For his explanation of what happened, Niphru skipped over the initial search, figuring it was unimportant.  Instead, he started with how he found the warriors hiding in a small cave, with the large bear besieging them.  After his quick description of the removal of the beast, he explained that he healed the two badly injured members of the group before beginning to return to the village with them.

 

Morris looked quite surprised, however, when he described the assault by the magic-wielding badger.  To be fair, Niphru himself had been quite surprised by it, when he wasn’t busy being terrified.  He actually felt relieved when Morris told him no one was allowed to go out alone again, not even himself, until the creature was killed.

 

Niphru made sure to describe what it had done, “It was able to resist my magic even when it did hit.  It seemed to splash off of it unless I put extra focus into it.  And it reacted to fire by both jumping fast enough to escape the flames and dousing itself with water to make itself soggy and even harder to burn.  It also used bursts of air to strike at a distance, not that it really needed to with the speed it moved.  It also took multiple hits from a log without seeming to be more than annoyed by it.”

 

After spending a few moments in thought, Morris remarked, “I believe I have a plan to deal with it, and will go out tomorrow to hunt it down.  It seemed like it was hunting, you said?  I should be able to lure it in that case, as I can’t look for it terribly easily; Kel repeatedly had to avoid larger aggressive birds when trying to help scout, and made the decision to pull back for safety.”

 

Niphru nodded before inquiring, “If no one is supposed to be alone, who do you plan to go with?”

 

Morris chuckled for a moment before stating, “I’m aware of my own limitations, and the strength of those around me.  I’ll be asking Narath.  The two of us should be able to handle it both up close and from a distance.  You don’t need to worry; we’ll get rid of that thing, even if it takes a few days.  It might be part of why there is a problem with twisted animals leaving the forest.”

 

He then hummed under his breath before continuing, “I don’t have anything in particular for you to do, so you can rest until tomorrow.  Actually, maybe you could help with the cooking?  We’ve been having a few people prepare food for everyone to be more efficient.  Dawn told me you’ve been cooking with her quite a bit, and that you are pretty good at it.”

 

Feeling like a distraction from dwelling on the attack would be a good idea, Niphru replied, “I think I’ll go ahead and do that; I’m still worked up over that battle.”

 

After Morris nodded at him, he remarked, “The people cooking for the village are a short distance from the center towards the lake, so it will be easy to notice them.”

 

Having heard that, Niphru turned and began the short trek between buildings, not bothering so much with directions, instead following his nose.  While he’d had to tune out a lot while staying in villages—not to mention the city—he was still easily able to follow the scent of food.

 

A short time later, he found several people working on making large amounts of stew, including the unfortunate man who’d had his arm broken during the fight earlier in the day.  He seemed to be keeping himself to just moving between batches and stirring them while otherwise staying out of the way.  A fox showing up did surprise the other workers, but they seemed relatively calm about it.

 

Questioning one of them, Niphru learned that they were having trouble setting up new batches, as they were focused more on preparing the ingredients.  This worked fine for him; he didn’t want to bother trying to cut things up for the moment.  It seemed they had piled up the portions of food in the correct amounts already, mostly needing the large pots filled and set up to begin cooking.

 

Niphru wondered how they were controlling the heat and offered to help with that, but was told they already had it handled, as the baker had quite a bit of experience with tuning the heat to specific ranges.  Having heard that, he grabbed a pot with his magic and turned for the quick walk to the well.

 

Once filled with water, the pot proved quite difficult to carry, requiring almost all of his focus to maintain his force magic strong enough to hold it.  Practice was always worthwhile, however, so he didn’t complain, returning the pot.  Once back, he asked about the ingredients and, when he was sure, shoveled one of the piles into the water before moving to place the pot at one of the unoccupied stations that had been set up.

 

Another quick question led to him igniting the wood to save a little trouble for everyone, and he grabbed another pot.  Several more trips saw all the pots filled and set to cook, along with thanks from the villagers for his assistance.  Other than the man stirring the food and the one checking the fires, everyone else left for whatever else they had to do.

 

Figuring that he was free to do whatever he wanted, Niphru decided to wander around the village a bit.  First, he went to where he heard the most noise, finding that a roof was being put over a stockpile of wood, likely to keep it from getting soaked if it rained.  There was nothing he could really do to help there, nor was he interested, so he continued onward.

 

Several other stops were entirely boring, so he headed up to the walls.  One of the guards simply looked down at him and nodded, but the other one was startled by his appearance up there when he went nearby.  All he saw was the ash over the plains from where he burned the grassland after their arrival, an empty field towards the forest, and the quiet lake.

 

The lake looked quite pretty with the lights Viera had mentioned creating down below.  Occasionally, he could see the silhouettes of rather large creatures moving in the distance, but they didn’t seem interested in the village, many of them drifting by without moving.  He did, however, spot one that seemed to be eating something too small to see from the wall, as it kept circling back through the same general area.

 

Everything seemed pretty peaceful, so Niphru decided to go see what Dawn was doing before resting until dinner.  While he had avoided it in favor of practicing normal pathfinding, he did still have the ability to sense the rough direction and distance between them via their bond, and used that to track her across the village.

