After a while spent failing to clean up the mess in our room, I quickly ducked out of the inn to get some food. It wasn’t much, just some grilled fish from a stall not far from the Warg’s Fang, but it was still something. I even got it on discount for accidentally spooking the stall owner, having forgotten I was kind of covered in blood.

  When I got back to my room I saw that Cassie was still unconscious. I’d placed her on one of the beds so that she didn’t wake up sore, but I was a bit worried that she hadn’t woken up yet. I didn’t know exactly what happened, but it seemed to me like she’d pushed too far after a stressful day. She shouldn’t be in any danger, but that didn’t stop me from worrying nonetheless.

  I put her portion of fish down next to her as I finished mine off. I was starving, so I hadn’t waited to start on my meal. I’d even ended up getting extra, but I was still pretty much done by the time I’d made it back to our room. I’d needed to resist the urge to just down the entire thing in a single bite, which had turned out to be harder than expected.

  I glanced at my carapace, which was still stained red and green from the fight. I had fixed up the cracks, punctures and scoring but I still looked a mess. I sighed and left the room again, ending up in the bar portion of the Warg’s Fang. It was pretty much empty besides the bartender, who gave me a suspicious look.

  “How can I help you?” She asked, not taking her eyes of me.

  I pulled up to the bar. “...Hi. Yeah, I was hoping that you could direct me to a bathhouse or something. Because, well, you understand.”

  She raised an eyebrow but decided not to comment on my state. I suppose she must have a lot of experience dealing with chaotic adventurers. “Down the hall, second door on the left.” She pointed in the opposite direction of the stairs.

  I pushed off the bar. “Thanks, Miss… Bartender. And sorry.” Before she could ask me what for I scurried off, hurrying through the door and finding myself in a short hallway with four door, two on each side.

  Following her instructions, I made my way to the second door on the left. It had an engraved picture of a woman on it, who was submerged under water. A little stylised, but I got the message.

  Pushing open the door I found myself facing the most ominous looking stairway I’d ever encountered. The steps were wooden with slats between each step, and the light vanished halfway down. Thankfully I could still see, thanks to my enhanced sight. That didn’t take away from the atmosphere, though.

  Slowly making my way down the steps, I soon found myself in a dusty basement that was empty save for a huge bath. It was shallow enough that it only went up to my waist, but it was broad enough to seat a dozen people comfortably. The moment I touched the water I seemed to activate something, because several symbols around the edge of the bath all lit up in unison.

  If I was able to I would have blinked when the room suddenly lit, even the dim lighting from the sides of the room bright compared to the gloom of before. The water, which had been ice-cold, suddenly heated up too. It didn’t feel particularly warm to me through my chitin, but it just kept warming until it was at comfortable temperature.

  I stepped fully into the water and sat down, relishing in the scouring heat as I let the blood and dust wash off me. There was something strangely soothing about just sitting in hot water that removed tension from my muscles that I didn’t even notice. I watched as the gunk I had been covered in dissipated and vanished, the water seemingly enchanted to self-clean. That was neat.

  I leant back, settling into the bath. The last few days had been pretty hectic, so it was nice to have some time to just relax. Well, it was more like the last few weeks if I was being honest. Everything since Cassie’s birthday had been… a lot. It was still going, too.

  I drifted further into the water, lying almost flat with just my head sticking out as I thought over the events of the past few days. I couldn’t quite tell if I was excited, annoyed or frightened at the potential scope of what we’d discovered in Matthais’ base of operations.

  I mean, undead plagues? Vampire assassins? Whoever ‘The One Who Lies’ and ‘The Enemy’ are? It was all rather a lot, especially given that we had only been adventurers for about a week. I refused to believe that there weren’t more competent, or at least experienced, people that could deal with this.

  At the same time, wasn’t this the dream? Getting dragged into whatever mystical nonsense was happening nearby for the sake of the greater good, fighting bad guys and hunting horrors? Part of me was enthused at the idea of it all, and that part had only been growing recently.

  It definitely felt like that part of me was getting more of a workout. Even disregarding the shudder-inducing sensations I received when I made use of my natural weapons, I had a feeling I was getting a bit more impulsive than I had been. The me from before my awakening wouldn’t have even considered just jumping head-first into a battle with a necromancer. She would have spent all of her time worrying about the ways she was likely to die and never gotten around to it.

  I could still be like that, I saw it in my decisions all the time. Hells, the form I was wearing right now was in part made because of that impulse. Yet I was also more inclined to just… act, these days. Same person, different outlook. I hoped, anyway. Who knew where this would end. I was a creature born of change, after all.

  That was the crux of it all, wasn’t it? The nexus where behaviour met anxiety met biology. I was inhuman, and there was nothing I could do to change that. I could wear the skin of a human, speak with a human’s voice and think like a human did, but at the end of the day I was Other. Had that fishmonger been right to be frightened? I was a huge unknown bug person right now, and in seconds I could have been a small creature he wouldn’t know to look for, or any other person in the crowd. What was I, really?

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  I was glad I hadn’t faced much of an issue with it yet. The Adventurer’s Guild clearly got a lot of weirdos, so it made sense that they weren’t all that concerned. Still, greater society wasn’t exactly inoculated against me, so I had to be more careful.

  I shook my head and sank further into the bath, bringing my head under water. I let my body shift on its own, letting me lie adrift under the comforting heat of the bath. I relaxed as my spiracles shifted into pseudo-gills, nictitating membranes formed over my eyes and my skin became thinner and more porous to allow for oxygen absorption.

