I was fidgeting. I couldn’t help it. I mean, I was just standing silently in front of the manor’s gate with nothing to do, and the atmosphere of irritation and impatience Talith and Lonna were radiating wasn’t exactly conducive to a comfortable silence, so…. I was fidgeting. Which maybe is the reason why my horse started fidgeting, whickering and stomping its hoof against the ground.

“Sorry,” I muttered, reaching out to stroke the mount’s mane. “All this waiting is probably getting to you, too, huh?”

“The Countess rushed us into getting ready,” Lonna grumbled, tapping her foot impatiently. “You’d think she’d be ready to see us out the gate.”

Talith opened his mouth, likely to agree with her, but stopped himself when the large doors of the manor began to open. The Countess stepped through them with a courteous smile and gracefully descended the stairs, stopping just in front of the group. Joanie, walking a step behind her, moved up to the spare horse we’d found waiting with our mounts. She stroked its muzzle lightly, shifting her beloved spear to her off-hand to make the motions easier. Then she hopped atop the mount and turned toward the countess.

“It seems this is where we part,” Liliath declared. “I do hope we meet again. Perhaps under better circumstances.”

“I’ll be seeing you at my coronation, then,” Lonna responded dryly. It looked like she was making an effort not to roll her eyes.

Liliath ignored the Princess’s reply, turning her attention to me instead. “It’s a long and dangerous road you have ahead of you. Defeating Sorissa will take everything you have, and then some. But I have to believe you have a chance. You’re the Heroine we’ve all been waiting for, after all.”

“That’s… a lot of pressure.” I winced, wrapping a few strands of hair around my finger. “I know it won’t be easy. Honestly, there’s a big part of me that’s worried I don’t have what it takes. But…” I hesitated, trying to figure out how to put what I felt into actual words.

“I don’t know why I’m the Heroine,” I said at last. “I’m sure there are plenty of people who’d be a better fit. People who can fight, people who can use magic, people who know they can kill if the cause is right. I’m not any of those things. I don’t know why I was picked. But… I was. So I’m going to do the best job I can.”

Liliath listened patiently until I finished talking and then gave me a solemn nod. “Your best effort is all we can ask for. For all our sakes, I hope it proves to be enough.”

“It will,” Lonna promised, nudging my side with a confident grin.. “She’s the Heroine. It’s practically her destiny!”

“There’s no guarantee that the Heroine will defeat Sorissa,” Liliath warned. “Only that she can.”

“Well, that’s better than literally every other poor fool who’s tried their hand at it,” Lonna remarked, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “And Sorissa knows it, too. So unless you want another two hundred years under our immortal queen, I suggest you let us get going.”

“Very well,” Liliath acquiesced, with a tight smile that failed to reach her eyes. “Joanie, your official instructions are to guard the Princess and ensure no harm befalls this queendom’s heir.”

“Yup yup!” Joanie confirmed, tapping two fingers against her chest in a salute. “Protect the Princess officially, train the Heroine unofficially. Understood.”

“I don’t need protection,” Lonna protested. She looked a little affronted at the suggestion. “Maybe you missed it? I’m a pretty powerful magi.”

“A pretty powerful magi who doesn’t know how to write her own spells,” Talith snorted.

“That’s beside the point!” Lonna protested, glaring at her brother. “You can’t tell me you’re happy about the Countess sending along a babysitter?”

“I didn’t say I was. I was opposed to this whole adventure to begin with, and now there’s someone else I need to keep an eye on.” Talith’s clay eye-sockets narrowed as he glared up at Joanie who was sitting peacefully on her horse.

“This is going to be a fun mission,” Joanie muttered. “Yup yup.” It was as difficult as always to make out any expression on a rabbit’s face, but I didn’t think she looked too happy. 

“Well, then I won’t keep you any longer,” Liliath conceded with a slight bow of her head. “Please, do take care of yourselves. It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of this continent, if not the whole world, rests on your shoulders.”

Two servants stepped forward to push open the wrought iron gates. I placed my hands on the back of my horse and awkwardly hopped up into the saddle. To the side, Talith lifted Lonna onto her horse before mounting his own drake. With Joanie in the middle, we made our way out the gate and onto the road.

For a while, we moved in silence, watching the scenery go by as our mounts took us out of town, past the rice paddies, and into a heavily forested area. The road wound its way between the trees, a paved path of grey bisecting a sea of greenery. 

The further we got from town, the worse the road became. Roots had pushed up flagstones and tree branches were jutting into the path. The horses had to carefully pick their way forward. 

Us riders, however, had fewer demands on our attention, and while most of the party seemed content to simply direct their horses forward, I at least was desperately trying to avoid being alone with my thoughts. 

“So, Joanie!” I called over my shoulder, attempting to break the silence. “Have you worked for Liliath - I mean, have you been in the Countess’s service for a long time?”

“Five years,” Joanie replied, shrugging her shoulders nonchalantly.

“Really?” Lonna asked, her attention perked. “You don’t look old enough for that.”

Melissa wasn’t sure how one was supposed to tell the age of a rabbit person, but Joanie nodded her head as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. 

“The Countess hired me when I was sixteen. Her men found me in these very woods, living off the land with nothing but my friend Trindi.”

“A spear?” I guessed.

“Yup yup! My very first. I can still remember every bump of her shaft. She died valiantly in battle when the city guard found me.”

