“You coming?” 

 

Mist was still stood by the bounty board, and Peter only realised she’d yet to move once he’d gotten ten paces away. He felt the paper brushing against his hand in his pocket, then ran his finger along it a second time when he realised the sensation was inconsistent. 

 

The herbs were wearing off.

 

“Y-yeah!” Mist snapped out of whatever was occupying her brain, nodding frantically as she walked back over to the pair of them. “Yeah. I was just looking at another listing, but it had the same problem as the rest. Too much time, not enough money. I know we’ve gotta get your hand back, not just make enough to put food in our mouths.”

 

Peter wanted to placate her. He wasn’t entirely sure how. “I appreciate you looking. You still wanna do this, right?”

 

“Yeah!” Mist nodded hard, almost frantically, crossing the distance between them and leading off ahead as if she knew where she was going. “Yeah. I’m totally on board. We gotta do what we gotta do, right?”

 

Peter quelled the urge to bite his lip. “Right.”

 

“Well, I’m glad we’re all on the same page.” Seles chuckled to herself. “First time for everything, I suppose. So, what’s the plan from here? Shall we march off to Caltrox and locate our bandit?”

 

“Not now.” Peter gave his hand a little shake, fighting pins. “Me and Mist are still exhausted, and I need a day that isn’t trying to kill me. We can rest for today and take off tomorrow. Doubt I’ll keel over in the meantime.”

 

“If that’s what you want.” Seles shrugged. “Is there anything to do here in the meantime, besides gather dust?”

 

“Without a budget? Think you’re stuck with twiddling your thumbs. Or paws.” Peter opened his inventory as he spoke, grimacing at what he saw.

 

With all that’d happened in the last day, monetary concerns were a little too sobering.

 

He had… one gold and one silver. In other words, fuck all, as the gold piece was destined to his landlord, who’d hopefully bequeath him another week of harassment in turn, rather than an immediate eviction. 

 

He’d been owing him money for months, ever since he’d had so much stolen from him on the road one month that his contractual guarantee didn’t cover it. Honestly, the fact he’d retained his job for so long despite his many shortcomings, plus the fact he technically shouldn’t have even met the attribute requirements to work there, was testament to his boss, Teflon’s propensity for hiring the cheapest labourers he could possibly find.

 

It was better than no job, though, and if Peter didn’t wanna make a habit of hunting criminals, he’d be best trying to stick with it. Maybe now that he could advance his skills, he’d be able to make deliveries faster.

 

“Yeah, I dunno if I can even get us anything to eat with this. There’s not much in my room, either, so—”

 

“I’ll sort us some food, don’t worry,” Mist said, tearing down at least one of his twenty concurrent anxieties.

 

“You’ve got money?”

 

“Enough that we can eat. Let’s just get you home, and I’ll go pick us some stuff up after.”

 

Mist was starting to feel reliable, which was at the very least calming. He didn’t know how long she’d be around to help him, but he wanted to do best by her.

He flexed his right hand. “I’ll make some more herbs for us when we get back, okay?”

 

She glanced at him oddly. “Why? I still feel fine. My body aches, but I don’t feel any of the worst anymore. Those were really potent.”

 

Right. Guess it was just him with the extreme tolerance to magical medications, or maybe his symptoms were just that damn pervasive. Humming, he mulled the prospect over in his brain, feeling an idea beginning to form. “Hey, Seles?”

 

“No, I don’t have any money for you. Or pockets, come to think of it.”

 

Peter furrowed his brow. “What? No. I was gonna say, if you dissolve that herbal mixture into a drink, does it keep for a while?”

 

She blinked at him. “You want to store medicine for the road? I wasn’t aware you had the capacity for forethought. Intriguing.”

 

“Not exactly what I was thinking. I mean, that’s a good idea, but I was more curious about whether this would be something I could sell. It’s strong, right?”

 

“Hmm, unexpected. Not your worst idea ever, but you’d need a lot of souls in order to both keep a stock for yourself and have enough to interest a merchant. I imagine you could sell a bottle here and there, if you were really desperate for cash, but I’d refrain from pouring all your souls into muscle relaxants right now.”

 

Souls. The word still took some adjusting to. In his mind, Peter tried to simply imagine them as mana, which, if he understood correctly, they kinda were? 

 

Didn’t make it less weird. “Alright, got it. Thanks for giving me a proper answer, and not just telling me to ‘figure it out’ or something.”

 

She blew air out of her nose. “I can tell you’re trying to be pragmatic. You’re horrible at it, but I can appreciate the effort.”

