As evening fell, and the setting sun painted our skull-home orange, mom went around the house closing the beetle-wing shutters. Alessi was granted one of the alcoves next to me. I helped her carry the furs from one of the storage caverns to make her a bed. Belassi remained in the living room with us as my parents retired to their bedroom. I heard them whisper-yelling at each other about Belassi. The root of dad's argument was that extra hands around the house were a good thing and mom was using a variety of hissy expletives I didn't even understand.

Alessi however, did and she winced at the harsh words.

"I'm sorry to bring discord into your family," she said, looking down. Her crystalline, white hair glittered with sharp edges beneath the soft light of the bioluminescent plant bowls.

"Eh, don't worry about it," I rolled my eyes. "Ignore them. I like you two and that's all that matters."

"But you're..." She muttered.

"The future high-cendai," I said with a wink. "Who needs assistants with all of her grand projects."

"I am glad to be of use," Alessi bowed. "I honestly did not expect Acadius to take us in so quickly."

"Yeah, that was pretty nice of dad to do," I nodded.

"What kind of grand projects do you have in mind?" the little, silver-haired chimera inquired after a bit of a pause.

"Before I start anything big, I need someone to teach me absolutely everything about the Chasm," I said.

"I can do that," Alessi said. "Did your mother not..."

"Mom is getting irate with me asking too many questions. She's been giving me names of things without describing what they do," I said. "I don't have the memory of my ancestors to rely on."

Alessi nodded.

"Do you two have your own skull house?" I asked.

"Yes," Alessi affirmed. "It's a bit smaller than yours. Now that we won't be living in it, I was thinking of gifting it to the high-cendai so that she could bless your family's home and tools in exchange with powerful protection magics. She gives empty homes to new families in exchange for pacts. Some of them… live in caves. Caves aren't as safe as giant skulls - they don't hold protective magic in them very well and don't frighten predators away.

"Don't give your home to Eunice," I said. "I need it."

"For?" Alessi raised a white eyebrow.

"For practicing magic in. Plus I need a place to build and set more traps," I whispered. "Would be very bad if one of my parents accidentally triggered one of them here."

"Ah," Alessi nodded with a sigh. "I'll have to think of another way to make your mother happy then. Plus, the high-cendai will require a grand gift for the ceremony too..."

"We'll figure something out," I concluded.

Alessi made a small frown. Her plans were disrupted.

"What does this 'protection blessing' involve exactly?" I inquired curiously.

"The high-cendai paints runes with the blood of incredibly deadly beasts, imbuing them with her magic." Alessi pointed at an old, almost faded, dark brown rune barely visible on one of the carpets hanging on the living room's wall. "It keeps monsters away. The magic fades with time. Yours is in need of replacement. The rune-carpets hanging in our home shimmer blue ever so slightly at night - that's how you can tell that the protection works."

"Ah," I observed the faded rune. "It probably ran out of magic, that's how the nightcrawler got in. We'll bring the rune-protected carpets from your home into ours."

Night fell as Alessi and I discussed the relocation of things from her house into ours.

A tapping of knife-like feet from overhead suddenly interrupted our quiet conversation. Alessi gulped, falling silent. I grabbed onto my black sword. The tapping went into the direction of my trap. The beetle bait worked! The room grew tense with every passing second. Only Belassi didn't seem to worry, lost in her head, sitting on the fur-draped couch and looking as blank as ever.

The sound of a snapping rope, the whoosh of the moving tree and the whack of the wooden stake meeting the nightcrawler's face resounded from outside. The monster screeched noisily. Alessi dove towards me, panic painted on her face. The screech slowly faded into dying gurgles, the tapping of sharp feet growing more frantic. I embraced the trembling little chimera. She was terrified.

The awful screeches of the dying nightcrawler slowly faded.

"Hrm," a voice resounded from the dark hallway.

I turned my head and noticed my mom standing there.

"It... sounds like it's dying?" Mom looked down at us, her ears twitching in the direction of the nightcrawler's wails.

"The trap I built worked," I mumbled.

"Great. Now. Don't do that again," Mom said with a snappy voice. I knew it. She didn't expect me to succeed. She didn't think that I could figure out how to kill it remotely, that I would simply give up on the whole idea.

"Uh, why?" I asked, looking up at her lime-tinted face.

"Noise. It's making a lot of noise. There's a small chance that its death-cry and spilled blood might attract bigger... far more dangerous predators," she explained. "We do not hunt where we live for a reason."

I melted under her conflagrant gaze.

"You three can go and clean it up." Mom looked over us.

Alessi and I nodded.

"Quickly throw its carcass into the Chasm, before it attracts other predators," she added, stepping back and vanishing in the dark hallway.

