Catkin or catfolk are much like their lycanthropic equivalent in demeanor though they do hold stronger bonds as a group. They will happily harass and harm others of their tribe but will fight to the death should an outsider take a single step to far. They tend to be nomadic by culture rather than the necessity werecats often cause for themselves.

Lykou

I return to Alana’s hut tired and feeling sore but doing this repeatedly will be beneficial. I set my bow down in the corner that I have been given as a place to sleep before I see that atop the two blankets is the leather tunic that Alana was working on yesterday.

“I expect you to use it tomorrow” I hear her say from the table where she is working on another piece of leather clothing. That one is not for me or Analais as it is too wide to fit us.

“Thank you” I say before moving to the table.

“Why do you spend so much time in the woods?” Analais asks as I sit down.

“I can practice and improve myself without risk of being interrupted.”

“Why do you not play with the other children?”

“This world is dangerous.”

He does not immediately respond to my answer but after a moment he seems to approve.

“Naliya tells me that you are very skilled with the bow for your age, and that you seem to be talented in melee as well” Alana comments.

“Good memory and practice.”

“I wanted to bring you hunting again but Ragnor refused it” Analais said.

“Why?” I ask.

“He says that because you do not bare the smell of the pack you shouldn’t be treated as one, Kylana disagrees but he is in charge of hunting.”

“I thought I was allowed in the pack because I had this scent.”

“You were covered in the scent of a female of great strength but Ragnor is against acknowledging her membership in the pack regardless of how clear the smell was.”

“Am I in danger?”

“No, Ragnor can’t do anything Kylana says you are a member of the pack and it is she who decides who is in the pack. He is however in charge of hunting and can say you are not allowed to.”

So, half of the diarchy that rules the village is hostile to me.

“Is Ragnor going to try to harm me?”

“Never, he must do whatever is best for the pack and you are a member of the pack.”

Not that he considers me a part of the village, should I rethink my practicing outside of the village? But if I am not outside the village I am more likely to be interrupted though I risk Ragnor being able to do something underhanded. Their disdain for sneaky tactics and does however make me doubt that he will come up with the idea of removing me in such a way.

I finish the bowl of stew before me and see that there is no more in the pot. Analais did not catch anything today, did Ragnor prevent him from hunting? He seemed like a good hunter so that shouldn’t have been a problem. He also caught a deer two days ago, we could not have eaten all of its meat already.

Actually, I haven’t seen any methods of preservation. Did what was left of the deer go bad and have to be disposed of?

“Did the meat of the deer go bad?” I ask.

“Meat is only good for a day and a half, afterwards it brings sickness” Analais says.

“Why do you not make the meat safe for longer?” I ask as this tongue does not have a word for preserve.

I just get looks of confusion from the two.

“Taking out all of the water will keep the sickness from growing in the meat.”

“How? Why?” Alana asks.

How can I explain this? Actually, I am not sure just that dried meat doesn’t rot and a word, bacteria. Bacteria is whatever makes the rot.

“The sickness needs water and warmth to grow. I don’t remember anything else.”

“How can this be done?”

“Ice, storing meat in ice will work or a rock crystal one that dissolves in water” I say not remembering the actual name for the substance.

She frowns and I do not understand how they do not know how to preserve meat, I’ve seen the vegetables that hang to dry have they not attempted to do the same with meat? Or what of magic? Surely there must be a spell that prevents rot and decay.

“We have no salt, it is too expensive to trade for.”

“Do you not have a magic to deal with this?”

“I do not have the skill to cast it, I've never understood that brand of magic very will.”

So, there is a spell. They have access to food preservation but Alana nor Analais have the skill in magic to do so.

“Can you freeze something?”

“If it is small but we also have no place to store it, and I don’t have the strength to keep something frozen for days.”

Then there is nothing I can do at the moment about it for them. Should I try to hunt for food myself? I am unsupervised in the afternoon so I should be able to. Perhaps I can gather food while out in the afternoon.

None of us say anything else for the rest of the night, though I soon after finishing my meal I move to my bedding and begin to meditate once more.

Gain: +10 XP Man-at-arms, +15 XP Ranged, +15 XP Archery, +15 XP Bow, +5 XP Melee, +5 XP Hand to Hand, +5 XP Evasion, +5 XP Bodybuilding, +5 XP Finesse Training, +35 XP Meditation

Lykou

Gender: Male

Race: Void Draconian?

Age: 10

Strength 14

Intelligence 15

Mana Potential 8

Skills

SP: 50

Dexterity 14

Wisdom 14

Mana Potency 7

Languages

Titles

Agility 16

Cunning 13

Luck 16

Traits

Options

Endurance 14

Willpower 17

Perception 12

Magic

???

Vitality 14

Alertness 15

??? 1

Classes

Racial Class

Appearance 15

Charisma 11

Health 29/29

Mana 8/8

Progress but not enough. I need to improve faster get more done in less time.

Multitasking is my best option, I can work on my fitness while hunting. Making sure to run and move things that may not need to be moved. Once I figure out mana I should be able to add it to my regiment as well.

The details still need to be worked out but I can figure those out during Naliya’s class in the morning. I am surprised there has not been any physical conditioning but perhaps that was yesterday while I was with Analais.

I dismiss the screens and delve deeper into the meditation. Slowly thoughts or more accurately memories begin to drift across my mental eye but I have no way of telling what any of them are. I grab one at random and find myself sitting in a room whose walls are covered in false wooden walls. My feet up on the table which is made of metal and some strange material as I lean back in a chair. Glowing light from an object made of glass hang from the ceiling while empty bookshelves sit with a few days’ worth of dust gathers on the shelves.

