Within the Suntouch Gardens, a vast expanse of lush jungle wilderness, lays a county with no name. It was simply referred to as the Suntouched Gardens, or the Feyfolks’ Land, and was held together by an ancient contract that all those who lived within its territory would band together should any hostile army cross the rivers that defined its borders. On its Northern coast laid the homeland of pioneer halflings who sailed across the seas and took on this land’s bounty. Their port cities were points of contact between the lofty and lawless eladrin and dryads in the center of the country, and the trading sailors across the world. 

Walking along the pier of the Easternmost port town of Languise was a princess masquerading as a lone mercenary, and her pet cat. Once a commander from a noble family of Zherazhaad to the South, she ran away following political turmoil. She crafted a new identity as Vrak, a mercenary who fought under the Refarn family in the war between Zherazhaad and their neighbour Irscile. At first she wanted to leave the continent entirely, but since fighting through the jungles of the Gardens, she had understood the words of her surrogate father, the former king. Just one country North was another world. Humans like herself were scarce and around her were not only elves and halflings aplenty, but creatures of legends like the merfolk and cait sith. While she had seen their homelands of the Areila Archipelago on a map, she had no idea it was the home of such races. 

While months ago, Vrak was left slack jawed and bewildered, she now easily went up to the stalls on the coast to haggle with an openhearted smile. Her pockets were full and she needed a new enchanted coat to safely cross the mountains to the East. Following her goal to get as far away as possible from her homeland, she had just finished a request to guard a caravan of traders from the previous port to an inland plantation and now to this sleepy border port. Once she was across the mountain range, she would contemplate her next step, but until then, she would not feel safe unless she had at least a whole country between herself and her treacherous brother and ex-fiance. 

She shook off those thoughts as the line shortened and she battled with the stingy halfling stall owner. Unable to reach an agreeable price, she scowled and turned away. The coat caught her eye but actually touching it and evaluating it, she would not buy such a low level enchantment for that asking price. As a former commander she had worked with army logistics before and the cold resistant coat was priced at more than twenty times its normal cost. She sighed as she walked around the salt-scented market. She should have bought the coat at the last town, it was no surprise that merchants were trying to take advantage of travelers in need of cold-resistant coats to cross the mountains. 

She felt a claw prick her calf just above her boot cuff. She smiled wryly when she saw it was her cat Twilight. It was a strange creature that was clearly intelligent and picked up on her emotions. She had picked it up on the border of Zherazhaad, right before she was entering the southern jungles of the Suntouched Gardens. The old man who had found it said it was either a spirit or a Cat creature variant. Its magic had been immensely helpful during their travel through the jungle. While it could not communicate, it had a vast mastery over many kinds of magic, although it seemed most proficient in fire and barrier magic. Vrak also noted on its strange tendencies during their journey. It preferred to stay in the shade during the day time, yet refused to sleep without a fire nearby. This, along with its large spellbook, made Vrak suspect that Twilight was a mage-variant of some kind of cat native to the Suntouched Gardens. Spirits generally specialized in the domain they were born from and she could not think of a domain whose spirit would avoid the sunlight yet bask in the heat of a bonfire that also had mastery over healing and barrier magics. Although avoiding the sun was also peculiar for forest cats. It was something that confused the old mage who had taken care of Twilight before. 

There were other peculiarities as well. When she started thinking about how it refused to eat raw meat and would even use fire magic to cook meat for itself, she muttered, “Just what are you?”

Twilight gave the closest thing a cat could to a shrug and batted at her boot again. Then she purred and pointed her paw at a stall. It was a stall for magic trinkets. Twilight had also demonstrated a sharp nose for treasures. Within the jungle they had stumbled upon ruins and the calico cat had dragged Vrak to a hidden room with an enchanted satchel and a wand of ever flowing water. In fact, the cat was wearing that very satchel on its back, with the wand inside. 

In truth, Twilight was invaluable to Vrak for more than just companionship. Vrak had a condition where she was immune to magic. However, this also meant that she could not use any magic and very few magic items. Enchanted items, like the magically enlarged satchel or a heated jacket would be fine, but anything that required activation, like the water wand, would be unusable to her. 

Of course, it was this constitution that gained her renown on the battlefield as the Paladin Princess, but she found it quite inconvenient while travelling alone, before she found the cat following behind her. She picked up Twilight and carried her to the stall. She purred and pointed to the section of the table that displayed quills and ink. 

The stall owner was draped in something similar to Vrak’s home country’s mourning clothes, all black with a thick veil so her race was undisclosed. It certainly sold the mysterious magical kiosk vibe. Vrak wondered if it was a charlatan snake oil merchant or a true eccentric witch. Her previous experiences told her it was just as likely to be either as both, but she believed in her companion cat mage. Even if the snake oil was not a panacea, it was quite likely to at least be a healing potion after all. 

The veiled witch finished helping the previous customer with a smile and then turned to Vrak and the cat curiously. A true witch, she instinctively knew they were dangerous. Not like a skilled mercenary, but like a natural disaster in the distance. Normally highly receptive to magic, she did not notice their approach until they were looking at quills and inks. Upon closer observation, the cat was releasing a dangerous magical aura, one that her mentor had warned her of many moons ago. Even stranger was the woman holding the cat, who gave off an aura of suppression. Low level magic that got near her would likely dissipate instantly. Was she a master magus or perhaps one of the southern jungle’s wardens taken human form?

