This chapter turned out MUCH darker than I anticipated, but we're back with Lloyd Wilson's party (Which might have to start calling itself "the party of people who had TRAUMA in Kosuta"). I promise the next one's going to be more light-hearted, whenever I have it out. And we finally get to see Lloyd get into a proper fight (that lasts more than ten seconds). He's doing the militia's job a lot isn't he?
The cat is another NPC (he didn't get the note and doesn't have amnesia) and therefore won't have a POV chapter. There *is* a mystery around him, though - how did he get his strange powers?
Basil's animal base is a strawberry tiger, a rare color mutation where the fur is lighter-pigmented (blonde instead of orange ground, reddish brown instead of black stripes). IDK I just thought it'd be cute. Also, by complete accident, I made Basil look a lot like Trey from Zexal. Oops.
Guessing game time! Who's Basil?
Basil: Ingenue Of Pristine Eyes
"Hello, sir! Welcome to the Scarborough Tavern Inn!" The boy behind the desk inclined his head in deference to the party across from him, before accepting the gold they put on the lacquered tabletop. He quickly counted it, before putting it into a box under the desk. It would be safe there.
"Here is your key," the boy said politely, handing a brass key to the party leader, a haughty-looking elf. "Good luck on your adventures!"
The elf glanced at the smiling boy in distaste, eyes flickering to the white-spotted ears poking out of his soft pink hair, his slit-pupiled aqua eyes, and the auburn-striped tail poking out of the seat of his tunic, currently quirked at the tip like a question mark.
Grumbling to himself, he gestured for his party to follow him up the stairs to their room.
The boy smiled brightly and gestured for the next person waiting for the desk to come forward.
"Therian!"
The boy's smile faded as a young woman marched out of the cellar.
"What did I tell you about taking more customers without my permission!?" she snapped. To the person the boy had been about to serve, she said sweetly, "I'm sorry, I'm afraid we have no more rooms available."
"But… Miss… I thought-" the boy began, only for her to give him such a murderous look that he clammed up.
"No rooms? But this is the only tavern for miles and it's a nightmare out there!"
"No rooms means no rooms," the woman said sweetly. "I wish I could help you, sir… really."
The man looked desperate, close to tears in fact, as he held the woman next to him who the boy took to be his wife and she cradled a shivering, crying child.
"There's… really nothing you can do?"
"I… might be able to make something work. If you can make it worth my while."
The man's eyes widened. "But… this is all the money I have left…" he said numbly, gesturing to the small sack of coins he had put on the table.
"Then I can't help you," the woman said. "I'm not running a poor house."
"W-Wait! Please!" The man ripped off his gold pendant, his sword, and his wedding band and threw them on the counter. "I offer these, they're everything I own."
A cold sneer the boy had become all too familiar with crossed the woman's face, and she made a "come on, now" gesture.
The woman, tears falling down her face, put her finely carved bow on the table, followed by the pin on her cloak and her own wedding band. The couple put their cloaks on the table. The man offered their farm back in Adrian, their goats, their horses.
When they had turned over everything of value to the woman, she smiled and said, "Thank you, your sacrifice is greatly appreciated." She handed them the key the boy would have gladly given them no questions asked twenty minutes ago and sent them upstairs, robbed of everything they owned for one good night's sleep.
"Excuse us for a moment," the woman said to the stunned drinkers at the tavern bar, before she grabbed the boy by his furry strawberry blonde ear and dragged him into the cellar.
She threw him to the ground.
"You almost ruined everything!" she shrieked. "You realize this is why I never let you man the desk, right, you stupid brat!? You're incapable of thinking like a businessman! You'd have let that wretched man in here without paying an extra cent!"
"But we had rooms!" the boy blurted out. "We had plenty of them! You didn't have to take so much from that poor man!"
