“Fur...ball?” the yeti rumbled in a deep, nasal voice, “Me no furball, you furball!”

Lexi shook her head. “Mountain Yetis… almost as dumb as Cave Trolls.” she muttered.

Like all wild monsters, Mountain Yeti’s had just enough intelligence to learn some basic words…and insults... though not all wild monsters had the ability to speak. What distinguished the wild monsters from the civilized ‘monsters’ was mainly their level of social and cultural development. Wild monsters were not much further beyond the ‘eat-procreate-sleep-repeat’ stage.

In other words, unless you trespassed in their territory, a Mountain Yeti only acted first if they were hungry, lustful, or angry.

Which begged the question… why was this monster here?

Lexi ran forward, swinging her claws. Same as before, the wind drew shallow bloody furrows in the yeti’s fur, yet she could tell that the damage was superficial at best. It only seemed to enrage the monster.

The yeti pushed itself to its feet, roaring in agony. Lexi’s ears perked as she heard the rattling of heavy chains and she followed the sound to the monster's legs. Broken shackles circled around chaffed legs. The beast glared at Lexi with a mix of obvious hatred and rage. The smell of bloodlust overpowered her fishy aura and caused Lexi’s knees to tremble slightly but she stood firm.

The bloodthirsty monster charged forward, covering the distance in the blink of an eye as it swung an arm in an attempt to backhand Lexi. She ducked, feeling the intense pressure overhead as the hand passed by. Then she leaped backward, barely avoiding the follow-up smash from the yeti’s other hand as it crashed into the ground.

Lexi was starting to regret her decision to challenge the yeti solo. She didn’t have enough experience with magic to take on an enemy so much stronger than herself alone.

The beast stepped towards her, the chains rattling as they shook.

“Bad noise! Bad, bad!” the yeti roared as it reached down and swung its massive fists at the chains. They creaked and rattled, but held against the force.

Lexi stared at the chains for a moment. They looked like the enchanted chains that slavers used…

“Are you a slave?” Lexi asked softly.

The yeti paused. It turned its angry glare back onto her.

“Me no slave! Me Ye-ti-ra!” it roared.

“Ye-ti-ra. Is that your name?”

The beast growled in response, preparing to launch itself at her again. Suddenly, it stopped, staring at something behind her.

Lexi glanced around, noting that she now had an audience. Og, Vorg, Shaman… several other goblins that she didn’t know. They all stood a fair distance away, watching with different expressions. Lexi ignored them all as she followed the yeti’s gaze to a single individual - Evelyn Raymond.

Raymond was… smiling? The small girl noticed Lexi’s gaze and nodded encouragingly.

Lexi grinned, releasing her magic. A wave of mental fatigue rolled through her and she stumbled as she started to move forward. She hadn’t had proper time to recover from mana deprivation and she had overdone it again.

“Ye-ti-ra. Why are you here?” Lexi asked.

“Humies. Chains. Run. Food.” it rumbled, looking around at the circling goblins warily. It turned as if to run but it's escape paths were all cut off. As Lexi saw the monsters back for the first time, she gasped. It was covered in long, crisscrossing stripes.

“It’s a trap.” Trog hissed, appearing beside her. He turned. “Everybody, get back to the camp. NOW!” he shouted.

“What about the Mountain Yeti?” Raymond asked as she approached.

Trog grimaced. “We can’t feed it, it’s too injured to fight and it led the enemy here. Kill it.”

Lexi watched as Raymond turned and faced the yeti. She could see respect and fear in the creature’s eyes as it stared the small girl down with obvious intelligence. All wild monsters had a danger sense of sorts… it helped them stay away from beings they couldn’t hope to defeat while preying on weaker foes. It could sense that Raymond was beyond its abilities to defeat.

To Ye-ti-ra, Raymond distinctly registered as a predator. More particularly, he could feel that she was a Lord.

Raymond walked up to the beast. When she stood before it, she reached just above its knees in height. Like a true Mountain Yeti, it stood unwavering in the face of a more powerful force. Despite the creature’s strong front, Lexi could still smell the overwhelming fear rolling off of the creature.

“Ye-ti-ra, if I’m not mistaken?”

“You scary. Who?” Ye-ti-ra rumbled back.

“I am Raymond. I have a proposition for you.”

“Prop..po..tion... ?”

And then Raymond said the last thing Lexi was expecting... something that somebody who knew the ways of this world would never consider.

“How would you feel about serving Legion?”

***

Lord Mortimer entered the sky over Cairel. The walls were still absurdly high for such a remote town, but that was no issue for a magnificent raven such as himself. He flew over the small buildings. At an initial glance, the largest change from when he’d last been here was the number of slaves. The humans had supposedly overcome their fear of the beastkin curse because there were many beastkin slaves alongside orcs and trolls.

Obviously, he saw no slaves from the immortal races… such an idea was absolutely ludicrous. The Fairies were gone, the Elves were too far away, the True Vampires and Slimes were too powerful and the Dragons… well, just like Lord Mortimer, they were kings of the sky and no ground-bound miscreant human would ever be able to enslave one. Also, there was only one Dragon trapped on this continent, which may or may not be relevant…

As he soared over the city, observing the flow and distribution of people, he found himself in a part of town that he recognized. The Underworld had its beginnings as a fledgling operation when he was last in the area. They had claimed this portion of town as their own and operated with full sanction of the crown at the time. Those days were glorious! Planning and organizing with his master, leading raids on caravans, undermining the political system… That was certainly a fantastic era indeed.

