“The cut ear is the least of it,” said the doctor. He was a short, plump man with the upper body of a fox, wearing overalls and a shirt. He tapped a pen on his clipboard.

  “Okay,” said Mori. She was bandaged around the ear, belly and across her chest under her sports bra.

  “It will scar, but your fur will cover it.”

  “Awesome.”

  “Next, you pulled a muscle in your abdomen,” he said and passed Mori a bottle full of pills. “A couple of those a day will dull the pain, but aside from that you need rest.”

  “Coolio.”

  “My big concern are your ribs,” and he showed her a drawing on his board. It was a sketch of a ribcage with red crosses on one side. “I don’t have an X-ray machine to scan your bones, but based on your pain they shouldn’t be broken or fractured, just cracked.”

  “Lucky me,” she said and made to stand up. Her shirt and jacket were on the end of the patient’s chair.

  “Woah! No moving and certainly no prancing around, for a couple days at least.”

  “But I have the magic pills?” She shook the bottle and it gave a satisfying rattle.

  “They ain’t magic, honey. You need rest.”

  “Okay Doctor, err–”

  “Cabin. Call me Cabin,” said Doctor Cabin as he wrote his last notes then handed a page to Mori. It described her injuries and the pills she was given. “Keep that if you see one of my colleagues.”

  “Thank you,” she said and pocketed the note. When he turned around, she put her shirt and coat on and eyed the door. “That’s a neat name. How did you get it?”

  Doctor Cabin tidied his shelves, putting away his bandages and disinfectant. When he opened the cupboards, Mori saw how empty they were.

  “Mum gave it to me,” he said, “because she thought I looked cosy when I was just a baby. Cosy as a cabin with a warm fire in the dead of wint–GET BACK HERE!”

  Mori was out the door, one arm through her coat sleeve holding her pills and awkwardly trying to get the other sleeve on while hopping through the corridor and out into the daylight.

  She went straight to the town hall, where she saw the pretty, bird-beaked receptionist sat behind her desk. A long line kept her busy.

  “I’ll telegram you,” said Mori, and the receptionist smiled and brushed a feather behind her ear. Mori ran past the line, up the main stairs, trying to ignore the stabs in her chest at every step. “Ow, ow, ow.”

  She found Richard up the steps and around the corner. He was staring out a balcony window, and the three small tentacles on his head he normally twists into a pompadour were uncurled and drooped down to cover one eye. He whittled with his hands.

  Also, sitting on a chair in the corner, was the short-haired huntress who fought the Talpids with them. She had a classic face apart from a gash on her cheek, which she’d tapped up.

  “Hey,” said Mori. The two looked toward her.

  “Did ze doctor say you could move?” asked Richard.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said and rattled her medicine bottle, “I got magic beans to stop the pain.”

  “Eh, pain is pain,” said the huntress, “power through it.” Then she stood up, and the chair gave an awful creak as the legs drew together as if a huge weight removed itself.

  It took Mori aback. Each of the huntress’s steps made the floor groan. Sure, she was tall and covered in muscle but she wasn’t a bodybuilder built as wide as she was long. Just a normal, strong lady.

  “I’m Ferra, by the way,” said the huntress, “I never had a chance to mention it before.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Mori, he’s Richard,” she said, “and we’re Manu Knights, although you can probably tell.” She flicked the badge on her jacket.

  Ferra looked confused. She stared at Mori’s and Richard’s badges.

  “Manu… from Manu City?”

  “Yessiree!” Then Mori’s face dropped. “Please don’t tell me you also have a vendetta against us? I fought a toad guy who did a few days ago. I still don’t know what that’s about. I should probably ask…”

  “And you come from?” asked Richard when he saw his chance to interject.

  “South of… Brumland,” she said and paused as if the words were unfamiliar to her, “in Lon… Londoom.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear, that must be tough,” said Mori, “no wonder you’ve travelled this far North, and why you’re so strong. How did your fight go?”

  “Alright,” said Ferra as she left the room; Mori and Richard followed. They wandered down the stairs, and out the back door. All the while, Ferra explained her own brilliant and strategic plan. “Talpids don’t fight to the death, usually, so I kept punching it in the snout until it ran into the forest where the roots would tangle up its claws if it tried to dig. Then I shot at it with my nail gun until it surrendered out of fear. Then I knocked it out.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Truly a bard with her eloquence, Mori and Richard bestowed upon her the greatest compliment they could: complete silence and two horrified expressions.

  Outside, where the sound of people died away, Ferra guided them into a flat building made of rubblestone. It was a prison: square on all sides, economical and sturdy, a trait mirrored on the inside. There was a classic-faced guard sitting behind a pull out table who gestured them on through. The cell they arrived at was better described as a pit than a cell. Through the bars, they looked down and there were the two Talpids: one covered in bumps, the other in bandages to hide the nail shots, Mori guessed.

  They didn’t move, look up, nor did they sniff the air as they were apt to do. No. Instead they sat down, faced the floor and stayed still, apart from the occasional twitch.

  “Can’t they just dig their way out?” said Mori, “seems kinda pointless to put them here.”

  “I talked about zis with ze mayor while you were resting last night,” said Richard, “we don’t have ze means of containing zem, nor ze chance to send zem back to ze Talpid Plains. We hope if zey leave, ze Talpids will retreat.”

