A large rock jutted from the cavern ahead. The path twisted past it, out of sight. I saw the faint flicker of firelight at the edges of the rock. The gentle murmur of companiable conversation echoed from around the stone.

  We stepped around the rock, Jeffrey hopping with excitement and pulling my hand in both of his.

  A stout sheepkin stood just on the other side of the stone, raising a sharp halberd he had been poised with and smiling.

  “We were about to go looking for you, Jeffy.” He said, his gaze flickering from Jeffrey to me. “And who is this?”

  “Chanter, he helped me get back!” Jeffrey said cheerfully, loud enough for his voice to carry into the chamber beyond.

  The tunnel opened up into a cavern that contained several tents of various styles and colors. Five sheepkin sat around a fire, their jovial conversations ending abruptly with our arrival. A tripod supported a boiling pot above the first and a grandmotherly sheep with grey wool stirred the contents with a wooden spoon.

  The aroma shifted. I smelled herbs and roasting meat, it smelled wonderful. A wave of comfort washed over me as I looked upon the family.

  They were all sheep beastkin, of varying ages. They looked at me with eyes and dispositions that radiated appreciation and welcome.

  The elderly male sheepkin called out before I had a chance to respond to the guard. “Welcome! Thank you so much for bringing Jeffrey back to us! Oh how he wanders about sometimes!”

  Jeffrey pulled me toward the warmth of the flames, which fought back the tepid coolness of the cavern.

  “Hi, nice to meet you all.” I bowed slightly as I approached the fire.

  “Please, please take a seat,” a sheep of middle age said, pulling a wooden chair from a neat stack and sitting it near the flames.

  “Yes, yes, sit!” Jeffrey said, leading me to the chair. “That smells so good, Gam-gam! I can’t wait to eat!”

  A ripple of affirmation washed over the others, who all nodded and eyed me, smiling. I sat down, smiling.

  “It does smell good, thank you for having me!” I said. I glanced around my interface, but the quest hadn’t updated. What the heck?

  “First bowl to the guest!” the elderly sheep said, shuffling forward with a bowl. He held it out and Gam-gam spooned out half a bowls worth of the brown porridge.

  “Hope you like meat and herbs! Family recipe!” Gam-gam said as she spooned the food into the bowl. The elderly sheep — Gamps I guessed — held the bowl out to me after plunging a smaller spoon into the dish.

  “Eat while it’s hot!” Everyone was looking at me, smiling. I should have felt uncomfortable, I was not used to having a lot of people staring at me, but it felt more like opening a present on Christmas morning surrounded by family. I was flooded with warm, welcoming sensations.

  I lifted the warm spoonful of porridge to my mouth, blowing away the excess warmth and watching the steam be carried away by my breath. The room collectively held their breath as I put the spoon into my mouth.

  The porridge tasted phenomenal. It was the single best thing I had ever tasted in my life. The texture, the flavor, it all melded to meet every culinary itch my mind had, then scratched some I didn’t know about as well.

  “Oh my god,” I said, shoveling in another spoonful. “Oh my god it is so good.” I barely noticed the wide, toothy smiles of the sheepkin, which had gathered to surround me as I shoveled the porridge into my mouth.

  I didn’t stop — couldn’t stop — until scooping the last delectable morsel into my mouth. I held it for a moment, savoring the flavor, before swallowing.

  A wave of dizziness washed over me. My stomach started to cramp, then released and a wave of warmth radiated from my stomach.

  Toxin of Apnean Dreams negated by lingering affects of Henrietta’s Curative Strawberry.

  Quest Update! Help Jeffrey get Home has been updated to → Escape the Barrow. History lesson time! The Barrow of Aldrick has long been forgotten by the annals of time. The remembrance tree, a long-dead tradition of old, grew to encompass the entirety of the tomb. It was torn open when the memorial tree fell to a savage storm that ripped through the coast and devastated the region. As they tend to do, a pack of scavengers moved in to the space, making it their own. Escape! Survive! Good luck; you’re going to need it. Reward: Bonus Skill experience in Transform. Copper Hero Complex Chest x1

  I looked around, dumbfounded. My stomach twisted in another knot as the toxins continued their assault. It was met by a relaxing warmth that pulsed from deep within.

  The faces that surrounded me shifted into confusion.

  “Shouldn’t — shouldn’t he be knocked out by now?” Jeffrey asked. “He ate a whole bowl of that stuff.”

  Gram-gram changed first. She shifted, her sheep features melting and reforming into a fleshy, bipedal monstrosity with numerous eyes and a massive, drooling mouth lined with teeth that were as sharp as daggers. Her arms ended in long, tapered tips — more tentacles than arms. The nameplate above her head shifted, changing as she did.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Gram-gram became Doppleganger Matriach. She screamed, spittle flying from her lips as her two tentacle arms whipped towards me.

  I threw the bowl, flinging myself backwards. The bowl bounced ineffectually off of her face as the rest of the sheep began undulating and transforming into the fleshy abominations.

  I jumped up as the closest, the guard, swung his halberd at me in a diagonal slice. He swung it in wide, unpracticed motions, losing his balance as I danced to the side. I knelt, picking up the torch I had set aside to eat, and hurried past him.

  He began pivoting his body for another swing as I passed. I pivoted on one leg and sent a powerful hooved kick with the other. I hit him in the chest; the creatures remained about the same height, much smaller than I was in this form. Something crunched in his chest and the guard flew back, crashing against the wall.