"Yes, I did!" the woman snarled, grabbing the boy by the neck and pinning him against the cellar wall. "I have to! Pretending supply is low increases demand, which makes people more desperate, which means I get paid more! That's basic business! So what if they sacrificed a lot to pay the toll!? You can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs!"
The boy knelt hunched on the ground, ears flattened against his hair. He knew what the woman was saying was wrong - more than that, it was evil - but seeing her so furious made any protests dry up in his throat. Some faint, distant memory, of seeing someone else that unfathomably angry and knowing it only meant pain in his future.
The woman kicked the boy in the stomach several times, forcing him to stiffen and fall over, holding his midsection and silently weeping in pain.
"You can stay in the cellar until you learn your lesson," the woman spat, before plastering on a fake sweet smile and leaving the cellar, slamming the door and leaving him in darkness.
He could see, mainly from the thin fingers of light pushing through the rotten wood of the cellar door. His slit pupils glowed with the reflection of the candlelight.
The boy huddled in a ball - not just because of his bruised, hurting stomach, but because of the freezing wind howling above him, that in the main inn had been drowned out by laughing, drinking, singing, and talking.
The boy had lived at the Scarborough Tavern Inn for several weeks, almost a month, after he himself had shown up at the door looking for shelter from the bitter cold of Canecreek Pass, with nothing to pay the greedy innkeeper with except his body.
So, he cooked, cleaned, and served drinks at the bar, fetched things, ran messages, and did anything he thought might assuage the innkeeper's dissatisfaction with the world - and her lack of enough wealth - for a few minutes. She claimed him as a son, although he was sure she only meant it so far as owning him, like she did the horses and goats and pigs on the property that he assumed she had scammed from inn guests, like she had tonight. He accepted it when she beat him and dragged him around by the ear and threw him in the cellar. Where would the boy go? The nearest towns were Hightower, on the opposite side of the pass, and Adrian, a day's walk away from the mountains. And he had no family, no concrete ties to anywhere. All such things had been lost with his memories, in the winter hurricane the innkeeper was adamant was the cause of such complete and terrible amnesia.
The boy's name was Basil. That was the only concrete thing he could recall - although he occasionally dreamed of a place made of rainbow stars. However, no one seemed interested in knowing his name. Not the parties and travelers that came through and certainly not the innkeeper. The innkeeper had never given a name for him to call her either, so he had settled on calling her "Miss", deference she seemed to appreciate. Although appreciate might have been a strong word - the innkeeper was too dissatisfied and angry to appreciate anything.
Basil felt a sob bubble up. This was far from the first time he'd seen the innkeeper scam someone. It wasn't even the first time he had seen her use the same scam of pretending all the rooms were full before offering to "magically" discover an opening in the rooms if bribed a little more. But this time it felt more egregious and unneeded than any of the previous times. Basil had learned quickly here - or perhaps it had come from the distant land in his mind where his memories had fled to - to recognize value in material objects. The man's gold was more than enough to purchase a room at any reasonable inn, have enough to provide drinks for the obligatory beer and conversation taverns were known for, and still have grocery money left over. Taking his weapons - an adventurer's life and limb on the road - and his sentimental jewelry (including his and his wife's sky-blessed wedding rings) was just greedy, petty, cruel, and completely unnecessary.
But what could Basil do about it? Protesting even in a small way had gotten him thrown in here, in the dark, and the innkeeper promised worse things if he didn't comply.
Tears splashed onto the dirty stone floor and his pale-yellow tunic, leaving dark spots.
Why does this have to happen? All I want is to-
"Help!"
Basil's ears pricked at the small, high-pitched cry coming from an upper corner of the room, where the dirt wall met the wood paneling that was both the cellar ceiling and the floor of the back pantry above it.
He slowly stood up and crept over to the corner the voice came from, where he could hear a faint scratching.
"Help! Help me!"
"What's wrong?" Basil asked.