 

Eventually, he found her in a small hut with an old woman wearing a fine net over her hair, who was grinding herbs up into a paste.  Dawn sat several feet to the side, quietly talking with her as she sterilized a pile of bandages.  Looking toward the walls, Niphru spotted numerous jars, each with a small label describing the contents as well as a date.  As the woman turned to say something to Dawn, she jumped in shock as she noticed him.

 

Fortunately, she didn’t have any kind of accident with what she was working on and didn’t seem too worried, just surprised.  As Dawn looked over to see what had startled her, the older woman chuckled and shook her head.

 

“I suppose that would be the Niphru you’ve talked about.  You are right: he certainly is larger than normal.  I’ve only heard rumors of some of the worst twisted forms reaching knee height.  At any rate, I’m being impolite.  Welcome to our little medicine collection, Niphru.  I have to ask you to stay a little way back; loose hair getting into the paste could cause problems,” she said with a smile.

 

Hearing the woman’s request, Niphru stepped further to the side of the hut and closer to Dawn.  “Thank you for the greeting; people are reacting better to me here than I expected,” he replied.

 

The woman nodded, focused back on her work, and remarked, “It has been a very long time since anyone has seen a fox in these parts, so there isn’t as much fear as there used to be.  We should have kept the old stories up, but there hasn’t been much need.  Even when they were more common, your kind only tended to attack people who were alone, and we’ve required at least two people to be together when going into the woods for many years.”

 

She shook her head before continuing, “A little fear for one of the more dangerous creatures is good, you know?  But I’m glad our failings have made things easier on you.  People should be judged on who they are, not what they are.  It took quite a while to get some people to accept that mages might be okay people after one of them was an incredibly poor guest a few years ago.”

 

After slowing down her work, she seemed satisfied and nodded before pulling a jar into sight and scraping the paste she’d been working on into it.  It seemed to take quite a bit of effort to get the majority clear before she sealed the jar and stood to set it on the shelf beside where she sat.

 

“Have you finished with the bandages, Dawn?” the woman inquired, looking over at her.

 

“Oh, yes, I finished a while ago.  I just thought it wouldn’t hurt to go back over them while you finished up,” Dawn replied.

 

“A fine idea, Dawn.  Now, what can we do for you, Niphru?” the woman questioned, looking to the side where he stood.

 

In reply, Niphru focused on Dawn before speaking, “I was just wondering if we had somewhere we were staying here.  I’ve finished up everything I feel like trying to do and was wanting to rest until the stew is finished cooking.”

 

Dawn looked over at the woman before asking, “Is there anything else you need me for, Hilda?”

 

The reply she received was quite simple, “Go ahead and show him the way, Dawn.  I can do all of this on my own.  If you want to return, I don’t mind, but I won’t keep you here.”

 

With a nod toward her, Dawn stated, “Thank you, I’ll come back if Niphru doesn’t need me; I’m interested in being able to help people without using magic too.”

 

Following this, Dawn gestured for Niphru to follow her and began to head back through the village.  The place she was staying seemed to be on the opposite side, taking a fair amount of time to reach.  She knocked on the door before entering, revealing that a young man was present inside.  He seemed to not be very interested in Niphru, simply glancing over before going back to carving something.

 

Dawn quickly walked over to a closed room and opened the door before remarking, “This is the room we’ve been offered to stay in while we are here.  Surprisingly, no one had any issues with the idea of you staying with me, as long as you don’t cause any problems, which obviously won’t be an issue.”  She chuckled at the thought as she shook her head.

 

“Did you need me for anything, or will you be fine on your own?” she asked, smiling as he said he’d be okay on his own.

 

As Niphru curled up on the bed, she left, likely to return to Hilda.  Some time later, the young man knocked on the open door, drawing attention to himself.

 

“Hello, I wanted to let you know that dinner should be ready around now, so you should head to the middle of the village to get your share,” he calmly stated, gesturing to the front door.

 

Niphru thanked the man and leapt down to the floor, slipping by him before using magic to open the front door, causing the man’s eyes to widen before he left the building as well.  After closing the door again, the two walked in silence and got in line for their bowls of stew.

 

It certainly wasn’t the best that Niphru had eaten, but it was surprisingly good, and quite filling.  He seemed to gather quite a bit of attention with his ability to use force magic to ensure he was tidy despite not being human.  He also found himself hungry enough to finish the entire bowl, despite it being meant for someone much larger.

 

After finishing up, he returned to the woman at the pot and asked where he should return the bowl.  In response, he was pointed to a fairly obvious stack of bowls and he wondered how he missed it.  Since he didn’t mind helping a bit, he asked for instructions on how they wanted them rinsed and where to take them.

 

It took a while to get through the stacks of bowls, even with two others joining in, but eventually, they returned the bowls to where they had been cooking earlier in the day.  A query about whether anything else was needed led to him returning to the home he would stay at with Dawn.

 

Keeping in mind that she had knocked on the door before entering, he did the same, finding the man sitting at the table again, the door to their room closed.  Reaching through their bond, Niphru found that Dawn was already asleep.

 

Fortunately, he barely had to open the door to slip through and could easily see in the dim light shining through the window.  On the other hand, leaping onto the bed proved to shake the bed enough to awaken her.  While he felt bad about it, she simply rolled over and threw an arm over him, hugged him, and closed her eyes again.  Not long after, they both fell asleep.