  “I suggested killing them,” said Ferra. She pulled a knife out her boot. “Their skin and meat will pay for damages.”

  “Lady Ferra–” began Mori.

  “Ferra.”

  “–Ferra it is– we aren’t gonna kill them. It’s not our way.”

  “I never suggested us killing them,” said Ferra and she stood next to Mori so she faced the full, towering height of the huntress, “I suggested me killing them. I don’t trust a cute bunny like you can manage.”

  Mori cocked her ears to the side.

  “You think I’m cute?” she said and smiled, but inside she was furious. The audacity. She held her hands behind her back to hide her clenched fists before she could strike Ferra.

  “Anyway,” said Richard, “ze mayor agreed to prison. We can leave now.”

  Ferra nodded, sheathed her blade and left. Richard waited for her to be out of earshot before turning back to Mori.

  “I hope we never have to deal wid her again,” he said and gave the Talpids’ pit a final glance, “or deal wid zem.”

  As they walked out, Mori saw the beady eyes of the Talpid she battled peek in her direction. It sniffed her way, then she left the prison building, hoping to never see a Talpid again. However, neither Mori nor the Kalshan locals knew of the impending threat growing beneath their feet.

  ***

  Mori felt she wasted enough time resting, so she was eager to leave Kalsha behind. She and Richard put on rucksacks filled to the brim with dried fruits and fish, before continuing once more to Manu City.

  On the first day, she saw a pine tree with a huge hoop-shaped crown with a family of two-headed birds nesting in it. In the evening she found ‘wristshrooms’: mushrooms that grew like hands digging out the earth but only got up to one wrist out. They’re delicious to roast.

  Eating merrily on a finger-shaped fungus, Mori inhaled the fresh night air. The campfire flickered, making the shadows of her hands dance on the grass. She imagined her shadow stretching out so far and so big it would reach the stars above, and she could make inappropriate shadow puppets for all the earth to see. But when she thought about it, she only knew one dirty shadow puppet, and the idea felt a tad too childish.

  “What are you laughing about?” asked Richard. He was lying down, his tentacles curled around him to make a sort of bed. He ate from a stick pierced through a roasted wristshroom and a dried golden salmon.

  “Oh, didn’t realise I was,” said Mori. She thought about dancing shadow puppets next to the stars and chuckled. “Imagine if I could project a dog on the sky.”

  “A dog-dog, or a dog-like guy?”

  “A dog-dog,” she said, “I’d make it dance around the constellations. And then it would eat them.”

  The laughter was infectious and they both couldn’t help it.

  Dance around.

  Like snapping awake and remembering you need to be somewhere, Mori stuck to the word ‘dance’. Her laughter died away.

  “Hey Richard?”

  “Oui, lady jackalope.”

  “How did you learn to fight like you did yesterday?”

  He put down his food stick, planting it in the soil near the fading fire. A few flickers crawled along the logs and the light dulled Richard’s pink skin to a brown-red.

  “Ah, my Waltz of Water. A silly name, I know, but if you can zink of a better one, do share.”

  “But how did you learn it?” Mori rolled onto her back. She couldn’t look him in the face. If he asked her, she would blame it on her ribs.

  “Well, Mori, just because we graduated ze knighthood didn’t mean training stopped. I found a dance teacher in Northandy, Jean de Fondi, and he suggested using my tentacules,” he stretched one out, “could control ze flow and ze rhythm of combat. Are you impressed?”

  In the corner of her eye, even in the growing dark, she could see his beaming face. The eagerness of her friend seeking confirmation.

  “Mori?”

  “Heck yeah!” she said and looked at him. “It’s awesome, like the coolest move ever. Remember when you could barely walk with those things around your waist, tangling in your legs? Now you’re so cool.”

  “Merci beaucoup,” he said, dipping back into his native tongue in excitement, “I was always worried I would lag behind being in ze bottom of our year, while you stayed in ze top. I feel like I can rival you now, mon ami.”

  “Yeah,” she said, hoping he didn’t see the jealousy seep through her facade.

  Night enveloped them, but Mori didn’t sleep for hours.

  She was knighted over three years ago and what had she achieved in all that time? She started as a prodigy with the most unique Deviation in years, standing next to Marco who’s potential matched her own, but he was successful and she continued to wander. Even Richard was outclassing her.

  She tossed and turned, covering her face with her ears, then flinching as she touched her healing cut.

  The embers charred, and when she squinted Mori could see the outline of Richard sleeping. She knew she was supposed to be proud of her closest friend. I am proud, she told herself but her heart wasn’t in it. Logic could not overcome her pulsing heartbeat. There was only one way to quell the growing anxiety: she had to train harder.

  In three days, she will be back in Manu. For three days of walking, she healed. Her fur covered the scar, her stomach became strong enough to do sit-ups again and her ribs only ached when she didn’t take the painkillers. She avoided taking too many.

  “Fitness Beast told us to keep a little pain,” said Mori when Richard pressed her, “because if you don’t hurt, you won’t know if you need to rest and you stay injured for longer.”

  “What’s gotten into you zese last few days?” he asked.

  They passed a sign painted over a large green panel on the old motorways. It said ‘Manu, the City of Bees straight ahead!’ Buzzing, and the smell of flowers, greeted them as they reached home.

  “I’m gonna learn how to dance,” said Mori.