"I'm - stuck in the wall!" the voice answered. "I-It was so c-cold outside… I tried to dig my way in, but-"
Basil bit his lip, ears pinning back. The cellar walls were only made of packed earth bricks, but they were thick and sturdy, as was intended, to keep the contents cool and dry even as the worst of the winter winds blew. Basil had never even considered trying to break through them.
"J-Just hold on," he promised, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt. "I'll… figure something out."
"Hurry!" the voice insisted sharply. "...Please?"
Basil paced back and forth, trying to figure out how to break through the cellar wall. All the weapons the innkeeper had collected hung on the wall behind the counter, outside the cellar, and he didn't want to risk hurting the owner of the mysterious little voice with one of them even if they were within his reach. He couldn't wait until the innkeeper let him out and then sneak the voice inside - the voice would freeze or smother to death by then!
What to do, what to do, what to do…
Basil looked around the cellar more frantically, finding nothing that he could use to chip away at the frozen earth.
"A-Are you s-still there?!" the voice asked, sounding more panicked.
"Y-Yes, I am, I just… need to break through the wall somehow! Can you, um… keep digging like you were doing? It'll keep you warmer if you're moving!"
No response.
"H-Hello? Mr. Voice?" Basil asked in growing dread.
Still nothing.
Basil felt tears come to his eyes again. It looked like he had once again failed in helping someone he was desperately trying to help. He put his hand on the wall, head bowed in despair, digging claws he'd hardly ever used before into the packed earth.
It registered after a few seconds what he was doing, and he pulled away, pieces of crumbling dirt slipping through his fingers and falling to the cellar floor.
His eyes widened, before he took a breath and swiped at the wall again, sinking his claws as deep as he could into the cold, hard surface. Basil hardly noticed when his claws began to wear down, break, and bleed as he tore at the wall, venting weeks of frustration into each blow. The gash in the wall began to more closely resemble a hole. Basil's hands disappeared into it up to the wrists with each scrape. He was getting close; he could somehow sense it.
"Mr. Voice! If you can hear me, back as far away from the wall as you can!" Basil cried. Then he sank his claws into the dirt inside the hole and pulled it free.
Freezing wind poured through the little hole in the cellar wall, along with gusts of powdered snow. Basil staggered back, nursing his hands, which were filthy and bleeding.
"Mr. Voice?" he called uncertainly into the dark tunnel.
For a moment, Basil saw nothing. Then, a pair of eyes shone back at him from the darkness. Basil backed up as the owner of the eyes grew closer.
Finally, a small, furry head popped out of the hole, large blue eyes blinking at him.
"Mr. Voice? You're… a cat?"
"Really? I hadn't noticed," the cat sniffed, before sneezing on the kicked-up dust and shaking himself. The latter didn't make any difference as mud and grass was caked onto his fur. "But what are you, though? Some kind of genetic experiment?"
"Hey! That's rude!" Basil said defensively, even though he didn't know what a 'genetic experiment' was. "If you must know, I'm a therian."
"That doesn't clear it up for me either," the cat said flatly.
"The People of the Wild?" Basil tried. "The half-animal race?"
The cat huffed. "Never mind, I guess that's just another thing about this place."
"What do you mean?" Basil asked.
The cat didn't answer, instead approaching the hole and inspecting it. "Impressive. Was this all you?"
"I… didn't know any other way to get you out," Basil said nervously. "I didn't want to leave you."
"Well, you're made of tougher stuff than you look, then." The cat jumped onto a nearby barrel and sniffed the hole. "However… I have to ask, what are you planning to do about this nice hole in the cellar wall?"
"Um… I didn't think that far," Basil said, tapping his fingers together nervously.
"Of course you didn't," the cat sighed. "Well, luckily for you, I did think that far ahead. Stand back, tiger boy."
The cat lifted his right paw.
"Command Twenty-Six: Rewind."
Basil didn't have time to react to the strange incantation before the cat's paw began to glow, and the loose clumps of dirt and rock on the floor gleamed with the same pale gold light, then floated up into the air, flying back into the hole in the wall.
