He and the bag thumped down onto a rug in the room. The cat girl had put the sack on the floor. Okay, all he needed was a little luck. Like the attribute on his array that was highest. A few moments later lo, there it was; the large flap on the bag fell over Corbin’s head. If he was slow and quiet about getting a look around, this flap would cover him perfectly.

The green-skinned boss lumbered over to a hardwood desk and opened a massive roughly made ledger. The front cover was little more than a plank of wood with holes punched through for the rough twine to be threaded.

“You’ll be owing me three hundred silver.”

“Three… hunnert?” Cat Girl cried.

“Did I stutter?”

“I only borrowed a hunnert off ya!”

“That was two weeks ago, and there is a teensy little matter of interest.”

“I ain’t interested in yer interest!”

The toady faced man chuckled. “Are we looking to make it four hundred?” he asked.

She produced the card from beneath her cloak, and in one tiger-striped hand turned it over. Corbin got his first look at the back side of the card. And just like the card game from his high school days, it was the abstract black and red illustration of a young Val Kilmer with long hair, and a pair of swords crossed in front of his chest.

The toady guy’s eyes bugged out of his head… more than they were already bugged. They bugged further out.

“I think that should be sufficient to clear your debt, so long as we understand–”

Well, he wasn’t going to get another chance at it. Corbin vaulted up out of the girl’s bag and got airborne with some little difficulty. Still, he was quite a bit faster than everybody else, mostly on account of them gaping in surprise.

“What the hell is that?”

Too late! Corbin pecked at the girl’s hand and grabbed onto his card, then rebounded off the boss’s face. A great cry went up, and Corbin ended up getting batted by the green guy’s flying hands. He also, by the way, carved a couple of bloody grooves in his big fat green face.

You have taken 2 damage!

Careful there, fella.

The third figure in the room, probably a bodyguard, just stood there with mouth agape. For Corbin’s part, he went careening into the wall, did a bunch of chaotic flapping to get himself righted, and made for the door. He nearly got there, too, before realizing the girl was going to get him.

“Kill her!” the boss shouted.

He tried to put on a burst of speed, but it wasn’t enough. He was out the door but she had the card. He couldn’t match her strength, not with his pathetic score, and she had it away from him.

He swore at her several times.

“Oh, this you, eh?” she spat. “Well yeh jes ruined my deal, unnerstan?”

He lit on the window ledge nearby. “That is mine! It belongs to me, and you are out of your ever-loving mind if you think I’m going to let you give it to that… whatever that was.”

She cocked her head at him.

“You speakin ta me?”

She couldn’t understand him. Very inconvenient.

She started to run off northward, and Corbin tried roaring. It came out as a gurgling croak. Just… great.

For a while he just followed her, lighting on this or that tree branch and trying to death stare her to death. It didn’t work. None of his powers induced death in humans… or cat ladies. True Sight didn’t have any sort of damage attached.

And as for the girl, he tried to get a closer look at her. She’d clearly been through a lot, not that it gave her an excuse to steal something that didn’t belong to her. Her fur was matted with dirt, though her eyes radiated out from within the hooded robe. She moved like a cat as well, slinking forward on two legs for a while, before dropping to four and rushing ahead when the bodyguard appeared and shouted from some distance off. She now had a sneer written on her face, and good for her. She deserved it.

“Ya blew it for me!” she shouted suddenly, and waved the card at him. “This bloody thing coulda been my ticket out from under Grundel, unnerstan? Course ya don’t, yer jes a dumb crow.”

He launched himself off the branch toward her, but the card had already disappeared back into her robes.

“An now my pack’s back at his place. I canna go back there, not wiffout my three hunnert silver.”

She kicked at a pebble and sent it skittering away down the dirt track. Then, after several more furious moments, she perked back up.

“Come on, you en me, hey? Raven and Scoundrel. Wot ye say?”

“Look, it’s just not going to work. I don’t think you’re going to survive the night.”

She grinned at him. “Still canna unnerstan ye, crow.”

“It’s… not… going… to… work. No… means… no. And I’m a raven!” God, he was a raven. A foot tall, max. He used to be taller than basically everybody.

“Cain’t unnerstan ye. Jes ‘caw caw caw cakaw!’ Dunnt matter anyway, seein’ as yeh owe me a new home, new pack, new loife. Guess I might as well ‘quip ya in the ole’ invent’ry.”

