The "Best" RPG Ever-106

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---

Rast's parents were great, pleasant to meet and reasonably friendly—although they did sharpen Lynn's impression that he was from the southern United States even more. There was the doting, loquatious mother happy to continually cook a far greater quantity of delicious food than any number of people could reasonably eat—and yet urge the guest to do just that until she protested of being stuffed. And there was the strong, weathered father with a sort of quiet, serious, no-nonsense aura about him who proved perfectly able to crack a joke so dry you weren't even sure he was joking until it was almost too late to laugh.

All of that was on top of both of them having apparently been part of Ezra's guard in the past—which probably meant both of them were reasonably accomplished warriors. They even had a wall of old, worn weaponry and a story of how one or two of them were broken while fighting particularly tough monsters together. She didn't exactly probe, but it seemed likely they were pulling some sort of retirement from the city's funds and maybe being held on retainer in case of extreme emergencies.

Fortunately, none of this deterred them from approving of Lynn, who they perceived to be mostly a traveling performer who'd only taken up serious fighting recently. They were as interested in her half-improvised stories as in firsthand tales of some of the feats her party was rumored to have accomplished. It didn't seem to surprise them much that the captain of the guard seemed to have had an entire contingency plan in mind to deal with the fire giant well ahead of one ever showing up. Well, if the group of "players" in town were the new town heroes with rumors going around of their impressive powers and feats, Ezra was the sort of long-standing local legend that people would believe capable of just about anything—especially former members of the guard with firsthand experience.

It was a bit of a ways into the afternoon that they finally got away, and started out on the street again—Rast offering to walk Lynn home. Once they were several blocks away—presumably far enough for the wolf-man to be reasonably sure they weren't in his parents' earshot, he said, "Welp. I think they liked ya."
"That's certainly my impression," she replied. "I guess you'll hear how they really feel once I'm out of earshot, huh?"
"That's 'bout right."

Around halfway there, both of them jumped slightly at a sudden peal of thunder. Lynn looked up and found stormclouds seeming to appear out of nowhere, rushing toward the town. "Oof. Should we make a run for it or look for shelter, you think?"

"Looks like Demaeus's got plans," Rast said. "We're pretty close to a playhouse, maybe can get that far dry."
"Okay, lead the way," she waved. Even though his strides were faster, she didn't have any trouble keeping up—owing to that archer-class high agility, no doubt. It was only a matter of seconds between them getting into the doors and the rain starting to pound heavily on the roof above.

"Phoo-wee," the wolf-man said between gasps of air. "Close one."
"Yep. Hey, this isn't the same place you brought me to last time," Lynn commented—not feeling particularly out of breath herself. "I guess you've been researching, huh?"

"Eh, well," he exhaled, mostly his breath mostly caught. "You get to know lots of places after enough patrols 'round town. But, yep, I thought since our last date at uh, a place like this went pretty well, you might like to go again," he said, rubbing the back of his head nervously.

"Well..sure. It beats just waiting around for the rain to quit," she said, waving forward.

---

"Aah!" A sudden loud noise, like an explosion, woke Hyacinth up with a start. She sat bolt-upright, and required a moment for her conscious mind to catch up to her sensory input: The noise that had awoken her was a peal of thunder, and there was now rain beginning to hit the roof above; there were sheets and covers falling away from her body now that it was sitting up, and a soft mattress below her; her armor had been removed and placed in a small pile opposite the foot of the bed, and looked damaged well beyond usefulness.

So: Captain Ezra had taken her somewhere more comfortable to sleep and removed the armor. Her vulpine ears twitched slightly, picking up the sound of her voice quietly saying "..ta get into character, now," but it was in a distinct accent..which one was that..?

Footsteps approached the bedroom, and the soldier turned to face the door, peeling the covers off of her lower body in the process. There was some complaint: The mild soreness of exertion and freshly-healed injury, as well as her body informing her it really hadn't been finished sleeping when a noise so rudely woke it up. But no trace remained of the excruciating pain or blindness from before, which were presumably good signs. By the time the legendary captain of Kyzerath opened the door, she was reasonably well-composed.

"I see you're up," she said, her tone neutral but seeming to imply she'd just entered to check. Hyacinth was pretty sure this was a ruse, and she'd more or less magically known the instant she'd woken up. "How are you feeling?"
"Not fully rested, but good enough," she said.

Ezra nodded. "I've contacted your town. They've had no sign of your squad, but were pleased to hear you'd survived."

"I'm sure. Not too many mages willing to enlist as soldiers," she said.

"I had some food prepared," the captain stated—whereupon Hyacinth realized she'd been smelling something meaty and delicious since waking. "The healer said you would be hungry." She gave the slightest wave before leaving the room—shutting the door to allow privacy. The soldier took a moment to stand and gather herself before heading for the smell.