Basil's eyes widened as the wall mended itself, so thoroughly he couldn't even tell where the hole had been.
"Impressed, huh? You haven't seen anything yet," the cat said. "Show me your hands."
Basil gingerly held out his bleeding hands for the cat to inspect. The cat put his paw on the back of Basil's right hand, repeated the incantation, and Basil felt the keratin in his nails and the ruined skin underneath knit themselves back together. Even the dirt scrubbed itself away, leaving no evidence that Basil had spent the past ten minutes carving a hole through a half-frozen, rocky cellar wall.
The cat grinned, looking pleased with himself, however, the light on his paw flickered and then went out, and he staggered.
"Oh! Are you alright?" Basil asked anxiously.
"F-Fine," the cat insisted. "Probably shouldn't… do that again for a while, though."
"What was that, that you just did back there?"
"One of my innate magical skills. I've always had them."
"Why couldn't you use it to get through the wall when you got stuck?"
"Because that's not how that skill works. Rewind allows me to restore something to its previous state. I could fix the wall by reversing it back to a few minutes ago before we started digging around in it. Same with your hands. There was never a hole there before you dug one out, so I couldn't rewind the wall to free myself."
Basil slowly nodded, feeling silly for not thinking of that. "What other skills do you have?" he asked softly, a plan beginning to form in his head.
"A lot. Rewind is number twenty-six, so that should tell you something. I can't use them all whenever I want to, though. You saw how using Rewind twice wiped me out." The cat flicked his tail. "Why? What does it matter to you?"
"Something… happened earlier," Basil said. "The innkeeper… the one I work for, she…"
Basil quietly told the cat the whole story of what had happened earlier that evening. He felt his eyes dampen as he recounted how the innkeeper had swindled the poor, desperate family out of everything they owned for one of her rooms. How she had used a similar trick many times. All the other things she did that she called "good business decisions" but just made Basil sick inside. Like using horse feed in her food when she was out of grain, selling wine that had gone bad, or using meat from nearby wild animals and butchered horses and passing it off as lamb or chicken. Like refusing to fix weakened ceiling supports and rickety stairs. Like almost never washing the sheets on the beds unless she could make Basil hike down to the stream and wash them in that. Like stealing livestock the tenants had left in her care and lying that they had run away, or fallen off a cliff, or been carried off by a mountain predator.
When he was finished, the cat whistled - which sounded funny coming from a feline throat.
"Running an extortion racket out of her inn, which she refuses to maintain and cuts corners on constantly, stealing guest property, and on top of all that forcing a child to work for her for no pay. Those aren't cutthroat business decisions, they're financial crimes. And she's so blatant about it, too… If she lived anywhere close to a proper law enforcement group, she'd be arrested."
"I just feel terrible not being able to do anything about it," Basil murmured. "I tried to give that family a room key since we had plenty of them, and for that I got locked down here."
The cat swished his tail back and forth. "What was your plan?"
"I… wanted to steal back those things the innkeeper took and give them to that family. I'm just… not sure how else I can help them."
"Doing that won't stop her from doing it again. Which leaves us with two options. One, we try to hunt down a member of the militia, or someone who can report her to them. Or two, we simply kill her."
Basil gasped. "Kill her?! I could never do that!"
"It was only a suggestion." The cat gave an almost smirk. "So, we have to find someone who can get her arrested. Any ideas?"
"Um… adventurers go through the pass and stay at the inn… and some are aligned with militia from a particular town…" Basil trailed off. "But not this time of year. You have to be desperate, to cross the pass during blizzard season."
"Militia members aren't likely to be desperate," the cat agreed. "But maybe someone who gets angry enough at her swindling to raise a fuss about it."
Basil frowned. "But how are we going to find such a person while we're trapped down here?"
The cat looked deep in thought. "Is there a way to get into the inn from the cellar besides the door?"