  Meanwhile I began to drift, mentally at least. I wanted to just exist for a while, no introspection or planning or worry. Just simply being, at least for a time.

  My mind was blissfully blank as I lay flat under the water. It wasn’t deep enough to really float in, but I was heavy enough to just sink to the bottom rather than float, so I didn’t quite reach the surface when I was lying straight down.

  I found myself mesmerised by the pattern of the lights in the surface of the water, dancing through ripples made by my passing and spiralling down into the water. It was dazzling, just a tiny detail that I never really paid attention to.

  Soon I felt myself starting to drift off, the adrenaline shot of waking up to the situation I did finally fading into heavy exhaustion. I thought I should probably get up so that I could at least sleep in our room, but my limbs felt leaden as I let the gentle pressure of the water push down on my from all sides.

  It’ll be fine, I can stay here for five minutes.

  --------------------------------------

  I woke abruptly to find myself being dragged out of the water, which was miraculously still just as hot as before.

  I hit the stone floor with a scraping clunk, taking a few seconds to get my bearings. I glanced up to see Cassie staring down at me, wiping her hands down on her clothes.

  “I see you’re up,” I commented as I clambered to my feet, making use of my omni-directional joints to keep watching her even as I stood.

  “Yep. Woke up very confused, given that when I dropped we were being attacked.” Her frown deepened.

  Ah. Shit.

  I absently rubbed the thinner skin on my neck, which was slowly reverting to normal now that I was out of the water. “Oh yeah. Dusk. Sorry about that.”

  She glared at me. “I thought something had happened to you, Lia. What was I meant to think, alone in a damaged room after seeing that an assassin was killing you!?”

  Whether it was Cassie being upset with me or the fact that I had just woken up, my brain wasn’t really in top-shape, which caused me to focus on what was absolutely the wrong part of her complaint. “I did try to clean up…” I trailed off.

  Cassie brought a hand to her forehead. “Dear gods,” she muttered before meeting my eyes again. “Look, I… I don’t know. Is it weird and needy of me to say I was kind of hoping you would stay with me in this kind of situation?”

  I tilted my head. “...I don’t know? I mean, I was going to. I was! Only I was covered in blood, and the bath was so warm…”

  Cassie sighed. “Is this what it’s like dealing with me sometimes?”

  “What? No! Mostly...”

  For just a moment I saw a grin. I was getting through to her. “Okay. Just… don’t run off next time, yeah? I was worried.”

  I looked her in the eye. “I won’t. No matter how filthy I get.”

  That broke her, getting a laugh from my… friend? Girlfriend? I wasn’t quite sure, and I felt the need to clarify. It seemed important.

  “Hey, Cass?” I asked.

  “Yeah?” She answered, a small grin fighting to stay on her face.

  “What, um. What are we? As in, us.” I struggled to phrase the question, but she must have understood because she went serious.

  “That’s a very sudden question. What brought this on?” She asked.

  “What, aside from last night? Not night, it was afternoon. Last afternoon, whatever. I just want to know what to call us in my head.”

  She stared at me for a beat. “Wait, do you actually have an internal monologue?”

  “...Yeah? Don’t you?” I asked. What did she even think about if it wasn’t what was currently happening.

  “No. You know what? That actually fits. You would have an internal monologue.”

  Despite the fact that I had absolutely no idea what that meant, I felt sort of offended. “Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that you are amazing just the way you are and that there is nothing wrong with that,” she answered quickly.

  I hummed. “Alright, you get that one. Could you maybe answer my question, though?”

  Cassie put her hand to her chin and struck a dramatic ‘thinking’ pose. “Well. We’ve been friends for a long time. Best friends, even. But also,” she put her hands to her cheeks and theatrically gasped. “We kissed! And also we confessed mutual love, but that’s less important. With this in mind, we are…”

  Despite myself I leaned forward slightly, held in suspense. “Go on…”

  She grinned broadly. “We are… whatever we want!”

  I was a little let down by that answer. “Really?” I asked, a bit downtrodden.

  Cassie squinted at me, still grinning. “Yep! So, what do you want us to be?”

  “Um,” I answered eloquently. In fairness, she knew I didn’t do well on the spot.

  She huffed histrionically and put on a deep voice, facing to one side. “Three, two, one. Ooh, so sorry. You have run out of time to answer. Onto our next contestant!” She pointed to herself. “What do you want ‘us’ to be, Miss Vaughn?”

  She turned to face the opposite direction and spoke normally. “Well, that’s a very important question there. How about…”

  She turned back. “Three seconds.”

  Another turn. “Hmm. This is a real tough one. I might need some time.”

  “Will two seconds do?”

  “Aha! I have it! How about girlfriends?” Rather than turn around she faced me, a questioning look on her face. I rumbled and nodded, which lead to her turning to the side again and affecting her deeper voice. “Ding ding! Correct answer! You win ‘One Girlfriend’. Please collect your prize after the show!”

  I shook my head and chuckled. “Where do you even get these ideas?”

  Cassie just shrugged. “Who knows? Can we go now? It’s kinda creepy down here, I have no idea how you fell asleep here.” She took a step towards the stairs and held out her hand.

  I took her hand and shot her a sideways glance. “It’s not that bad. Kind of cosy. Besides, I could sleep anywhere,” I boasted.

  Cassie laughed softly as we made our exit. “Yeah, somehow I don’t doubt that at all.”

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