This seemed to be a small, cozy home maybe somewhere in the middle of the city. Hyacinth wondered whose house this was—maybe whoever the captain had been speaking to when she awoke, although there was no sign of that person now. While she ate, Ezra pulled out a map and spread it across the opposite end of the little table. "Is there still a gap in your memory?"
Her mouth full, the vulpin nodded. "A complete blank from normal patrol to waking up blind and hurting," she said once able.

"I'm not interested in your patrol route beyond what your town gives out as public knowledge," she stated. "But I'd like to know where you were just before the loss of memory." Naturally, the map encompassed much of the area between their two towns.

"Sure." It was understandable enough that anyone would want to know as much as possible about the location of something with memory wipe potential. The vulpin mentally traced the route briefly before pointing to about the last place she remembered being—almost halfway between the towns, and on the deeper-frontier end of the map.

Ezra nodded, and waited a long moment in silence, seeming almost uncertain about whether she should say something. Eventually the decision appeared to be made, and she said: "Our healer described your injuries in terms of the weapons your squad uses. There was an arrowhead in your side."

Hyacinth's eyes narrowed slightly, but her left hand went down to rub one particularly sore spot near her hip. It was...extremely slippery, but she could almost feel an arrow coming at her from that side, burying itself there, her hand grabbing to pull it out but only managing to snap the shaft off. She shook her head, trying to clear it, and it slid off like a daydream, feeling more like something imagined than remembered.

"..You think there's a rogue psion around? Or something grabbed their weapons?" In that same sense of imagination, a hammer glanced off of a hastily-placed barrier spell, and...someone was laughing. "Why leave me alive, then?" Especially powerful psions were rumored to be able to temporarily "puppeteer" people's bodies, but it took immense concentration to do that to even one person. Three at a time was unthinkable, besides the fact that someone that strong had much more effective means of kidnapping or hurting people.
"I don't know; this situation matches nothing we have on record." The vulpin heard this as: I, the immortal ancient warrior, have never seen anything like this before—which was much more worrying than her literal words. "For the moment, I've advised my guard to approach carefully if they see anyone matching the descriptions of your squad members. If something is either controlling or imitating them, their behavior could be hostile or unpredictable."

She nodded, understanding the implications of this as well. "They're good people. But if...if something like that is going on, I think Nir will understand. I'll support that decision, as far up as my word goes."

"Thank you. I'll arrange an escort to return you to them as soon as you're well enough to travel," the captain said. "Preferably after the storm lets up."

Ezra didn't say anything for a long moment, allowing Hyacinth to eat undisturbed for a bit. She paused chewing, thinking she heard—remembered, imagined?—her own voice: I'm not— (and a blank); You're not— (and a blank). She shook her head slightly, feeling more confused than ever.

"Do you remember anything new?"

"I don't...I don't know," she said after some hesitation. "Nothing specific. I'll feel like I've got something for a moment, but I think it's just my mind playing tricks on me. Trying to fill in the blanks by force."

Ezra nodded, and was quite a little longer. Then: "I think it's possible you encountered dangerous information. That can't be the source of the amnesia, but it explains why the bits and pieces filtering through would be difficult to hold on to. It may be safer for you to not try too hard to remember."
"...I understand. But if you learn anything at all—what happened to them, what happened to me—I still want to know."
"You will," she said, in the same level, serious tone as always.

---

Before too long, everyone split off to other parts of the house, leaving Zack on the couch with the small wolf-girl still clinging onto him. Well—Katherine was still there, at least. Think you could float me a book?

She raised her head to look up at him for a second or two, then shrugged. Sure. He hadn't bothered putting which book into words, having more or less accepted that she knew anyway. She even opened it to the right page for him, waiting until he had a grip on it to let go.

A paragraph or two in, another peal of thunder made Lupa shudder and softly whine again. Zack's ears folded down a bit, and he placed a hand on top of her head, carefully running it down from around the base of her ears to the back of her neck and on down along her back. Since this seemed to help her calm down, he repeated the motion.

It was different from the sort of thing he'd done with Nora or the catgirl, but was a kind of petting all the same. Somehow, even with all of the physical differences, it didn't feel too different from petting the wolf who'd turned into her. Maybe a little better—she was smaller, easier to reach due to being so close, and decidedly softer to the touch. After a moment of this, she finally lifted her head just slightly, enough for her eyes to peek up at Zack's face for a moment, and then peeled partway off and wiggled far enough up to place her head over his shoulder and pull into a marginally more dignified hug. Her right ear tickled the taller wolf-girl's cheek, and her tail swished slowly back and forth.

Katherine watched all of this, and he didn't really need her to 'say' anything to know what she was thinking. You can't deny that's ridiculously cute.