"Not that I know of. The innkeeper has shut me in here multiple times, and I haven't found any trapdoors or secret passageways or anything like that." Basil looked longingly up at the wood paneling in the ceiling.
His gaze faltered when he found one particular panel on the side of the cellar that connected to the house.
"Wait… that panel in the ceiling - it's loose. I remember her complaining about how rats were getting into the kitchen through the crawl space between it and the kitchen floor. It's too small for me to crawl through…"
"But I can get through it quite nicely," the cat finished. "Give me a minute to get up there." He quickly picked his way up the stacks of crates to the one closest to the loose panel. He pushed it open with his head.
"Oh, yeah, I can definitely get in there," he said. "I'm going to see if I can get the cellar key."
The cat vanished into the hole, leaving Basil once again alone in the cellar.
Basil watched the place he had gone for a while, before hoisting himself up onto one of the larger crates and sitting there, kicking his feet nervously.
That cat is nice. Kind of spooky… but nice.
Basil frowned as he realized something.
Getting the innkeeper arrested meant he was knowingly getting rid of his only caretaker. Would one of the adventurers coming through the pass be willing to take on a young therian boy with no memories and no useful skills? Could he stay in the inn, or would the new owners throw him out? The innkeeper kept him around because he was occasionally - only occasionally, she was always sure to tell him - useful to her.
So, what would happen to him if no one else found him useful?
Basil shook his head. "I just want her to not be able to con people again. If this stops her from doing that, I don't care what happens to me."
"Word of advice, tiger boy, you shouldn't talk to yourself. People are going to think you're crazy."
Basil's head shot up in surprise, and he jumped off the crate. "You're back already? That was fast…"
"All I had to do was get a good look at the cellar key, then I used one of my skills to replicate it," the cat replied. He jumped to the ground, the counterfeit key dangling from his neck by the lace the innkeeper used to hang it up. It did look identical to the cellar key.
"Thank you," he told the cat as he gently took the key from around his neck.
"It was nothing. Now get that door. I'll distract the innkeeper while you find a place to hide."
Basil nodded, before watching the cat again disappear into the crawl space under the floorboards. He turned the key over in his hand, before swallowing his nerves and sneaking over to the cellar door.
He listened intently at the keyhole, not sure what to listen for but expecting noise.
Then the innkeeper screamed.
Basil's heart jumped at the sound, which was joined by a cacophony of shouting, loud footsteps, weapons being drawn, and things falling over.
Basil, guessing that was his distraction, quickly inserted the key into the hole and turned it. The cellar door swung outward with a soft creak.
Basil froze, despite being sure that the noise couldn't be heard over the commotion in the main kitchen. He quickly tucked the duplicate key around his neck and under his shirt, before he got down and crawled out of the hallway leading to the cellar and into the kitchen. He ducked behind the door frame leading from the kitchen to the front desk, before cautiously peeking out.
What met his eyes was pure chaos: patrons fighting and shouting, tables and chairs overturned, the innkeeper shrieking and brandishing a broom, and in the middle of it all, the cat dodging and weaving through the chaos.
Basil bit his lip in concern for his new friend, but it turned out it was unneeded. The cat seemed to express a remarkable ability to avoid getting hit.
Maybe that's one of his magic skills?
Basil dug his claws into the door frame, debating what to do. He had to find someone to confess the innkeeper's crimes to, but he couldn't do that while the innkeeper was right there.
He glanced back and forth, debating his options, before settling on a small cabinet against the wall - ostensibly for coats and cloaks, although Basil had never seen it used for that, or, really, much of anything. It had a small knothole in the side that the innkeeper had never bothered to fix, allowing him to look out into the main bar area.
Hopefully without being seen.
Basil crept out of his hiding place, quickly climbing into the cabinet and shutting the door, heart pounding. It was cramped inside, and dusty, but the small amount of light squeezing through the knothole was more than enough light for Basil to see. He had just gotten settled when a new noise joined the commotion - the door being thrown open, letting in the freezing wind and snow from outside.
