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Oh! You’re back to normal?
No one’s told you yet what you were like in the Golden Country.
“We weren’t there long,” Marcille assures you with gentle urgency, her hand going to pat your head. You swat it away, scowling; she was far too comfortable with touching you now. “It was only one night. We couldn’t have stayed longer—we had to keep moving before the Mad Mage caught up with us. Oh, I suppose you missed that story?”
“You would’ve found it all boring anyway,” Chilchuck tells you, arms going up and hands threading behind his head in that cocky way he always did when he was being rude. He was staring at the cavernous ceiling and trying not to sneer. “Let’s just say you’re lucky we didn’t put you outside with the rest of those beasts. We even let you sleep indoors and eat at the table with us.”
“The villagers’ agriculture was something to behold,” Senshi says, because all he ever wants to talk about is food. “And the meal they prepared for us—exquisite. You probably don’t remember it, Izutsumi, but you ate Minotaur meat. You seemed to rather enjoy it, I thought—I certainly did.”
Your cat ears flatten and your tail flicks irritably as you stare at the back of Laios, walking up ahead of the rest of the party. He doesn’t say anything at all.
That night, when the party had found a good place to eat and rest, you tell them you have this bad feeling you can’t explain and would keep watch over them as they slept. It’s not completely a lie; there was always a low-level danger anywhere in the dungeon but there was nothing so immediate, so present in the air that meant you couldn’t go to bed like the rest of them. You just didn’t want to.
Hours pass as you watch the slowly dwindling fire, legs up to your chest, arms around them, chin resting on your knees. You wait for the tells of everyone’s sleep, for their breathing to drop into a steady rhythm, for Senshi’s snores and Marcille’s sleep-murmurs and Chilchuck’s teeth-grinding, before you let the weight of it all crush you until you can barely breathe.
You keep getting flashes—of a castle, of fields, of townspeople. Or perhaps you’re just bringing to mind staples of a kingdom that everybody who’s ever picked up an old storybook knows—you’re not sure. Marcille rattled off to you as she cleaned the plates that the maidens there wanted to play dress-up with you both, and how you wore pretty dresses to dinner together, and you slept in real beds, with fresh linens and soft pillows, and how wonderful it was to have had even just a short break from camping. You asked her, “Did I sleep on your bed?” and she blinked and put a thoughtful finger to her lips as she replied, “Come to think of it, I don’t think you did…” Embarrassed, she added, “You were so clingy the whole time, I think I was just glad to sneak off and have a room to myself…”
You sniff harshly as you stare into the fire, thinking about it. Your face burns with humiliation and you swipe angrily at every tear tracking down your face. What an awful, cruel spell that was to cast over the Golden Country—to make beasts docile, as useless and dozy as house pets. “Not surprised you’re too restless to sleep,” Chilchuck sighed as he was making up his bed for the night. “You spent most of the time there either napping or rolling around in the sun. The place was so clean, there were no mice for you to chase, I guess.” You asked him, “Did I sleep on your bed?” and he tossed his head with a cold humourless laugh. “No way was I letting you disrupt my sleep for the first time in months I got the chance to sleep in a real bed. No, I sent you away—why would I care where you went?”
An ugly sob escapes you; you smack a hand to your mouth to try to hold it all in, your face screwing up tight with the urge to cry. You put your head between your legs and force deep breaths, deep breaths, deep breaths—but you don’t feel good. You haven’t felt good since the moment you left the Golden Country. Even after Senshi mistook your silence for sickness, and he poured you a cup of green tea to help you keep watch, he noted, “You hardly touched your dinner tonight. I know you’re still a bit hung up on the monster-eating, but you know it’s no good for your party to be tired and hungry. If you need to tag out of night-watch at any point tonight, for any reason, just wake me up.” You asked him, “Did I sleep on your bed?” and he looked at you for a moment and replied, “No. But I thought I heard you get up in the night. Or, no… maybe that was someone else.”
“Izutsumi.”
You flinch hard, your head rearing up, and your stomach lurches as you come almost face-to-face with Laios.
Your breath grow quick and shallow as you stare at him with widening eyes—how did you not hear him, how did you not sense him sneak all the way from his bedroll over to you? It’s that kind of prowess which is going to get this party to the centre of the dungeon, that you’re absolutely sure of, but it terrifies you to no end—the ease with which he can creep up on monsters to kill them.