She's only acting this way because she's terrified, he replied, continuing to gently stroke her from head to lower back.

The catgirl put out a hand, palm-up, toward them for a second. Still. Anyway, that's definitely helping. Lupa seemed not to respond as violently to the next few peals of thunder, except for whimpering just slightly in response to a particularly close one.

...At least her face is out of my boobs now. I thought she was gonna suffocate or something.

Katherine snorted, and quickly put a hand to her mouth to stifle her laugh into a quieter, but just as hysterical giggle. "PFFheeheeheh!" Gods, Zack!

What? It's true. This made the laughter a little worse, if anything. Lupa made a half-hearted effort to turn her head and try to see what she was laughing at, but seemed to give up before long.

I never expected to hear something like that out of your mind, though!

---

Thankfully, they were far from sold out, and Rast was able to get himself and Lynn some seats fairly near the center of the audience at something of a last-minute-arrival discount.

The play was a comedy, with some allowances for improv. The first time that a loud peal of thunder from outside made it impossible to hear an actor's line, he turned his head skyward and said, "Well excuse you, Demaeus!" and waited for the crowd's laughter to die down before repeating himself. After that it became a running joke among the entire cast to express annoyance (in character) at the storm every time its noise interrupted their lines, and it only seemed to get funnier every time, woven as it was between the play's well-written jokes and several other moments of good improv. One character's soliloquy involving "the sun shining overhead" was interrupted by thunder seven different times, and he just repeated the lost line and continued on louder and more emphatically each time, as though the entire speech were an argument with the real world's weather; the audience was howling by the end of it.

While the storm wasn't exactly over by the time the play was done, the worst of it seemed to have passed; it had died down to a light enough rain to bear with on the rest of the way home. Lynn was still giggling on just thinking about some of the better jokes from the play.

"So, uh, d'you like it?" the wolf-man said.
"Yeah. I haven't laughed that hard in forever," she said, quite sincerely. "It's not even that it was all that well-written, the acting and improv were just top-notch across the board."

"To be honest, I was a little worried once I knew what we were seein'," he said. "Thought it might be too 'low-brow' for ya, or somethin'."
"You kidding? I'm a traveling performer, not some..high-class court musician. 'Low-brow' sits fine with me, if it's good."

---

After a while, Lupa slowly, courageously pulled off to Zack's side, still very much clinging on and burying her head in his shoulder when the storm grew especially loud. She clearly still wanted Zack's encouraging touch, so he continued gently rubbing her ears or stroking down her back as he read. But her eyes were on the book he was reading, and she squinted, clearly trying to make out the words.

"You want me to read it to you?" he said after a while. "It might not make much sense from the middle."
"Um.." the smaller wolf-girl said softly. "T-this one still wants to learn, how to read. This one got very distracted last time, but still remembers some of it."
"Oh, well. I don't think I'm as good a teacher as Rayna, but I guess I can try to help," he said.

Zack focused on showing her words (since she seemed to sort of recognize the letters already) and explaining their meaning. Eventually she started trying to sound out new ones herself, with a pattern of successes and failures that showed she hadn't retained some letters quite as well as others. Katherine occasionally pitched in too. As they continued, the small wolf-girl focused increasingly on eagerly learning this information to the point where she hardly noticed the quieter thunder, and seemed to willfully force herself not to cower when its roar was too loud to ignore; though her voice was shaky, she went right on sounding out words and asking questions afterward. The rate at which she learned and worked things out was impressive, bordering on unbelievable, but time would tell exactly how good her long-term retention was. Nonetheless, it seemed like she could probably read something basic to herself by the time they were through.

By this time, the storm had died down to a relatively light rain, and thunder was infrequent if present at all. They didn't so much formally decide to end the lesson as they were interrupted by the front door opening and Lupa bouncing to her feet and running off to see who it was. Zack just looked at Katherine, who nodded. Lynn's back.

It was after exchanging a couple of..okay, a few farewell kisses under the small awning hanging over the town side of their house's door that Lynn suggested Rast could come in briefly to meet Lupa. Most of the blush was gone from her face by the time he agreed and she got the door open.

"Hiii!" the little white-haired wolf-girl herself ran up immediately, stopping quite close to the archer with her tail wagging and leaning up at her. Lynn leaned in the opposite direction just slightly for the second it took the short wolf-girl to notice Rast coming in behind her. "Oh! Black-fur, hi! This one has a name now," she said rapidly while coming uncomfortably close in front of him.

"Uh, hey there. Miss Lynn told me 'bout your uh..'personification'?" he said, pronouncing the word carefully in the manner of someone who had only heard it once before and still didn't really understand its meaning all that well. "Lupa, right?" Rast put out a hand, and she took it eagerly, her grip strong enough to make him wince.