Then a sharp, heavily-accented voice. "Vhat on earth is going on in here!?"
The voice belonged to a figure now silhouetted against the fading silvery light of the snow. He looked wealthy, judging from his fancy suit, gleaming pink brooch, and intricately embroidered black cloak. A blonde girl a bit younger than Basil - betrayed as a mermaid by the faintly glowing markings on her arms and forehead - in a purple dress and a silver cloak that blended into the snow, trailed behind him, and Basil saw him firmly grab her shoulder in a protective gesture.
He ran his fingers through his wavy black hair - soaking wet from the snow outside - and glared coldly across the bar, prompting quite a few of the bar patrons to regain their senses and sheathe their weapons.
"Th-There was a cat. Sir," the innkeeper said. "A cat slipped into the inn somehow. Gave all of us quite a turn!"
The man looked around. "I don't see a cat," he said with a pompous smirk.
Basil's heart stopped as he realized the cat had vanished. He could only hope his new friend had gotten out of danger.
"B-But it was here!" the innkeeper said helplessly.
"Never mind zat, if there vas a cat here, it's gone now. I assume you're ze owner of zis… fine establishment?" He looked around in unmistakable distaste at the state of disrepair of everything in the room - the chairs that had at least one hobbled leg each, the stained tables with cracks down the middle or entire chunks taken out of them, the grandfather clock that hadn't moved in all the time Basil had lived there, the crooked, rusty shutters on the windows, the cobwebs in every corner, and the warped, uneven floor. Was he wrinkling his nose?
Mean! But he had inadvertently saved the cat by distracting everyone, and he was clearly an adventurer judging from the whip attached to his back. Maybe he could be helpful.
"Oh! Yes, I am, sir. Unfortunately, we-"
"Siren and I are getting a room here. Zis storm looks like it could last for hours, and on a night like zis ve'd be likely to break our necks valking off some cliff," the man said, cutting off the innkeeper before she could even begin her elevator pitch to pull the same scheme on this man and his traveling partner that she had on that poor couple.
"Sir, I was going to say we don't have any rooms open," the innkeeper said insistently. "I… could always ask someone to move and you could take their spot, but that would lose me a lot of money, and I'd hate for it to not be worth my while." She slapped on the sweetest smile she could.
The little blonde girl bit her lip. "Can we… do that, Rose Emperor?" she asked softly. "The poor people in those rooms…"
The newly named Rose Emperor, meanwhile, narrowed his eyes. If he had been irritated before, he was angry now.
"Are you asking me to bribe you, Frau Innkeeper?" he asked. "In exchange for kicking one of your guests, who already paid you for a safe place to vait out zis storm, out into ze cold? I have sunken to lows I am not proud of before. But condemning a paying customer to die? Just to get a bit more money?"
"S-Sir, please - I'm t-trying to run a business here. If you and that girl want a room, you should be willing-"
"Let me repeat zat," Rose Emperor hissed, backing the innkeeper against the desk. "I vill not have ze death of a person on my conscience. I certainly vill never give zhe one who vould do such a zing money to line her pocket."
"Then you'd rather your little girl suffer out in the cold, then? Seems rather callous to me personally. Must she die for a stranger-eek!"
A loud CRACK filled the air, and it took Basil a moment to recognize the source: Rose Emperor's whip, which he had yanked out of his adventurer's sheathe and snapped in the air, inches away from the woman's face, without actually hurting her.
"Zat sounds. Like a zhreat. Frau Innkeeper," he said slowly and deliberately.
"No rooms means no rooms, sir, I - Oh! Grab him, grab him, don't let him come near me!" the innkeeper screamed.
A couple adventurers stood up to obey that demand, trying to corner Rose Emperor between two tables. However, the man quickly snapped his whip, wrapping the thorn-covered rope around the wrist of one of the adventurers and pulling him down to the ground nursing a bleeding, ruined wrist, and then spun around and struck the second man in the face with it.