You’re pressed up hard against the wall with nowhere to go, your heart trying to thud right out of your chest. It feels so darkly familiar, him fixing you with his steady, calculating, unblinking gaze and pressing a finger to his lips for you to keep quiet. You’re realising fast that he’s never actually treated you like anything other than a beast, at least when there’s no one else around. He’s approached you just like you’re a scared, cornered animal and so that what you’ve become—that’s what he’s turned you into.
“Hey… Hey.” He places a hand on you, between your cat ears. They are as flat against your head as they’ve ever been. “What’s wrong?” he asks, voice barely above a whisper. “Why are you crying?”
You can’t answer him. You don’t have an answer for him. All you can think about is how on fire his hand feels as he rubs you just like you’re a cat and a specimen—the hand on your head, and his other now going to your thigh. He brushes his hand up the sleek fur of you like a hand returning to the feel of a familiar rug, like he’s done it before.
“Hm?” He prompts, tilting his head. From the shadows cast across his face, turned away from the fire like that, he looks like the most dangerous thing in this dungeon. “Is there anything I can do?”
Your whole body has seized up, your muscles locking up as you will the nerve endings in your skin not to react, to singe instead of sing. “I’m fine,” you croak out.
“You don’t seem fine.” He removes the hand from your head to brush at the tears running unchecked down your face. “Are you upset because you don’t remember what happened in the Golden Country?”
But you think you do know what happened in the Golden Country. You think you know now why Marcille always covers up your body from Laios whenever it was time to bathe or change. You think you understand why Chilchuck always joked that you better not ever get under the covers with Laios, even if you slept on his bed. You think you finally get why Senshi tells you that Laios’s obsession with monsters borders on the unnatural.
In the light of the flames, peeking out from under his night shirt, there are angry red claw marks.
Even under a spell, you still scratched him.
“You don’t remember,” he says, serious now, face hardening. “Do you?”
“N-no,” you stammer out, shaking your head. Your tail, curled around you, gives a sudden thrash of fear—Laios catches it in a closed fist without even needing to move his eyes away from yours. Hunter, your mind whispers as you shiver uncontrollably. He’s hunting you. “I-I don’t remember… I was just sleeping a lot, I think…”
His expression softens as hears this. The grip on your tail lessens and it flicks out; you catch it and tuck it safely away out of his reach. It’s still sore and limp from this morning. “Yeah,” he replies, settling back a little. A smile ghosts his intense face. “You were just sleeping. That’s all the spell put on all the beasts in the kingdom did. It just made them a bit sleepy.”
You don’t know what to say. You already know it’s a lie.
You try to run through your options—but what would you even do? If you hurt him, he might hurt you right back and claim you attacked him first, and everyone would believe it. If you ran away, you know realistically you wouldn’t stand a chance on your own. If you waited around just long enough to join the next party that came along, who was to say they wouldn’t treat you any different? Or worse?
He hasn’t stopped smiling at you. It’s like he thinks you’re enjoying it as much as he is. “You’re a good girl, Izutsumi,” he says and the chill from that is bone-deep.
Senshi suddenly lets out a gruff noise; you both turn to look—you with desperation and Laios in alarm. Please, you plead with wide eyes at Senshi, or Chilchuck, or Marcille—anyone. Your mouth trembles, unable to speak. Please wake up. Please don’t leave me alone.
But no one sits up, no one asks what’s going on. No one wakes up. They all sleep peacefully, happy at least that you’re out of their beds tonight and they can get some decent rest.
“Nothing’s going to surprise us tonight,” Laios says, taking your hand and trying to pull you over to his bedroll—it’s positioned further away from the others. “Kensuke will let me know if something’s coming, so you don’t need to keep watch. Come to bed.”
You don’t move at first, or even after Laios starts to tug at you, but you give a little yelp as he suddenly snaps forward, predator-like, and sweeps you off your feet like you’re nothing. He shushes you as you whimper, still crying, and you frantically look down at the others, still sleeping, and Laios whispers into your ear that you’re the most beautiful creature he’s ever seen that he can’t stop thinking about, still ignorant.
He pulls you under the covers with him and you almost wish you were back in the Golden Country, blissfully dumb and senseless and animal.
You think that Kensuke must secretly be on Laios’s side, or else that sword would be clanging as loud as warning bells all night long.