I glanced at Alessi. She didn't look confident about going outside at night. I let go of my new sister and trotted towards the roof hatch. I climbed the rope ladder up to the hatch and untied the rope that was holding it closed. I pushed the heavy beetle wing that functioned as the hatch aside and emerged out onto the night.

Thankfully, it wasn't completely pitch black outside.

The walls of the Chasm were dark gray, but starlight shone from above, visible through the breaks in the clouds. Alessi and Belassi emerged out of the hatch after me.

I approached the nightcrawler, finally observing the monster in all of its glory.

It was an enormous pure-black, matte centipede and unfortunately for me… it was still alive. It wasn't screeching anymore but it was still trying to free itself from the rope around its neck. I assessed my strength against the rapidly moving knife-like feet and found it wanting. Then I glanced back at my new sister and her mom.

"Belassi, finish it off," Alessi ordered, her voice trembling.

"Here," I handed Belassi my nightcrawler sword as the young woman passed by me. She glanced at me momentarily. I saw the tiniest hint of determination in her eyes as she accepted the weapon. Monsters like this had killed her husband.

"Status," I whispered and watched as my experience went up incrementally while Belassi stabbed away at it, sitting atop the beast. My experience went up a whole five points as the creature finally stilled. Killing things as a party paid off, even if I wasn't the one performing the finishing blow.

The monster screeched one last time and finally fell silent.

I approached the panting Belassi. As she handed me the sword, I saw the smallest hint of a smirk on her normally blank face.

"You... made her smile," Alessi whispered, looking at me with sparkling eyes. "Mom hasn't smiled since dad died...."

"Revenge is best served cold," I said. "Girls don't kill monsters. Your mom got a taste of revenge against the creatures of the Chasm for the first time. Now, help me take this monster apart. I want all of these lovely sharp feet for my collection."

I started cutting through the rope that bound the centipede with my sword. I examined the monster while I did so, touching its skin. The centipede's body was covered in pure black scales that seemed to repel light, akin to vantablack material from Earth. If I made myself an armor out of these, I would be able to blend into shadows with ease. It would make for perfect assassin-style armor.

It took us a while to take apart the centipede. As its blood spattered my body, my experience ticked up rapidly. I wondered if I was absorbing its life's experience.

"Is this creature's meat poisonous?" I asked Alessi.

"No," she replied. "It is safe for chimeras to eat. It does not require cooking."

Trusting in her ancestral knowledge, I carved a chunk of nightcrawler meat away from the monster and bit into it.

"What are you doing?!" Alessi yelped as I chewed the meat ponderously.

"Eating, obviously," I replied as I swallowed the meat. It tasted like a very rare steak. Yummy. My experience jumped five whole points. I was right. There was power in monster meat. No wonder the men ate it!

"But girls shouldn't..." she uttered, looking at me with wide eyes.

“You said it’s not poisonous,” I mentioned.

“For boys… I don’t know about girls,” she muttered.

“I highly doubt our stomachs are that different from the boys,” I chewed.

“But…” she muttered.

"I slayed the beast therefore I get to eat it," I interrupted her with a wide grin. "You helped make the trap too. Want some?"

She stared at the meat, not sure how to proceed. I saw the struggle in her eyes between the desire to take the meat and the countless eons of ancestral memories.

"It won't hurt you," I said. "You'll get stronger, I promise. My magic tells me that by eating it I am becoming stronger. You’ve already taken the first step - you helped me kill it."

Finally, she took the meat from my hand and bit into it. Her eyes widened when she tasted it.

"It's delicious!" she exclaimed.

"Good. Fill up," I urged her. "There's plenty of it."

"Oh, yes," she uttered as she chewed. Her eyes dilated.

When she was done her piece she licked her lips and sighed contentedly. She then glanced at her thin mother.

"Belassi, eat!" Alessi ordered. The pale chimera complied with no quarrel.

The clouds parted completely, and I saw the moon for the first time. It was nothing like the moon of Earth. If anything, it looked akin to an enormous, jupiter-like planet. Truly gargantuan, glowing rings made from blue light shimmered on its dark surface, casting light across the Chasm. I stared up at it in bewilderment for a bit and then looked at the girls who were enjoying the meat.

At that moment I wondered if Chernobylite really granted me my wish. I wasn't able to make a difference on Earth, but here, in this new world I was already changing things. It wasn't that big of a thing, true, but to me it felt like an accomplishment. I thought back of Valentina Tereshkova, a girl from a tiny village on the Volga River who started as an amateur Soviet skydiver and became the first woman in space.

Little steps, I told myself as I took another bite of the Nightcrawler.

[202/200 Experience optimum reached! Initiate level up?]

The System chimed in my mind. I was moving up in the world and nothing would stop me now!