“Wait, wait,” Lonna interrupted, holding a hand up high. “Excuse me. Are you saying you hunted? Like, actual animals?”

“...Have two younger siblings. Didn’t have much of a choice, back then.”

“We talking fowl?” Talith asked. “Because birds are easy. If you really want a challenge, try capturing a hare some time.”

“Caught hares!” Joanie declared, puffing out her chest a bit. “Deer, too. And a boar, once - up north. That one was really annoying, kept changing sizes.”

“Changing sizes?” I balked, confused. “Wait. What’s the big deal about catching hares? I mean, everyone in my world’s always trying to catch a big buck, but aren’t hares basically just rabbits?”

“Nope nope. Rabbits are much harder to catch,” Joanie shook her head, her long ears flopping from side to side. “Even I only ever caught one of ‘em.”

“What are they like in this region?” Lonna asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Super speed?”

“Passing through things,” Joanie informed her, sticking her tongue out in a surprisingly obvious expression of distaste. “Hares just turn invisible around here. If you can figure out where they are, you can hit them. But you’re only going to get a rabbit if you catch it by surprise.”

“I think I’m missing something,” I grumbled, frowning. “The animals back in my world didn’t do any of that stuff.”

“Really?” Joanie asked, taken aback. “How do they defend themselves, then?”

“Well...with claws and teeth and...burrows. Hiding. Nothing like you’re describing. Are you saying all the animals have weird traits like that around here?”

“Mostly just the herbivores,” Lonna assured me. “Though sometimes you’ve got to be careful of the omnivores, too - just be glad the carnivores don’t get anything, or we’d all be in serious trouble.”

“Okay... So. Hares turn invisible, rabbits phase through things, and wild boar can change sizes?”

“Nope nope,” Joanie denied, shaking her head. “You can’t get them all with a single throw of the spear.”

“Huh?”

“She means you’re being too broad,” Lonna translated. “I think.” She glanced back at Joanie, who nodded. “Animals all have different abilities depending on where they’re located.”

“So the same species might do completely different things in different areas?” I idly ran a hand through my hair. “How does anyone manage to get meat?”

“Farm animals mostly.” Lonna shrugged. “We can hunt carnivorous animals too, and sometimes a really good hunter will put deer or something on the menu.” 

“So boars can change sizes, but pigs can’t do anything?” I asked. “Or did you just find an area where they didn’t exhibit any powers?”

“Nope nope,” Joanie denied, her nose twitching. “Animals lose their power when they spend too long away from the wild. Always heard their magic came from it.”

“I think I read something about that once,” Lonna murmured. There was a distant look in her eyes. “I was practicing my letters on a really big book. It said something about their magic coming from their diet…”

“Their diet...” I echoed, frowning. If it was mostly herbivores that showed the ability, that implied the magic was coming from plants. Lonna had said something about light being the origin of all magic, and also something about plants sometimes turning into monsters? If the plants were directly absorbing magic, and the animals were eating those plants, that could explain how they were gaining these abilities. Since the same animal would likely be eating different - if similar - plants in different areas, it could even explain the variance in their powers. “Do any plants have magical properties? Like, similar to the ones animals have?”

Lonna rolled her eyes. “If it was that simple there wouldn’t be any mystery where the powers came from. There’s definitely plants with magical effects, but nothing like the animals have.”

“Then what if you mix them together?” I asked. “It could be like potions - if you put together the right ingredients, you get a completely different effect than what they do on their own. Maybe if we could figure out what mixture of plants the animals were eating to get their powers, we could reproduce their magic.” That had to be how it worked, right?

“Pow…. seans?” Lonna’s tongue twisted a bit as if she couldn’t quite make the word fit in her mouth.

“I don’t know what those are, but you’d both better drop it,” Talith warned us, his voice low. “You know what happens when you try to combine different magical plants.”

“What happens?” I pressed, twisting about on my horse to catch a look at Joanie and Talith.

“Goes boom,” Joanie answered with a shrug. “Bad idea.”

“It doesn’t always go boom,” Lonna corrected. “Sometimes it turns to sludge, or light, or lights everything in the area on fire. The stupider kids around town used to try it once in a while, but the lesson’s always the same - don’t consume more than one type of magical plant at a time, and don’t mix their juices together.”

“Good to know,” I murmured, a bit disappointed. “Does that mean animals don’t mix magic plants, either?”

“I mean, they’d explode if they did, right?” Lonna remarked. “There’s no way anything that dumb would survive in nature.”

“I guess… Do you still have that book you had by any chance?”

“Nope.” Lonna’s response was terse, her face drawing tight. “But hey, if it means that much to you I know where you can find it.”

“Wait…you don’t mean?” 

“That’s right,” Lonna confirmed, turning around in her saddle to flash me a grim smile. “All you need to do is kill Sorissa and claim her library.”

Unsure how to respond, I allowed the conversation to trail off. We spent the rest of the day riding in silence.

~~~

Author's Notes

Hey everyone! It's... been a while since I posted on this account, huh? Long enough that I apparently never got you guys the updated version of this series... I started a rewrite a while back, you see - it's mostly the same, just edited to be in first person instead of third, since I'm better at the former than the latter. I'm afraid I haven't progressed all that far beyond the original writing, but I am up to chapter 15 in terms of public releases, so here's the newest!

I'm thinking of going back through the originals and just updating them, rather than reposting chapters that are more or less identical outside of the whole "being in first person" thing? We'll see.