  The other doppelgangers charged me, a wall of flailing tentacles, eyes, and huge fangs. Their screams reverberated within the barrow. I swung the torch, holding them at bay long enough to back out of the chamber and into the narrow confines of the hall around the large rock.

  “Come back,” Jeffrey said. He had shifted his head back to that of a sheep, but the massive dagger teeth remained. “I’m so hungry.”

  He broke free from the pack, leaping at me. I turned and some deep-seated instinct took over. I turned to face him, squared my hips, and rammed the airborne doppelganger with my horns. We impacted with a muffled THUD that belied the force of the impact.

  Doppelgangers were not a hardy bunch, which made sense considering their tactics of toxic sleep-induced ambush. I felt several things break inside of Jeffrey when my head hit his body. It felt good, like some deep, base desire was being met by weaponizing my skull.

  His body was caught between my head and the low cavern ceiling. It squelched between the two unforgiving surfaces, falling limply to the floor as I backed away. I wanted to do it again. I wanted to headbutt something else. I snorted, stamping a foot.

  Several sets of eyes that caught the torchlight and reflected it back out as a silver shimmer stared at me from the dark beyond the rock. The fire had gone out at some point. cloaking the inner portions of the cavern in darkness.

  I snorted again, tamping a foot and shifting my head up slightly, daring them to come. The tunnel was too narrow for more than one of the doppelgangers to attack me at a time. I stamped my hoof again in challenge.

  My mind was beyond conversation, in a more primal place. I yearned for one of the beasts to come out and bump heads with me. I needed it. It didn’t happen. We stared at one another for a long minute. My boiling blood cooled down to a simmer, and with it went the battle lust that had overtaken me.

  I backed away from the narrow hall, glancing backward but keeping the majority of my attention behind. I watched for the creatures to emerge, but they didn’t. I expected them to flood out of the narrow opening and overwhelm me, oversized teeth bypassing my headbutts and kicks and sinking into my flesh. They didn’t.

  I continued backing out of the tunnel, one careful backstep at a time, until I reached the entrance. I looked around the barrow once more — they hadn’t followed — then I turned and ran out of the hole.

  Quest Complete! Escape the Barrow. You have successfully escaped the deadly deceptive doppelgangers. You must be lucky to have survived, especially after falling into such an obvious trap. They say the Gods favor fools, or something along those lines. Here, take this and go blow something up, fool. Reward: Bonus Skill experience in Transform. Copper Hero Complex Chest x1

  Transform has leveled up! (7/50)

  Transform has leveled up! (8/50)

  Transform has leveled up! (9/50)

  Transform has leveled up! (10/50)

  -DING-

  Welcome to level 6! New Stat Points available for distribution!

  I opened my inventory and pulled out the Copper Hero Complex Chest, sighing. An engraving of my human face stared back at me from the chest. I sighed again as I opened it. The chest disappeared in a stream of multicolored smoke. A single, cylindrical object remained in my hand. A long fuse hung from one end.

  Explosive Cylinder. Standard Grade.

  Big things come in small packages. Gnomes take this up a notch. Explosive Cylinders are used to clear vast swathes of mountainside. Construction of the Western Pass would not have been possible without these little things. The exact chemical composition and construction of this explosive is kept secret, but it’s destructive quality is known around the world.

  I stood at the mouth of the barrow, the small cylinder — it was no wider than the palm of my hand — held in one hand, the torch in the other. A gust of wind pulled and tugged at the flames of the torch.

  “Fuck you guys,” I said, holding the edge of the wick to the open flame of the torch. It began fizzling and ejecting sparks as the wick caught. I threw the small bomb into the barrow.

  I turned and ran, pushing my powerful legs to the max. I had taken a dozen steps when the explosion detonated with a dull thwump. I felt the ground shake for a moment, nearly losing my footing as I was hit from behind with a spray of earthen chunks.

  The area around the fallen tree had collapsed into itself from the explosion, resulting in a sunken in divot of churned earth, roots, and rocks. I watched the area for several minutes, but nothing emerged.

  I felt another knotting of my stomach. This time there was no accompanying wave of warmth and I vomited. I vomited for what felt like an eternity, though in reality it was likely only a few minutes. I pointedly looked away from what I was throwing up, heaving as tears streamed down my cheeks. The taste was awful.

  Eventually I finished, washing my mouth out with a waterskin as I made my way out of the forest.

  The last rays of the sun were painting the sky in beautiful shades of red and orange. I hid behind another large tree and changed back into my human form before leaving the protective cover of the forest.

  I jogged back towards the gates, afraid of being locked out. I wasn’t sure when they locked the gates, but Telko had mentioned the gates being unlocked just before dawn so I imagined they were locked shortly after nightfall.

  I spent the jog back mulling over the memories of the evening and pushing them from my head.

  How had I been so stupid? I had waltzed through a forest of red flags and avoided a gruesome death only thanks to the lingering effects of Henrietta’s curative berries. I really needed to bring her a gift to say thanks.

  Had it been some magical effect or my own stupidity? Did I really want to know? The amazing taste of that porridge lingered on the edge of my memory. Had those flavors been magical as well? What, exactly, had I consumed?

  No, no. I couldn’t let the thoughts consume me. I pushed them all away as I jogged back to Verdantbrook.