enough to hunt humans. That fox had been a stroke of luck really. Besides, I realised that I had never just copied something, besides my brief time as an Observer. I had always taken bits and pieces of the various monsters I had come across, or made my own forms. Chitin from a Gloom Stalker, eyes from a cat, that sort of thing.

  With that in mind, I secured the idea in my mind and began to shift my body. It wasn’t a quick process, at least compared to most of my shapeshifting these days, because I wanted to be completely accurate to the mental model I had in my mind of a fox. I even kept a little scar on the right hind leg, which appeared to be from the jaws of a similarly sized creature. A predator, judging by the teeth marks.

  By the time I was done, I realised that I was definitely going to lose my clothes if I just ran off as I was, and even as torn up as they were from the glass shards I’d been going through far too many sets of clothes recently. I couldn’t really afford to lose these too.

  After a moment’s thought, I briefly shifted back into human form and drew my sword, levelling it towards the nearest tree I could find. With a quick, powerful thrust I sank it deep into the tree’s trunk, flat of the blade facing up. Then I hung my clothes off it, draping them over it in a way I hoped would prevent them from falling.

  Hopefully, that would stand out enough for me to find it again. I briefly considered placing an illusion over it, but I didn’t want to limit myself to eyeline of my belongings, so I decided not to. There wasn’t really much more I could do, so I shifted once more and took off into the undergrowth at speed. The world around me seemed so much more vibrant now, my senses sharper than before, tuned in to one purpose.

  Scents, sounds and sights burst around me as I ran. I heard the rustling of feathers as birds passed over head, smelled the passage of half a dozen different creatures. I only stopped when I noticed a small mouse, scurrying out from a hole in a log. The perfect target.

  Driven by some instinct buried deep in this canine brain, I crouched low and crept closer to the small animal. Padded paws progressed precisely, dodging loud twigs and noisy leaves. I hid my approach within the brush, careful not to disturb my surroundings.

  In range, I stilled for a moment and readied my body. It knew what to do, tensing the muscles in my hind legs as I took aim. At the last second, the mouse’s ears perked up and it turned in my direction, just in time to see me leap, bearing down on the mouse.

  I missed.

  Shaking my head to rid it of dirt, I huffed and moved on. I knew already that I wasn’t going to catch it now. Nonetheless, I was determined to catch something, even if it was harder than it seemed.

  Time passed, and I still failed to catch a single thing. I tried mice, squirrels, even a bird that decided to roost in range. Each of them escaped, either noticing me before I could get in range or managing to flee me once I made it to them.

  I settled into a comfortable position and watched a rat go about its business, scrounging around looking for meals. I clearly needed to rethink my strategy.

  It struck me for the first time that I technically didn’t have to hunt like a fox. I mean, maybe that was my issue. I was pretending to be a fox, wearing the skin of a fox and thinking with the brain of one, but I wasn’t one. My limits were different to that of a fox, so my strategies needed to be too.

  I glanced up at the sky, peering through the skyline to check the position of the sun. I probably had time, if I was quick.

  Alright. One more and then I’ll head back.

  I stood from where I had been lazing, keeping one eye on the rat while making sure that it didn’t flee. As I crept closer, I started making adjustments to my form. Nothing major, and nothing noticeable from the outside, but enough to give me a new edge.

  As I got into position, newly banded muscle allowed me to leap from further away while reworked joints ensured me a wider range of motion. I leapt, and loosened skin around my forelegs provided me with the manoeuvrability in the air to twist and catch my prey even when it noticed me. I caught it between my paws, pressing it into the dirt in triumph.

  This rat wasn’t to be trifled with, however. It was a scrappy little rodent, and it bit into my foreleg with enough force to make me loosen it from the shock. It wriggled out of my grasp, and a chill spread through my body at the sight of it scurrying away, like a splash of cold water to sharpen the senses.

  Without thinking, I sprouted four thin tendrils from my shoulder blades and reached out, wrapping the rodent in an inescapable embrace. Overcome with triumph, I didn’t even think twice before biting down onto my prey.

  After a moment I realised what I was doing and dropped the rat. I could taste its blood in my mouth, and honestly it wasn’t the worst taste ever. My mind raced, trying to figure out if this was fine for me to do.

  Part of me insisted that I couldn’t just eat raw meat, that was how people got sick. Another part asserted that of course I could eat it. I mean, wasn’t it a shame to waste the product of a hunt? To kill it for no reason? Besides, if I even could get sick anymore, surely I could just heal it, right?

  I ate it.

  Not necessarily my proudest moment, but I was hungry and I couldn’t really think of a practical reason not to. I decided to specifically not think about Dusk’s hand while I did so, because I honestly just didn’t have the mental bandwidth to contemplate borderline cannibalism right now. I could deal with that the next time I got some time to myself, since I was coming up to the end of this little break.

  In any case, my hunger was sated, as was the strange drive that awoke whenever I hunted, chased or fought something. There was a certain rush that I wasn’t used to, but it wasn’t the most intense thing in the world.

  I set off back in the direction I was pretty sure I had left my clothes. I had scored small marks into several of the more stand-out trees, so I didn’t expect to have too much trouble finding my way back. Of course, getting back meant going back to the group, after I had essentially stormed off into the middle of nowhere.

  To be fair to myself, I did feel a lot more secure now. Something about spending some time alone in the wilderness had a healing effect for me, and I couldn’t deny that I would probably deal with whatever nonsense was likely to happen next better for having taken this small break.

  Of course, I also couldn’t deny that I felt incredibly embarrassed, both for leaving and for how I had acted beforehand. I also felt guilty for how I’d snapped at Cassie. She probably didn’t deserve my ire just for trying to help, even if she was being a bit much.

  Sure enough, it only took me about ten minutes of travel to find my sword, all of my belongings hanging untouched from it. A quick shift later, I dressed quickly and pulled my sword from the tree, cleaning it on my sleeve and sheathing it.

  I sent a last longing look into the woods, turning away with a sigh. It was time to face the music.

  never felt the impulse to just vanish into the woods when something stressful was happening. Never actually done it, but it's the thought that counts.

  don't get along perfectly. Like, I know that it makes the 'good bit' when they resolve their issues so much sweeter, and I appreciate that it makes the relationship feel so much more three dimensional than if it wasn't there, but still. With that in mind, there was part of me that just wanted to resolve this immediately, and that made writing any kind of conflict between the girls so much harder to actually get right. Let me tell you, it's much easier to plan this kind of thing than actually write it. ;D

  really hope you enjoyed this chapter. <3

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