I run through the forest, dispatching multiple creatures as they try to attack me. Most run from me, but there are a few brave things. Somekind of boar-like creature with long legs that uses it’s face as a sledgehammer, but I take out its legs and move on. Something pops up, but I ignore it for now.

Finding the river where I forced myself on her, I quickly sniff out her scent amongst the overwhelming smell of myself. Her scent goes further up the river, and I follow, till I’m very, very close to a log cottage. I don’t know if anyone is inside, but the lingers here, thick and heavy, until it goes out another way.

I follow that, it’s about a day old. She must have left the lodge a few hours after entering, and entering only a few hours after I raped her. I track her scent, and it winds and winds around trees, I lose it when she crosses the river, but I catch it again when I predict where she’ll go.

I’ve never tracked someone before, much less with scent. I imagine this is how bloodhounds track down people, but I think I’m better. Why?

Because I’ve found her. My ears prick up, hearing the sounds of combat. I move silently through the bush to get a good look, and see the same cat-like girl holding a hefty crossbow. A long, winged beast charges down at her, and she rolls like a goddamn commando before targeting it. She fires, but the bird is quick, and it dodges.

It comes back for another swoop, and the crossbow’s not reloaded. I jump, running towards her to intercept the creature, but something blue sparks as the bird charges for her, and a misty blue bolt fires into it, right through the ribcage. The creature drops to the ground, its claws pushing the dirt around it in a futile effort to push itself off the ground.

The bolt has carved through it’s organs, and I smell its blood on dry grass. I don’t know what she hit, but it isn’t getting back up. The thing that fired the misty bolt watches me, larger than the girl and ghost-like, floating in the air, no legs or even a lower half, just an upper torso with covered breasts. It holds a crossbow, much likes hers, just a little larger. It reloads it silently.

She turns to look at me, and fires her now-reloaded crossbow. I wasn’t expecting it, and it hits me in the side. I fall to the ground, but I scramble up and hide behind a thick tree as another bolt chases after me. It lands in the spot I was just a second ago, then dissipates, the only mark of it ever existing a large hole in the floor.

If that hits me, I’m not sure I’ll live. I try to speak, but I’m frazzled from getting hit. Yet the bolt didn’t hit me anywhere she could have killed me, and her aim was true on the flying beast. Taking a leap of faith, I put a claw out in surrender. Then I step out. She looks at me with hatred and sorrow in her eyes.

“Why? Why did you do that to me?” she says, the blue thing hovering above her, a second bolt loaded and aimed at my life. “And what the hell is this? Why is there words seared into my head? What have you done to me?”

So it’s true then. I’ve granted her access to the system. Still, I can’t get the words out to speak. I’ve never been much of a conversationalist to begin with, but the fact she’s aiming at me with two things that could totally kill me plus the fact I have to lick my damn brain to speak is making this a lot harder than it has to be.

“Can’t you speak? I saw in your eyes that you can think. When you… spoiled me… Fuck this. Die, beast!” she shouts, and looses the bolts. I try to duck back but they are about to strike me. I manage to speak right before they hit me.

“I’m sorry.” I say. The bolts do not strike me, instead they crack against an invisible barrier as Avelihn walks out of the shadows behind me. The girl immediately bends to one knee to her. “I am sorry, Mistress, I did not mean to fire in the vicinity of a Liian.”

She walks over to the girl, then puts a hand on her head. “I am not like the Liian of the capital. I’m not a young aristocrat with balls bigger than his brains. Please, stand, but do not fire on Ryan Rivers.”

The catgirl looks at me. “Ryan Rivers? Why would a werewolf have a name? And one so strange…” she says, but I despite her curiosity I can see that if Avelihn wasn’t here she’d shoot again in an instant. I’m not sure if I’d blame her.

“Ryan? Can you speak again. I heard you, but I’m not sure she did.”

I speak the words again. “I’m sorry.”

She looks completely taken aback. All the hatred is replaced in an instant by… conflict. She doesn’t know how to feel.

“There are something you should know, Casai. But first, I am Avelihn, and this is Ryan Rivers. He’s an Incarnate.”

Now her eyes turn to fear, and something else I can’t place. “I am Nysali, the best hunter of Omega Village. Or at least I was.”

“Was?” Avelihn asks.

“I returned to the village, after spending some time in my hunting lodge. I had some things to sell, and I made the mistake of telling someone I thought was my friend. By the end of the night even the surrounding villages knew about it. They called me dogfucker, or just a liar. So I left to take his head.” She says, pointing at me.

Avelihn looks up at the ghostly thing hovering above Nysali.

“And this, I assume, is new?” she asks. “Looks like spirit of some kind. Strange. The Casai incarnates do not usually have this choice of class. Which means you’ve granted her something else entirely.”

She wheels on Avelihn, angry. “Granted? This beast has granted me nothing.”

Avelihn chuckles. “You are now part of the Incarnate system. You’ve been granted a power only a few other non-incarnates ever get to see. You’ve access to the system, dear little Casai. You should be thanking him.”