The portion of town that had housed the Underworld was pretty much exactly as he had remembered it. One of the buildings that was used as a hideout was in ruins, but other than that the area remained dirty, drab and depressingly lacking in clearly visible activity.

Naturally, Lord Mortimer’s trained eye could pick out the thieves scuttling in alleys, harlots waiting to ambush and other such elements generally considered unsavory by society.

Of particular interest to the illustrious Raven Lord was the miscreants who were at that moment attempting to corner a young temple priestess. She was hurriedly moving through the streets as they tailed her but they were slowly boxing her in. There were six men in total moving to corner her… two stayed behind her at all times while the rest moved through side alleys and secret passages to cut off her escape. Witnesses simply ducked into nearby buildings, pretending that they saw nothing.

Such was the way of the Underworld.

Normally, the Raven Lord would ignore such a thing and move on. However, the girl looked vaguely familiar. He looked closer, examining her until he suddenly realized who she was. He had never met her, but Lady Raymond had.

Kelsey Vale, the young temple priestess that had escorted the Lady Raymond to the High Priestess… and from the memories he received from his Lady upon being summoned, he knew that she didn’t feel any antagonism towards the young priestess. Since he didn’t know whether Lady Raymond would be bothered by her death or not he decided he should intervene now and then ask later. He could always kill the girl himself if the Lady preferred her dead.

The small hunt was nearing its conclusion. Kelsey was finally forced to cut through an alley to avoid the men who appeared on the path in front of her, but this one was a dead end. She backed against the wall as four men blocked off the entrance to the alley and two more dropped down from the roofs of the buildings on the side.

Lord Mortimer flew down and landed on the roof of the building that formed the back wall of the alley. He observed the girl for a moment, noting that she was trembling. Perspiration lined her brow and she was breathing heavily, clearly tired from the chase.

Kelsey reached down and pulled a small knife from inside her robes. She held it up to her own neck.

“Back off!” she shouted.

Interesting. Lord Mortimer approved of her methods. This girl was willing to stain her own soul with suicide rather than allow her mind to be damaged by rape. One would think that having absolute certainty of respawning would make suicide an easy option but that would not be the case for most people. Suicide has a higher chance of producing a drone… the theory is that something in the soul is lost when an individual takes that dreadful step.

“Miss, there’s no need fer that.” one of the men said. Mort sighed as he focused on the man and activated Curse of Fate, his one ability that he’d received so far. It was a more powerful version of the standard level 1 Raven ability Curse of Luck, so his expectations were high.

And he wasn’t disappointed.

The ruffian who had spoken took a step towards Kelsey and tripped. He threw a hand out to catch himself on the wall but missed and slammed his wrist into the wall at just the right angle and with just the right amount of force to break it.

The man fell to the ground, the strap holding his mask mysteriously breaking from the impact. The mask fell, revealing a rugged, scarred face.

“What the…?!” he screamed as he held his broken wrist against his chest. One of his comrades leaned over to help him up and a small, green potion rolled out of the man’s pocket and broke against the injured man’s face. The smell of burning flesh filled the alley.

Kelsey simply stared at the sight in utter confusion, trying to comprehend what was happening.

The cursed man screamed and screamed as the acid melted his face. Some of it had landed in his mouth and his screams turned to gargles as his throat filled with blood. After another minute or so, the man went still. The other five men stared at the corpse of their colleague in shock. Then they looked back at Kelsey. Two of them looked angry, three of them looked scared.

“What did you do?!”

“I… I didn’t…” Kelsey stuttered.

The five of them started to rush towards her.

The Raven Lord promptly placed out five more curses. A few minutes later, he received a notification.

Congratulations! You are now a Level 2 Raven Lord Familiar!

Lord Mortimer Perseus Raventon the Dark observed the six brutally destroyed bodies with mild interest. This Curse of Fate was a lot more powerful than Curse of Luck. He had merely been intending to scare them with a few strange mishaps. Naturally, as a level 1 ability, it would not be the most powerful skill in his repertoire… either this skill had to have some severe limitations and weaknesses or he was going to be absurdly powerful.

He returned his attention to the girl. She was shaking, tears at the edge of her vision. Her knife was on the ground and her arm was frozen extended towards the bodies as if to help them in some way.

“I… I don’t…” she muttered to herself. The rest of her words were incoherent.

“Greetings.” Lord Mortimer said.

Kelsey whipped around, her eyes immediately locating the source.

“I am Lord Mortimer Perseus Raventon the Dark, a familiar in the service of the Great Lady Raymond.”

Kelsey stared at the bird for a moment, her mouth gaping. She slowly collapsed back to the ground, chuckling weakly. The motion slowly built as she began to laugh so hard that her body almost seemed to be convulsing and tears streamed out of her eyes.

Gradually, she calmed down, taking a quivering breath to calm herself. She looked back up at the Raven Lord.

“So prayers really do get answered. I wasn’t praying to Legion in particular, though.”

If birds could smile, Lord Mortimer would be grinning ear to ear.

“Say, young priestess. Would you be interested in returning the favor?”

“I’m listening.”