The two of them quietly left the golden room and returned to the room with the pictographs. The beastman servant from earlier had his back turned to the two of them, busy with looking after the plants and cleaning the room. Grizz quietly motioned over towards the right door and started tiptoeing towards there, but as Orou was following Grizz, he felt vibrations coming from the right. It was more than one set of feet coming their way and one particular vibration as much deeper and heavier than the rest, most likely a big beastman or someone wearing a suit of armor. Using his head to nudge Grizz’s foot, he silently hissed towards the right door and turned his head to look at the left door, unsure if they could make their way to the shaman’s study through there.

Grizz hesitantly looked at the door, one foot in the air, still deciding whether to follow Orou’s advice. It didn’t take him long to decide as he turned around and started walking towards the left door, putting his trust in Orou’s decision. Very slowly and carefully, he opened the door and peered inside. As expected, the door was well-oiled and as such, it opened without letting out any noise. Grizz waved his hand for Orou to come along and as Orou slithered inside, he saw a narrow corridor with three doors leading who knew where. From the left, Orou heard the sound of arguing, a conflict between a male and a female beastman about love or some other nonsense.

“Right, according to the palace schematics, the only way to reach the shaman’s room would be to head to the invisible gardens and loop around to the other side. There should be an exit to the gardens near the kitchen, though it’s bound to be packed with people,” Grizz pressed himself against the right door and carefully listened while whispering to Orou. Orou didn’t have to press himself against the wall to determine that to the right of him was a room full of people. Most of them seemed to be chaotically running around the room, so he wasn’t sure if the room to his right was truly a kitchen.

Grizz stood up straight as he winked at Orou and with a burst, he opened the door in front of him. Several beastmen were running around the kitchen, doing their best to cook up a meal most likely meant to serve the entire palace. None of the cooks paid any attention to the two intruders before them as they were too busy trying to finish everything on time. Grizz simply looked at Orou and shrugged before he started walking forwards through the middle of the kitchen. The two of them had gotten half-way through the kitchen before one of the cooks ran into Grizz, dropping whatever green vegetable he had in his hands.

“Goddamnit, be more careful next time,” the cook picked up the vegetables he had dropped on the ground and was preparing to head off to another table before he stopped and simply started at Grizz and Orou. “Wait a second, you shouldn’t be here,” the cook carefully inspected Grizz’s outfit and said out loud, drawing the attention of several more beastman who turned to look at Grizz. He silently sighed to himself before loudly clearing his throat in order to draw attention to himself.

“I have new orders from the king. He wants the current dish that you are preparing to be steam-fried. That is, he wants it steam-fried for the entire royal family.” Grizz straightened his back and said with a loud and clear voice and a slightly condescending tone, pointing towards one of the dishes they had prepared already. Immediately after he said that the cooks practically exploded with chatter, complaining about how they wouldn’t make it in time and how the king changes his mind on every whim.

“Silence! I shall not have anyone disrespecting the king in front of me. You shall have the dish prepared or face the wrath of the king,” to the surprise of the cooks, Grizz shouted out with surprising authority in his voice. The room went silent and they shot him both fearful and angry gazes, resuming their previous work by redoubling their efforts. Some people looked curiously at what Orou was doing, though they didn’t spare him more than a single glance before they returned to their work. Grizz simply looked around before he started to confidently stride across the room towards the door straight ahead of him and while the beastman looked at him strangely, no one objected to him simply heading towards the exit.

As they stepped through the door, Grizz let out a sigh of relief and leaned against the wall, not saying anything for a few seconds. “This is why I could never succeed my father, the nobles look at other beastman like a lesser species, animals to be herded at their will. At least I’ve picked up a few tricks by being around father.” Grizz looked at the guards that had their back turned to them and the constant stream of beastman that were paying no attention to them. He smiled, crouched down and slinked in the shadows of the palace, saying to Orou: “Now this is more in my element.”

Looking ahead of him, he saw nothing more than an empty space, but even without his spirit vision, his gut was telling him that there was something wrong here. He guided spirits to his eyes and found himself in the middle of a patch of roses. Orou looked around only to see the same thing he had seen before, only from a closer point of view. Next to Grizz were two gentlemen sipping tea and not paying any attention to the world around them and even when Grizz blatantly passed through them, they simply returned back to normal and continued with their silent conversation.

Orou felt a gust of wind hit his scales and from the corner of his eye, he saw a tree rustling its leaves, following the direction of the wind. Although it was something very simple, something a child would even understand, it completely baffled Orou at how the leaves were rustling. He stood there for quite a while, simply staring at the tree in front of him. He only awoke from his stupor after Grizz had properly shaken him for a few seconds, whispering to him: “Come on, we need to go or else the king’s shaman could return.”

It was a fairly easy task to sneak through the gardens. As much as Orou wanted to hide behind the spirit trees, he had to constantly convince himself that they weren’t truly there and each time he passed through something that he would collide within the real world, he felt something wrenching his gut, his mind telling him that something was most certainly wrong, though he didn’t know what it was. Despite all of this, the guards were faced in the opposite direction so they little to fear of. The two of them made their way to another door, quite similar to the one they just walked out of. Grizz was about to open the door when Orou lightly bit his foot, not enough so to draw blood but enough to stop him from doing so.

“What was that for?” Grizz looked at Orou and while he didn’t expect an answer, he expected some sort of reaction from Orou. Orou could sense multiple heavy vibrations, at least more than ten pairs of feet. Hearing so many of them, the only logical conclusion that Orou could come to was that they were guards, dressed in heavy armor. Going face to face with more than ten heavily armed guards was something that seemed very foolish to Orou, so no matter what they did, they can’t go in there. He let out a menacing hiss towards the door and turned around to go back to where they came from. Grizz let out another heavy sigh as he listened at the door, his face still a bit confused but slowly and surely, he realised what Orou meant.

Orou wasn’t sure how they were going to get into the shaman’s room, but he wasn’t about to waste his life for some spirit. Perhaps if it had been his past self, he would have charged straight into the room, but the present Orou had seen and experienced several things which have made him appreciate life more and more. As Orou was deep in his thoughts, Grizz whispered something to Orou and as Orou turned to him, he saw Grizz staring at an opened window with light shining through it. Grizz had a grimace on his face, but he seemed to have steeled himself as he jumped, reaching the window and climbing up.