 

“What did you think I’ve been trying to do until now, not figure things out?”

 

“You tell me. You’re the one that’s been stagnating here the last two years.”

 

Peter rolled his eyes. “Forget I asked.”

 

//

 

The remainder of the journey to the boardhouse Peter was staying at was fairly uneventful, an uneasy silence having descended over the group. When they finally reached Peter’s room and Mist had learned the way, she ducked out as quickly as possible in order to pick up food for them all, leaving Peter and Seles alone.

 

Seles immediately started surveying Peter’s living quarters, but they didn’t span far enough for her to have much to look at. The room was an L shape consisting of a small cooking station by the door, a desk by the window where Peter usually ate, and a single bed in the far corner, spartan and rough, a ripped comforter all he could currently afford.

 

It was a depressing sight, one Peter often tried to tune out, but most times he was too tired while he was here to really pay it much mind. 

 

“Looks like your room’s got sepsis,” Seles commented, pointing to the yellow and frayed wallpaper, a total eyesore. “You might wanna write the place off at this point, set it on fire and put it out of its misery.”

 

“At least it doesn’t smell.” Peter managed a smile. It was easier to laugh at shit like this. “Would you believe this wasn’t much of a downgrade from where I was brought up?”

 

“Which circle of hell was that?”

 

“Whichever circle South Side’s in, I guess.” Peter didn’t think about home much anymore. His life here felt so thoroughly removed from Earth that it was like imagining a vivid dream when he thought back to it. 

 

“Why did you come here, Peter?” 

 

She was a cat again, and she was on his bed. That was easier to register than the question she’d asked, which had totally blindsided him.

 

“I… was told that I was important. I didn’t really feel as if I could say no, either. And…” He trailed off. It was easier not to dwell on the ‘why’ of it. “What about you? Why come to Paragora?” 

 

She seemed to mull over his question for a few moments, pacing over his mattress, eventually pressing a paw against one of the wooden posts, testing her claws against it. “I travel to worlds where interesting things are happening. I observe my findings, and I take notes. It’s a job, I suppose you could say.”

 

Peter had almost expected something as neutral, if only from her behaviours. “It’s the monsters, right? The monsters and the expanding forest are why you came here, right?”

 

Seles clambered onto her hind legs and began to scratch the post. It was incredibly distracting. “Eh, that’s more like a symptom of one of the reasons I came. A chaos dragon flew into this solar system a couple of years back. It’s been nesting in the sun. Since its arrival, mana on multiple planets in this system have become erratic. That’s contributed to the increasing monster threat, and—”

 

“Wait.” Peter stopped staring at the scratching cat and tried to actually comprehend. “Wait, hold on. A chaos dragon?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Nesting in the sun. In space.”

 

“Yes. Those are the words that I said to you. It’s a dragon about half the size of this planet, it flies around in space, and it causes things like this to happen.”

 

The gears in Peter’s head refused to turn any harder. “I don’t believe you.” 

 

In an instant, the floor melted away.

 

“Okay. How about now?”

 

Peter blinked, and found himself floating. 

 

The floor had melted away entirely, leaving nothing but empty black space.

 

He tried to scream, but no air filled his lungs. He crumpled, gasped in futile, clutching horror, and realised as his eyes threatened to burst from his skull that there was nothing he could possibly do in this moment, with all of the life being so swiftly crushed out of him, but succumb to the relentless pressure and die.

 

“What are you doing?.. Oh! Oxygen.”

 

Before Peter’s brain could fully shut down, he was encased in a bubble of sheer, undiluted air, perhaps the cleanest air he’d ever inhaled. 

 

It might’ve just felt that way because he’d been in a vacuum moments before, but as he breathed greedily from the protective sphere now keeping him alive, gasping from the bliss of filling his lungs where there’d been nothing moments before, Peter came to grips with the fact that randomly, suddenly, he’d been torn from his bedroom in Bellstrow, from his conversation with the magical talking cat, and been placed in a bubble, floating in the middle of fucking space.

 

And right ahead, staring straight at him, was a massive gold blue and red dragon. 

 

It yawned.

 

“Wh-what the fuck?!”

 

He could hear himself. The echo in the small bubble was killer loud, and he was almost worried one of the reverberations of his terrified voice might pop it.

 

Magical cat floated in front of him, breaking his staring contest with the harbinger of otherworldly doom. “See, told you! Chaos dragon. Pretty neat, huh?”

 

“GET ME DOWN FROM HERE! NOW!”