Orou was coiled up on the ground next to the mirror, thinking about what he could do with this information. He kept glancing at the various furniture around him and observing the mist that was half corroding, half merging into the black strands. It was a slow process, but Orou couldn’t deny that it was happening. He felt a bit weird about the situation, he didn’t really care much about whether or not the black mist corroded everything around him, but it simply felt wrong on a fundamental level. The more he stared at it, the more he was convinced that something like this simply shouldn’t be happening.

Orou kept staring at himself in the mirror as if hypnotized and as Grizz walked around the house, he came to check up on Orou. Patting Orou on his head, he said: “What’s wrong buddy? Notice something interesting about yourself?” As he did so Orou noticed that when Grizz touched his head, the black mist that floating around him was attracted to Grizz’s hand, or to say more precisely, the black strands in this hand. The black mist started to spread through his entire body and slowly merge with the strands, corroding them in the process. Orou violently jerked his head away from Grizz’s hand and moved a bit away from Grizz.

“Not in a good mood I see. I was planning on bringing you along to meet with Mar, but if you don’t want to, you can stay here,” Grizz shrugged his shoulders and started to walk outside, looking expectantly at Orou. Orou thought about it for a while before following behind Grizz, wanting to see how the world around him in his new sight. Walking outside, he was overwhelmed by the sheer number of black strands. Everything, absolutely everything had strands in them. The stone below him, the birds flying above him, the trees and even the clouds were made from the strands.

The second he stepped outside, the black mist that was once restrained to the small shop was let out to roam about freely. It latched onto anything and everything it could, staining the area around Orou completely black. Orou was hesitant to follow Grizz after seeing what was happening around him, but eventually, he convinced himself that he didn’t care about the mist and moved forwards. Everywhere Orou went, he left a trail of darkness that slowly disappeared behind him. Catching up to Grizz but not standing too close to him, Orou glanced at everything around him, hesitant to see how else he affects the world around him.

“I didn’t notice this before, but whatever you were doing seems to have succeeded, you’ve got a weird crystal on your forehead,” Grizz glanced at one of the houses and abruptly turned to Orou, looking straight at his forehead. His face turned weird as he continued staring, he rubbed his eyes and blinked twice before saying: “Or not, I swear I saw something. Is this another one of your weird tricks?”

Orou didn’t notice anything like that when he was staring at himself in the mirror, though that would explain why he was continuing to see the world in black and white. The two of passed through several beastman and as they finally arrived at a more crowded area, Orou noticed that he was not the only one that was releasing any sort of mist into the air. Above the crowd was a massive cloud of black mist, a tiny source from each of the beastman walking next to each other. The black cloud seemed like it wanted to descend onto the crowd and devour them whole, but instead, it floated above them like a menacing pack of buzzards.

Eventually, the two of them reached the already familiar tavern. Grizz, as usual, said something to the bartender, ordered a drink and sat down onto a nearby chair, beckoning Orou to approach him closer. Orou slowly but surely approached him, wanting to find out in what proximity he affected Grizz, but surprisingly, he found that unless he was walking right next to him or Grizz was directly touching him, the black mist wouldn’t affect Grizz. Orou didn’t know how to convey this to Grizz, so he simply kept his distance, making it seem like he was alienating Grizz.

“What a coincidence, I wanted to inform you about the latest news soon and there someone was, saying that Grizz wanted to speak to me. We should go somewhere private, wouldn’t want to cause any unnecessary panic,” Mar opened the door and walked into the tavern. Placing his hands on the table, he smiled towards Orou and Grizz, but as he reached his last sentence, his smile turned into a grimace. Grizz was about to say something but he held his words back, standing up and following Mar outside of the tavern.

The two of them chit-chatted about miscellaneous things like how the king was feeling and what the local gangs were up to, information that would be privy for any other beastman, but nothing too exciting for the two of them. They reached a small alleyway with a single door on the side of it. Knocking on it several times in a complicated rhythm, the door opened was opened by another beastman and the two of them descended down a narrow staircase down into the darkness. After several seconds, the darkness revealed a colorful area. Beastmen were drinking, smoking and taking strange, multi-colored dust on every corner of this place.

The people here seemed to recognise Mar as they acknowledged his presence, but no one went out of their way to greet him. Finally, the two of them arrived at a separate room, completely closed off from the rest of the beastmen with sound-proof walls. Mar wasn’t in a hurry to explain what information he was withholding as he prepared several drinks for both of them, sitting next to the only table in the room. Passing a drink to Grizz, he said: “This probably won’t be a secret by the end of today, but I don’t want to be hunted down for inciting panic.”

Grizz leaned in to listen as Mar took another sip, saying to him: “As you know, the revolutionary army had taken over Lium and was marching closer to the capital. Apparently, what we didn’t know was that the king had secretly sent an army to wipe out the revolutionaries, but instead, they were the ones who got wiped. There were no survivors remaining and somehow, they had masked this fact until now. There were suspicions and rumors regarding the departure of the army, but they did a great job of keeping everyone’s eyes away from the real facts.”

Mar heavily sighed as he continued: “It wouldn’t be so bad if this was all that happened. The revolutionary army is marching straight towards the capital with no stops and the king, either in his rage or in his fear, has decided to lock down the city. That means that no one can get in and no one can get out,” as Mar said this, Grizz stood up and slammed his hands on the table, nearly spilling the alcohol besides him, shouting out: “Has he completely lost it? Who in their right mind would think of locking down the entire city just because of this? If the king’s army got annihilated, what hope does the capital itself stand? Furthermore, not even the king’s side is safe.”

Mar tilted his head at Grizz’s last sentence but Grizz promptly shut his mouth, only continuing to grumble about how the king was out of his mind. He looked to Orou with hope in his eye and he could see that Grizz was formulating a plan, likely on how to get out of this city. Despite that, he still continued to unleash his anger at Mar, shouting to him: “How is it even possible to mask an army heading out of the city, not to mention it getting annihilated. Surely there must have been some talk of him locking down the city, he can’t simply decide that on his own.”

The angrier that Grizz got, the faster the thing inside of him spun, releasing more and more black mist into the air and corroding everything around him. Sitting down on his chair, he took a deep breath and the thing inside of him stopped spinning so fast. The mist around him wanted to spread out, but it was attracted to a single point on Grizz’s body and after a moment, there was no more mist in the air.

Mar shrugged in response to Grizz and said to him: “You can’t expect me to know everything, the king has spies and beastmen who live and breathe deception. He was able to cover our eyes for long enough to pull this off, leading to this uncomfortable situation.” Grizz snorted and stood up, preparing to leave. He looked at Orou, saying to him: “We’ll get out of here, if you could break a barrier once, I believe that you can do it again.”