I turn a page and find myself drawn to the words on the page of the book. The old handwritten pages are filled with words that cause me to shiver but they are words of magic. The secrets to a magic that neither the current me nor from what I gather the me in this memory fragment. I continue fascinated by the knowledge in the book, descriptions of the flow energy needed to twist and warp the body and shape it, enhance it with mana.

. . . Mana flows through the blood as the heart is the core through which all energy flows in the body, supernatural creatures require both mana and life force for their bodies to work and rely on the same delivery method natural creatures do.

Like life force mana passively radiates away from living creatures. Unlike life force however stopping this mana radiation is beneficial for most creatures, supernatural energy stores refill faster and hunger is decreased with the added benefit of becoming more difficult for divination magic to locate.

This is accomplished by taking control of this passive body function and causing the mana to spin in a field just under the skin or by looping the energy back into the core. An enchanted item is the easiest way to do this though meditation is another. Prolonged use of this method of energy conservation however saturates the body with mana and experimentation was stopped to avoid pointless mana poisoning as my foreign mana builds up within the subjects they begin to break down once they are no longer able to withstand the forces. . .

The fragment of memory ends as I turn the page once more. I try to grab it or at least one like it but find myself going through the memories of today.

Bryan

The four of us, Adrian, Tomas, Abagail and me, sit at a table within the library of the city. I arrived later than the others being the only one who is going to the swordsmanship training in the morning. Everyone else has spent the day here, reading as we need knowledge if we are going to survive.

I place at the books in front of my friends, Abagail and Tomas have books on beginner magic though there are also a few with vague titles in front of Tomas. Adrian has a few dozen books on dragons and another titled Duplicates and Shapeshifters.

Pick up a book that Adrian placed on the table for me but do not start reading it yet.

“How was the fighter training?” Tomas asks.

“Painful” is all I answer remembering the bruises I recently received.

“Did it help?” Adrian asks.

“Some but I don’t think it’ll manage learning both weapons and magic very well.”

“You need to, you’re the only one here with the stats to do both.”

“You have the physical stats too. Why aren’t you switching over, or at least teaching us magic?”

“My magic is different. I don’t know anything about mana, I can’t help you.”

“There still has got to be something you can do to help? A hint or an idea maybe” interjects Tomas.

“Ideas on spells to make after you figure out mana sure but I don’t know the first steps so I can’t help Tomas.”

“Bothering him over and over isn’t going to change if he can help Tomas” I say to stop Tomas from continuing this circular argument.

“But the idea that we have to meditate until discovering the mana within us is boring” he complains.

“Then spend SP on it. You can be rewarded it for raising the skill or class level and killing monsters, that’s your shortcut.”

“But those are scarce.”

“Then farm them by studying here. That’s what I’m doing.”

Adrian closes and sets down the book on the larger of the piles before he picks up the next one in the smaller stack.

“But they’re so poorly written” Tomas complains and I can’t deny that. Everything I read yesterday was repetitive and vague when not downright cryptic.

Adrian

I turn a page that has nothing on it except for a description of how majestic the left wing of some dragon whose color still hasn’t been mentioned or really anything else of significance aside from the name Triphograph. Like many of the other books I simply begin to skim, you would think that if paper and books are so expensive they would try to keep their information as concise as possible rather than these pages where nothing worthwhile is mentioned.

Either they are trying to conceal information or whoever makes these were paid for word count rather than quality.

“If you think that book I passed to you is terrible try this one” I say after seeing that the description of the wings continues for two more pages.

Tomas takes the book and begins to read as I grab yet another equally horridly written book. At least this one wastes time describing the effects and greatness of a red dragon’s breath rather than how great such a creature is.

After a few minutes Tomas throws the book I just passed him down while near shouting, “this is utter garbage!”

“Yes, it is. So, stop complaining that I’m filtering out the worst and leaving you with those that are simply unappetizing.”

Tomas grumbles for a minute before he turns back to the books that weren’t rejected as I skimmed them earlier. I ignore Bryan and Abagail as she begins to help him with the clearest book I had found on a meditation to find mana. As much as I want to gain use of this form of magic, I do not have the aptitude for it.

Shortly after Tomas moves to my side of the table before whispering, “want to go somewhere else?”

“Yes, but we can’t afford to slack off. Whatever you go do make sure it is something that is useful.”

“Your loss, I found some coins and there’s a place some of the nobles go gambling. . .”

With a slight sigh I stand up, it will be good if I can find a card game or dice I can use to win supplies or better information than the public library has.

“Fine but expect to lose if you bet against me.”

Neither Bryan or Abagail seem to notice as Tomas and me leave. The cobblestone stone roads are mostly empty here in the ‘noble’ district though I notice a few of the soldiers are following the two of us. The stone architecture of a simple chapel to the Althaen gods draws my eyes compared to the painted but plain wooden structures of the buildings holding the other summoned until we will inevitably be shipped to be military assets.

We enter into a nicer tavern and I follow Tomas past the tables of adults and those that seem a little young to be drinking towards stairs down to the basement. Once down the stair there are tables of youth spending, winning and losing money on games of dice.

“Do you know any of these games?” I ask.

“Only one, where you guess how many of a number you have under the cup.”

I smile at that I should be able to cheat at such a game. I scan around the room, looking for the table that is running such a game. Finding it I go to sit at that table. Tomas sits down next to me.

“You know it’s a bad it’s a to play against me in dice.”

“They know about magic you can’t cheat like you did back home.”

I just smile, they play with mana to cast spells while I do not. I place two of the five copper coins the Althaen gave me on the table and am passed a cup of dice. Tomas does the same.

I mirror the actions of the other four players at the table and shake the dice before placing them on the table with the cup concealing the four dice. I push my will at the fabric of reality and while I am not sure how to alter how the dice are falling I can read it and know what everyone rolled. . .