However, Basil's mouth dried up as he saw the innkeeper take a knife out of a hidden compartment in the desk and raise it to stab Rose Emperor's currently undefended back.
"No!" Basil screamed, bursting through the cabinet door.
The innkeeper froze in shock at the sound of his voice, which allowed Rose Emperor to see and react to the coming attack. He snatched the knife right out of the innkeeper's hands with his whip and pulled it back to him. He tossed it up and caught it in his hand.
"A knife, hm? So, one person refuses to go along vith your schemes, and you try to kill him?"
The innkeeper, however, wasn't even focused on Rose Emperor anymore, instead stalking up to Basil, her face purple with fury.
"You! How did you get out of the cellar, you brat!?" she screamed. Basil backed up, tail puffed out and ears flat in terror.
The innkeeper's face split into a too-wide, maddened smile. "You disobeyed me again. After everything I did for you. You still disobeyed me," she said with a hysterical giggle. "It's time I teach you a lesson you'll remember!" She lunged at Basil, who, without even thinking about it, dodged out of her way, jumping up and over a table and knocking it over.
Basil felt a hand close around his wrist and instinctively fought back, only to find it was Rose Emperor grabbing him. The pompous young man, with the quickness that only came with practice in the subject, pulled Basil to join a shaking Siren under the table, putting his body between them and the frenzied innkeeper. A quick SNAP and there was a ragged, bleeding wound on the innkeeper's face. However, that only seemed to make her angrier.
A pair of adventurers near the back of the room jumped in, wrestling her arms behind her back as she fought madly, spitting threats, to get to Basil, still on the other side of Rose Emperor.
"I'll lock you in the stable where beasts like you belong! I'll chop off your ears and tail and make them into a hat! I'll hang your body from a tree for the mountain wolves to tear you apart! I'LL! MAKE! YOU! PAY!" she shrieked.
"Eternal chain," one adventurer, an elf, intoned, causing bindings to appear around the irate woman. The other adventurer, a fox therian, took off her scarf and stuffed it into the innkeeper's mouth as a gag.
"You don't have the right to scream obscenities in that poor child's ear," the fox therian said coldly.
"Excellent," Rose Emperor said. "Siren, your services are needed."
The young mermaid climbed out from under the table, pulling out a mother-of-pearl-decorated ocarina from her adventurer's sheath. She cautiously approached the struggling, furious innkeeper.
"Sleep until the Emperor's ready to deal with you," she said, her voice soft but deadly. She then began to play her ocarina.
Almost immediately, Basil began to feel sleepier. Other adventurers in the bar looked drowsy as well. But that was nothing compared to the effect on the innkeeper, who was only listening for a minute before her head lolled to one side and she dropped to the floor, unconscious.
"Zere. Zat should make it easy to hold her until ze Hightower militia can get here to take her off your hands."
"Hightower?" the fox therian asked.
"Ze mayor zere is among my acquaintances in zis country, and I vas told ze pass is technically under his jurisdiction."
"That's true," another adventurer said.
"You, zere. Ze tiger boy," Rose Emperor said. "You come here, too."
Basil nervously crept out from under the table. The only adult he was consistently around that he could remember was the innkeeper, who never meant anything good when she wanted to see him, and while Rose Emperor seemed… well-meaning enough, he was also arrogant and rude, not someone to cross.
"Zis woman - who are you to her? How does she know you?"
Basil's tail twitched nervously, and his stomach felt like it were fluttering with butterflies. "I'm her…" Son seemed like the wrong word, although that was the one she always used. "She took me in. I work for her in exchange."
"How old are you?" Rose Emperor asked.
"Th-Thirteen… I think."
"And are you paid?"
"She gives me food and lets me stay," Basil said. "She doesn't need to pay me."
Rose Emperor's face darkened.
"Sh-She said so," Basil excused. "B-Because I'm… a therian. We don't count."