"Yes! Lupa!" Her eager handshake was also a bit violent, but mercifully short.

"Well, I'm Rast, if you ain't heard before," he said.

"Rast!" she repeated back. "Easy name, not like big tall one."

"Well, I'm..glad you like it, I guess?" he said, not really having the context for that.

By this time, Rayna had made it to the hallway. "Hey you two, back from your daaate?" Katherine and Zack had also followed from the living room, the former coming a couple of steps inside and the latter just standing in the doorway watching Lupa's antics with his arms crossed.

"Mmhm," Lynn said. "I met his parents, then it started pouring buckets, so we stopped to see a play."

"Oh, is that all?" she said, teasingly. "Well, we've been pretty busy around here. Nora has a fox form now that doesn't have a speech impediment, Mira's studying curse-making and -breaking, and if I'm not mistaken, Lupa here just learned to read some actual words!" At this last part, she came up behind the short wolf-girl and ruffled her hair, which she seemed to greatly enjoy.
"Yes! This one can read some now," she said proudly. "Master helped!" she added, pointing back at the knight.

"Err, 'master'?" Rast looked to Lynn for clarification.
"Zack," she said. "Her 'alpha', according to her. There's some sense to it, since he actually is her legal guardian for the time being."

"Well ah, it's nice to meet ya, miss Lupa," he said. "But I oughta get goin' back home. No tellin' whether this rain'll get lighter or heavier."

"Okay! Meet again later, Rast!" she said.

"Err...sure," he replied, taking a moment's hesitation to parse her phrasing. After this, he shared a brief sidelong hug with Lynn, opened the door to head back into town, and nearly ran into a tall, gray-haired human man who'd been just about to knock.

"Ah, pardon me, sir." Turning her body along with her head, Lynn saw that he was carrying a door under his arm and some sort of toolbag slung over his shoulder.

"No trouble," Rast went around him, and he continued inside, the catgirl walking up to meet him.

"Hi there," he said, addressing the psion in particular, and pointed to the unlinked door just next to the one he'd entered through. "That the one?"

"Yep," she nodded,

He went and leaned the door he'd been carrying against the wall just next to it. "Great. Sorry the delivery's a bit late; lightning can damage the components—not to mention the person carrying them—and I didn't want to risk it." He pulled out some sort of wand and some string from the toolbag, getting to work.

"No problem."

A wordless request went out from the psion to give the guy some space to work, and everyone more or less obeyed, Lynn following Rayna one way and Lupa following her "master" the other. "Now," he continued, unperturbed by their movements, "don't open either of these until you're at least a few yards apart, to avoid any feedback damage. Best if you make sure the loose one here's firmly planted upright, too—rooted if not surrounded by walls." The door he'd taken with him glowed faintly, its appearance flickering a couple of times until it became an apparent exact copy of the other door—which presumably meant they were now linked.

"Hard to believe this sort of thing is so common," Katherine commented. It was interesting for her to watch how talking helped him focus on his task rather than distracting him. "Which is to say—it's quite rare on the mainland."
"Aah, well, y'know. Ooone little explosion-the-size-ofa-city from some dummy putting way too much power into a door and then trying to put it into itself, and everyone starts saying it's unsafe compared to transport crystals and such. Folks out here, though, are used to unsafe. Really, the likelihood of our doors killing anyone is thousands of times lower than the whole town getting flattened by some big monster. Or..it would be in most other frontier towns, anyhow. This one..maybe hundreds, still.

He stood upright and turned Katherine's way. "..A'right, you're all set. Lemme know if you have any trouble with it, though."

She gave him a quick handshake. "Thanks. And we're all paid up?"
"Certainly. I don't do rain deliveries on credit, after all," he joked, and headed back out the door to town.

Rose peeked her head through a doorway as he left, slinking around the frame into the hallway once the door was shut. "Soo, the door's ready to go?"
"Mmhm. You heard his warnings, right? Got a way to brace this so it stays upright?"
"I've got a great idea involving some tree roots," she nodded. going over and carefully picking up the door still leaning against the wall.

"You could've watched closer if you wanted to," the catgirl said. "I don't even think he would've noticed you were a dragon."
"Heheheh. S-still, though."

---

Wow, it's been a LONG time since the last of these, huh? Over half of this part has been sitting for more than half of that time, I think, while I've been stewing in writer's block trying to come up with what should happen next.

The mood of this story is very distinct from a lot of the others, and always enjoyable to come back to when I can. The block I've been having is this really annoying kind where I know what'll happen shortly after what I'm supposed to be writing, but need to get through this to reach that. Hopefully I can make more progress on this story sooner than I did after the last part, ugh.