While the information he got was a lot to handle at once, he didn’t give up on his original task. He kept his eyes open for any unusual spirit activity around the village. Even after continuing his task for an hour and scouring the entire village, he saw nothing wrong with spirits. The only thing unusual was that he couldn’t see a barrier around the town. He had clearly seen one appear when Grizz came into the village, but now that he was searching for it, it was nowhere to be found.

Turning back to look at the town centre, he decided to slither back to Grizz’s house, perhaps simply to think about what the beastmen said. Using his usual route of slithering behind buildings, he used to window slit to slither into Grizz’s house. Grizz was sleeping on his bed, though Orou noticed that he was tossing and turning with a grimace on his face, almost falling out of the bed at one point.

What Grizz did in his sleep was no concern to Orou. He slithered to a corner and lay down, his mind preoccupied with thoughts of what Vaar might want of him. The first thought on his mind was about the possibility of him getting captured. Although Grizz didn’t react negatively to the collar around his neck, that didn’t mean the rest of the beastmen wouldn’t.

Thoughts about leaving this place crossed his mind, but he still had yet to investigate the barrier and if he left now, he wouldn’t have Grizz as a guarantee that he could enter the beastman kingdom. His mind was conflicted on the topic of leaving, but eventually, he decided to stick around for a few days and simply practice spells. Inspecting a “feast” closer and clearly seeing how Vaar controlled the red ribbon held greater sway over him than getting potentially captured.

Looking outside to see how dark it was, Orou decided to sneak out of the village and test his new spell on any animals he could find. Unlike Grizz, he had no issue getting out of the village by simply slithering over the wall. It took him most of the night to find a single animal around these surroundings and Orou wasn’t sure why he couldn’t find any decent meal. Perched on a tree was a single bird, cheerily chirping away as the sun started to rise.

He snuck up on the bird perching on a tree branch and started to conjure the ribbon right on the bird, hoping it didn’t escape as he was conjuring the ribbon. Fortunately for Orou, the bird didn’t fly off before he was done with the formation and when ribbon did appear, the bird’s chirping turned into cries of pain and the cries turned into silence. The bird fell out of the tree branch and a withered corpse was lying on the ground, completely sucked of its blood.

Although the test was successful, there was an issue was with him moving the ribbon. After Vaar had cast it, he returned it back to himself but there was no way for Orou to do that, it would simply collapse again. Another issue was that Vaar’s ribbon didn’t seem to such out blood, or if it did, it didn’t do it that rapidly or else the beastmen would have been screaming in pain. He wasn’t sure what the issue is, but he felt like this would be much more useful to him in combat.

He returned back to the village before any of the beastmen woke up and he contemplated entering Grizz’s house. If he was as chatty in the morning as he was yesterday, Orou would soon have another headache. He was taking a gamble here by entering Grizz’s house, but when he entered, he saw that Grizz was still asleep. Perhaps he was expecting something more when he returned, but this suited him perfectly fine. Orou salivated as he observed Grizz but he had to stop himself before he could take any action.

He had days to burn with nothing to do but practice spells, so that’s exactly what he started to do. The time between breaks became shorter the more he practiced conjuring the red ribbon, most of his practice was staring at the red ribbon desperately trying to make it move and failing. He had finally gotten the ribbon to move more than a centimeter forward when Grizz’s scream disrupted his focus and his ribbon shattered.

Grizz’s scream could have been caused by either a ribbon or a nightmare, but Orou didn’t care. He had finally made some progress only for Grizz to disrupt it and he was absolutely fuming with anger. As Orou was staring down Grizz, he slowly got out of bed and laughed, petting Orou despite Orou glaring daggers at him.

“Did I scare you big snake? Don’t be so angry now,” despite having woken up with a start, he was still happily grinning at Orou. He was showing his white teeth in response to Orou and after a few more minutes of playing around, he said his goodbyes to Orou and headed out, mumbling something about today being the day.

Practicing spells was a hard and arduous process, it even seemed mindless, repetitive and boring at times to simply cast the same spell again and again with no success, but Orou took great pleasure in being able to command an extra one or two spirits at a time when he started the casting process anew. He experimented with the formations for all day, trying to find a way to finally move the ribbon easier and indeed, he found out that making it completely straight was simply hindering his ability to move it. Although it was much easier to construct a straight formation, when he finally managed to make all the spirits stop in their right places, a curved ribbon practically flew in the air, for a few seconds at least.

Jovial about his success, he realised that it had been half a day already. The sun was slowly setting and Grizz would be returning soon. Orou was sure that his progress would shock Grizz, so he couldn’t wait to show off. His prediction wasn’t far off as soon Orou heard footsteps approaching. Lifting his head slightly and flickering his tongue, he stared at the door expecting Grizz to return.

Grizz did return, but he was not alone. By his side was a beastman about twice his height, carrying a cane in his right hand. Vaar’s gray and yellow fur was fluttering in the wind as he ducked to enter the house, a toothy grin on his face. As soon as he entered, Orou got the same feeling of danger he got from Dawn, if not even more oppressing. By reflex, he started conjuring the red ribbon in the air and he did it with practiced ease despite having only learned it two days ago.

“I know that you can understand what I’m saying, so listen up. I have my own contacts in Belor and I’ve heard about what you can do, so let’s make a deal.” Vaar’s imposing voice rang in Orou’s ears as he was still in the middle of conjuring the ribbon. His actions slowed down a bit as he thought about the deal Vaar was proposing to him, but he was almost done with the formation and the feeling of danger that Vaar gave him made Orou instinctively retaliate like a cornered animal.

A red ribbon appeared above Orou’s head and moving in the air with extraordinary speed and grace, it shot towards Vaar. Both Grizz and Vaar were shocked, though the reason for their shock was completely different. With a slight smile on his face, Vaar lifted his cane in the air and the line engraved on the cane started glowing. In spirit sight, Orou saw the cane absorbing any spirits in the surrounding area, creating a sort of whirlwind of spirits.

The line expanded to cover the entirety of the cane before the line started to creep up Vaar’s arm. In almost no time his entire arm was covered in all kinds of lines, both straight and scribbled. As the ribbon fluttered in the air and rapidly approached Vaar, he lifted his cane up to meet the ribbon. As soon as the ribbon touched the cane, it completely stopped in place and the lines that had reached Vaar’s shoulder all started rushing towards the ribbon. The place where the lines touched the ribbon rapidly dissipated, Orou saw in his spirit vision that the lines were devouring the spirits, the rest of the spirits almost fleeing in terror from the lines.

As if not having had their fill, they dropped down to the floor and started travelling through the wooden floor, leaving marks of decay on the wood as they rapidly approached Orou. His mind was paralyzed by fear, but deep inside of him he felt something familiar about these lines. Before they could reach Orou, they seemed like they were cut off by something invisible and after squirming around for a few seconds, they returned back to the cane.

“So, have you come to your senses yet? I shall not make you return back to your owner nor will I kill you, I simply need your help to break the barrier binding us to this place.” Vaar lowered his cane and spoke to Orou in a calm demeanor as if nothing had happened.

“I shall give you a night to consider, though I do not recommend fleeing as bad things tend to happen to those that disobey my will,” with those words Vaar turned around and started walking away, his cane tapping against the ground.