“Don’t–”

A glimmer of light washed over the girl with the cat eyes and the ginger fur. She had already smelled pretty rotten, but now even more scents seemed to waft into his beaky nostrils. He saw her, but he also saw himself standing on the outer wall. It caused him a sudden overwhelming sense of vertigo, and he flapped to keep himself from falling to his death.

And watched himself flap around like a fish on land. It was so disorienting that he closed his eyes, and still saw himself moving about. That was at least a tiny bit better.

Quest Complete! You have found your first master!

+100 experience points

You have leveled up!

He banished the message, and the message telling him he had stat points to spend.

The cat girl, for her part, wasn’t looking too much better. She swayed drunkenly and threw a hand out to rest against the wall.

After a few moments he figured out how to separate the feelings, smells, and scenes coming out of his master’s eyes, ears and nose. He could navigate this, luckily, by concentrating on which set of sensations he wanted. He got his balance, got his sight back, and fluttered down to land in front of where she looked ready to vomit.

“Why’d you do that?” he shrieked, and heard himself through two sets of ears.

At first she couldn’t speak from the heaving. He could feel that too, and shut it right out.

“I told you not to!”

“Stop shouting,” she moaned, and heaved several more times. The urge to vomit kept coming and he kept shoving it aside. It was from her. Clearly he was better at this Familiar stuff than she was, if she was still so out of it from simply putting the holo foil card into her inventory, whatever that meant.

She finally let fly, and he danced away, flew back up onto the wall, and sighed in resignation. He was now bound to this person, though he wasn’t sure exactly what that entailed. Seeing through her eyes, obviously, hearing all the sounds that came into her ears, ditto feelings and smells. Oh, yeah, and now he could taste her sick up. He bore down on his willpower and cast that disgusting sensation away.

And now being able to be understood by her, thankfully.

He gave her a few minutes. It took her a while before she got to her feet, swayed there, took some deep breaths, and finally started walking in a way he felt was semi-confident.

“Look, I’m not even a raven,” he said. “I’m not your slave, and I won’t take orders from you.”

“Shut it, eh? This was bad enough before I could understand you. Now I’m seein’ everythin’ you are an hearin’ double.”

“Shut it out,” he told her.

“Easy as, eh?”

“Yep.”

She gave him the side eye, then hunched in on herself and trembled for a few moments before standing straighter and taking a deep breath. “Oy… that worked.”

“Now unequip the card. It’s not for you. I’m nobody’s slave.” Although as soon as he said this, it didn’t ring true. He didn’t know what memory he didn’t have access to yet, but apparently he was somebody’s bitch in real life.

Even though oddly this felt a lot like real life.

“Now… we headin’ north?”

“We are not headed anywhere,” he said. “Give me back my card and I’ll be on my way.”

“You got three hunnert silver stuffed in yer birdy bum, ye git? That’s what ye cost me.”

“I am… was… a man. I don’t deserve this, okay. Something happened to me, and I need to figure it out, and that means keeping that card safe–”

“I got it handled, guv. It’s safe wiff me.”

Nothing about that statement reassured him.

“Three hundred silver?”

“Yeah.”

“And you give me my card back.”

“Three hunnert silver and my boss gets off my back, maybe another hunnert for the gear… I give you your bleedin’ card, and we’re square. Call it four hunnert.”

He couldn’t very well trust her, but he didn’t have a choice. There was no physical way to force her to give up the card. Once they crossed the four hundred silver threshold, he’d have a better idea whether or not she was telling the truth.

“Fine.”

“Fine?”

“Follow me.”

He flapped up into the sky, peered about for a few seconds, and spotted his first monster. This place was teeming with them.

“What’s your name?” he asked, from a good twenty or thirty feet up. They could just… talk like this. Somehow.

“Cilla,” she said.

“Like Priscilla?”

“Like Cilla,” she returned.

“I’ll just call you Prissy then.”

“Don’t ye dare.”

New Quest received! – Begin your Shared Journey

Work as a team to gain 200 experience points.

Til death do you part

Reward: 50 xp, 1 skill point

Till death do you part. No thank you. How about ‘till 400 silver do you part’?