Oblivious to the cold sweat from the stall owner, Vrak was trying to figure out what Twilight wanted them to buy without seeming like a psychopath. Twilight held onto her arm with one paw, and made wild gestures with the other. Vrak patted the cat gently to calm it. The owner could not figure out the pair at all. It could not be a druid, after all, a druid would be able to talk to their animal companion. And wizard familiars were made or imbued with the owner’s mana, which enabled at least rough communications. Just wanting the pair to leave, the veiled witch spoke.

“It appears your cat is quite magical, just let her down and she can pick it up herself.” 

Twilight’s eyes went wide, as if she never considered the possibility. She quickly crawled down Vrak’s arm and picked up a quill with stars and moons painted upon the feathers and gave it to Vrak. Vrak was briefly impressed with Twilight’s new skill of not slobbering over anything she picked up with her mouth. She had gotten quite good at it since they reached civilized lands. Then Twilight poked and tried and failed to pick up an inkwell that matched the starry sky motif of the quill. She hissed at it before simply levitating it with magic and put it at the edge of the table in front of Vrak. Finally Twilight jumped down and purred as she rubbed against the witch’s leg under the cloth that was draped over the table. While Vrak smiled at her cat’s strange antics, the witch was flabbergasted. 

“Sorry for my willful pet,” Vrak began with an apology, “how much for these?” 

While the quill was simple, with a weak astral enchantment, the ink within was imbued with mid tier magic, the highest quality her master let her make and sell at such a rough market. Usually such an item went unnoticed at such a plebeian event and she referred back to a set of notes that her master had given her. Honestly, in her fear, she was willing to simply hand them over without charge, but the horror of her master’s wrath steeled her will. 

“Twelve gold pieces.” She evenly stated the price listed by her master. 

Vrak frowned. She had the money, she was a former princess and commander after all, but it was more expensive than anything she had bought on her journey thus far. She could not spend her fortune on every silly trinket Twilight, her pet, wanted in every village. Besides, they had enough junk stuffed in their bags already.

“Can I drive the price down a bit? How about bartering as well?” Vrak dragged Twilight from under the table back to her arms and asked her “Twilight, can you show the nice lady one of the cores we got?” In this world, wild beasts can become monsters by absorbing the world’s natural energies. Very powerful or long lived beasts transformed in this fashion often absorb so much energy that it crystallizes into a new organ within them called a monster core. As they enabled simple beasts to utilize magic innately, they were Vrak’s natural prey. Vrak occasionally wondered if Twilight had one within her, and was certain that if she did, it would be a beautiful purple. 

Due to her constitution, Vrak could not touch the cores without damaging them, so she relied on Twilight’s telekinesis to show one to the show owner. In the shop owner’s eyes, it was a deep blue which would have great affinity with her master’s water magic research. It was certainly from a powerful monster, and the witch worried if it would exceed the value of her own products. 

“Might I ask what monster it came from?”

“I do not know its name, but it was from a snake beast within the Southern jungle. It had shimmering blue scales and was about twenty feet long.”

To the witch, Vrak’s description sounded like a very large Horizon Viper. It was a dangerous beast that could cast a multitude of magics and the witch would never approach one without her master or a senior apprentice nearby. The crystal core was significantly larger than any of the Horizon Viper cores than she had seen before, but those were worth about seven gold coins when she saw them for sale in the capital. She was not much of a merchant, but the witch figured it was worth at least ten gold coins and hoped that they would just leave afterwards. 

“It looks like something my master would have a use for. I evaluate it at about ten gold coins.” The witch spoke evenly.

Vrak quickly took out two gold coins and placed them in the witch’s hand, and Twilight did the same with the monster core. The witch smiled weakly, “Thank you.”

As the strange pair left, the witch overheard Vrak say, “What a nice souvenir.” And she wondered how powerful they were, when the greatest enchanting ink she could make was reduced to a simple souvenir. For better or for worse, Vrak was no wizard, and simply had the money sensibility of nobility and had no second thoughts for buying something expensive for her pet and travelling partner. In fact she was glad to be rid of one of those cores, they collected quite a lot of them during their journey through the Southern jungle, but she had no use for them and most towns did not have an active mage to sell them to. When she did monster exterminations under the military in Zherazhaad, she idly wondered who they even sold those monster cores to. She had learned that they were the most valuable part of most monsters, but in her travels thus far, they had been quite useless. 

That evening, when the witch went back to her master’s homely cabin on the coast West of the town, she learned of her mistake. It was the core of a Horizon Serpent Matriarch, a monster that was only found once every decade, required a team of skilled mages and paladins to defeat, and its core could be sold in an auction for up to one thousand gold pieces. While her master was overjoyed at the find, the apprentice herself had nightmares for the rest of the week, dreaming that the witch and her cat came back and ate her for cheating them. 

The next morning, Vrak awoke to her cat sleeping on the table next to a burnt out candle. When she went to dress, she found her jacket with various magic arrays written on its inner lining. She smiled as Twilight awoke to her petting and wondered how in the seven hells the cat learned to write enchantments. Still, with her jacket having a fantastic climate control enchantment, the pair bought the minimum provisions for their upcoming journey and set out for the mountain road to the East. 

Music

My first chapter. Please be magnanimous.