Finally, with the sun shining bright, I stretched and nuzzled Isabella lightly. “Come on. We’ve got to get up. We can’t stay in bed here all day long. There’re things we still need to get done while we can.” She stretched and slowly unwrapped her arms from around my head and then eased up and headed into the bathroom. While she was dealing with her “morning’s business”, and washing off at the sink, I put all the cushions back on the couches and tidied up the room a bit. I made certain to pick up her glasses and sit them on the coffee table so she could find them easily.

After a bit, she came back out with a light bounce and a smile on her face. “Give me a few minutes,” she said, “and I’ll fry up some of the meat from the fridge for us this morning.” I just nodded towards her; still feeling awkward enough not to want to say anything, and then I went into the bathroom to get the first of the larger dog-sized rats.

While I was in there, I was struck with an odd thought, and I called out to ask Isabella, “Izzy. Do you actually use the bathroom?” Silence from the kitchen was all that greeted my question.

“Isabella?” I stuck my head around the corner of the doorframe and checked to make certain she was still in there. She was over at the kitchen sink, looking back in my direction with a “What type of stupid question is that?” look.

“Umm… Just tell me. Do you actually use the bathroom?” The look on her face made it seem like I was going crazy. “You know… Number one, or number two?”

Finally, she laughed out loud. It wasn’t the light little giggle I’d gotten used to hearing from her, but was instead a full belly laugh that lasted for several long moments. I went ahead and grabbed up the first dog-rat and carried it to the kitchen counter while waiting on her to compose herself. Finally, she wiped a few tears from her eye and told me. “I do. What in the world made you think that I don’t?”

From the way she was acting, I was kind of expecting that answer. “I don’t. At least, I don’t anymore. Not since the world changed.” I hadn’t thought about it until this morning, but I really hadn’t had to use the toilet since this all started.

Isabella looked at me with one eyebrow raised in question. “Look,” I shrugged my shoulders to show I didn’t know what it meant either. “I’m being serious. I really haven’t had to use the bathroom since the crack in the sky opened up and all the monsters poured out of it. I hadn’t thought about it until now, but I swear it’s the truth. I was wondering if it might have been something where the world was being more ‘game-like’ anymore, but it doesn’t seem like it since you still go.”

She just giggled and then turned back to her cooking. “Well, I do,” she replied. “Does it hurt you? Do you feel constipated or have any stomach aches?”

“Not constipated, but my stomach does ache after eating your cooking,” I told her.

Another set of little giggles answered me. “Then I wouldn’t worry about it right now. It might be something man-specific, or what-not. After all, look how all my hair disappeared from below my neck. You’ve still got yours, but mine isn’t growing back at all. And look what it did to my hair!” She ran her hands through it and held it up so I can see the lovely silver-chrome color. (As if I could miss something like that anyway!)

She continued on, “This world has changed everything as we knew it and there’re so many things we don’t know. I say we just worry about the ones we can do something about, or the ones that seem to badly affect us, and we just ignore the other little things. It’s the best I think we can do right now.”

What she said made sense to me, so I decided to drop the subject and start skinning the dog-rat. As she cooked, she fed me the same as yesterday while I kept working. I guess it was just the fact that we didn’t have any real plates to use, by eating directly from the frying pan was getting to become our habit. There were plenty of little coffee cups and coffee mugs in here, but who the heck wants to have to use a tiny coffee plate as something to eat on? It’d take forty plates to fill up a person!

After eating, Isabella went back to reading her book once again while lying on the couch on her stomach. She was still just as shameless as ever, but I tried to focus on my work and not her. Working with the larger rat here, I managed to harvest a lot of the quills from its back. These things were the size of knitting needles, and were actually fairly durable and quite sharp. I was wondering if someone might could throw them with a little practice. The idea was definitely something to keep in mind.

As for the meat itself, I harvested a lot of it, but I could tell by the odor that it was already going bad. It had that sharp, rancid, spoiled meat smell, but I carved it up anyway just for the skill practice. I was actually becoming rather talented at this.

As the morning passed, I finished the first rat an started on the second one. When I was about half-way done with harvesting the quills off the second rat, Isabella let out a little squeal of joy, “OOOOH!!”, that was immediately followed by a quick “OH NO!”

She sat bolt up straight on the couch, and startled me so badly I almost jabbed a quill halfway through my index finger. “What? What’s wrong?” I rushed over to see what the problem was, while dripping blood down upon the floor from my injured digit.

Isabella looked over at me with the strangest expression I’d seen on her face yet. Her bottom lip was quivering like she was going to cry, and yet she had an upturned smile on her face. Pouty-smiley she told me, “I finally got my first skill and spell.”

I blinked twice at hearing her words. “That’s great!”, I told her.

She just shook her head from left to right. “No it’s not. I can’t practice them.” She pouted once again, and looked almost like she was going to cry.

“Can’t practice them? Why not?” I asked.

Sniffling, she said, “It’s my class. Apparently a ‘LifeStealer’ is a rare class with some unique bonuses and restrictions. For starters, I get twice the energy to use for my magic as other people does.”

“Well, that sounds good!”

She nodded. “It is. The problem is, I can’t meditate or regain my energy like any of the other classes. I don’t have any way to naturally recharge.” She paused for a moment, then continued. “Well, there is one way, but I’m not going to be able to use it to practice.”

“What way?” A wizard who couldn’t recover their energy sounded like they had a terrible problem to me!

“I’ve picked up a skill called ‘Consume Life’,” she said. “It lets me drain some of the life of another living creature to use to recharge my energy. It’s why the class is called a LifeStealer apparently. I can learn to do anything any other wizard can do, but I just can’t meditate or recharge my energy on my own.”

“Oh!” I blinked a few times. “How much life does it take from the target, to refill your energy?”

“I don’t know,” she honestly answered. “From reading the skill itself, it seems I can only do a slow drain right now, but I need something to practice it on so the life drain goes up and I can get energy faster and more efficiently with it.”

We were both quiet for several moments, and then wincing to myself, I told her, “If it’s slow, you can use some of my life to recharge and practice on. With my CON what it is now, I recover twenty life an hour, and I have over 100 life more than you. You can practice your magic and skill them up, and then afterwards you can use your skill on me to recharge.”

Her eyes grew wide as she stared at me. “I couldn’t do that. I’m certain it’d be painful, and no one would expect another person to endure something like that.”

Puffing up my chest and acting macho (even though I was really afraid and didn’t like the idea at all), I bravely told her, “I guess it’s a good thing you weren’t the one to promise not to the other then. Guess what.”

“What?” She was barely whispering now.

“I really think this is something you’ve got to do to survive. And, if you survive, it helps me survive. A little life-stealing can’t be half as bad as a life-ending, so I’ve got an order for you.” I emphasized the word ‘order’. “You’re going to practice your magic. You’re going to get better. And then you’re going to take enough of my life to recharge your energy without killing me. That’s my order to you. Are you going to do what I say?”

I stared straight into her eyes, and she slowly nodded. Her voice was quiet and low, but I still heard her. “I will. Thank you.” Suddenly she lunged at me and wrapped her arms around me and then she began bawling into my shoulder. I just held her and patted her back gently.

I wasn’t so certain I liked this class, but I had to take responsibility for it. I was the one who had told her to choose it after all. It was only fair that I had to help pay the price for her to be a LifeStealer...