The fox therian scowled and aimed a kick at the woman's sleeping body.
Rose Emperor exchanged glances with Siren, who had bit her lip and looked away as Basil was talking, her eyes dulling in… understanding? Pity?
"I already know vhat you're going to say, Siren," Rose Emperor said. "It's up to him, still."
"Up to me to… what?" Basil asked.
"Don't mind zat now," Rose Emperor said. "Vas Frau Innkeeper right zat she had no rooms to spare?"
Basil slowly shook his head. "She uses that trick all the time. Earlier today, she scammed a man and his wife into giving everything they owned to her. Their money, wedding rings, adventurer weapons, personal jewelry… she even made them sign over their farm and house."
"Did she get such a zing in writing?" Rose Emperor asked.
Basil frowned. "I don't… think so. I think she was going to take those things when the storm let up and she could get to Adrian safely."
"Then it's illegal," Siren said. "At least, that's what Rose Emperor is saying, right, sir?"
Rose Emperor nodded. "She doesn't legally own ze farm wizzout ze deed or some form of writing. And since she vas scamming zose people, and vas convicted of such, it von't be too much trouble to get zeir personal effects back to zem as well."
"Thank you, sir," Basil said. "I… I wanted to stop her. But I…"
Rose Emperor held up his hand for Basil to stop talking. "Ve aren't asking for you to share your darkest secrets, tiger boy. Zere are rooms left, yes?"
Basil nodded.
"Zen Siren and I shall be getting one in order to rest, vait out zis storm. You're velcome to accompany us in zat room, unless you have ozzer sleeping arrangements."
"...The cellar, usually," Basil said truthfully. "I'll… I'll come with you."
Rose Emperor nodded in acknowledgement, before turning to the elf and fox therian. "Take Frau Innkeeper up to one of ze empty rooms and put her in it. To be sure she doesn't run away if she vakes up."
"We'll guard her," the elf said. "Nikki and I are usually up at night anyway."
"Good. Now, Siren, I have been deeply looking forvard to zat room and bed. You come, too, tiger boy."
A few hours later, Basil was lying on the trundle bed in the inn. They had eaten some of the food Rose Emperor had in his bag, and he was feeling very full and satisfied from it.
Rose Emperor was in the bathroom, cleaning up from the long journey.
Siren, who had already bathed, sat on her bed going through her bag of things. She had a small pouch of water, a thin but deadly-looking dagger, a piece of flint chained to a sharp blade for starting fires, some dried fruit and roots that she had helped Rose Emperor forage for, and a worn piece of paper. The last thing, she frowned over for several minutes.
"Siren? What does that paper say?" Basil asked.
Siren frowned. "It's a message. The only thing I remember from before I lived in Hightower, with the adventurer Charmweaver."
"You… can't remember anything either?" Basil asked.
"Either? Do you not remember anything from before the last… three weeks?"
Basil sat up. "No. No, I don't." He bit his lip. "Siren… does your paper say, 'Kill to survive, survive to win'?"
Siren's eyes widened. "It does. So, you're…"
"What's wrong?" Basil asked.
"I wondered if there were other people like me," Siren murmured. "Do you think there're more? Are we supposed to find them all somehow?"
Basil frowned. "I… don't know. That paper… that message… it scares me. I haven't shown it to anyone." He reached into his pocket, where he knew it was neatly folded.
"I've only shown Rose Emperor," Siren said. "He said he hadn't gotten anything like that and couldn't identify where it came from. But he did agree to help me find out who sent it. Maybe he could help you, too."
Just then, as if on cue, Rose Emperor entered, running a comb through his wet hair as he walked, already dressed in pajamas that looked only marginally less fancy and expensive than his regular clothes.
"Vhat are you two talking about?" he asked.
Siren pointed at Basil, who flushed pink. "He says he has amnesia dating back to a few weeks ago and got a mysterious note like mine."
Rose Emperor turned to Basil in surprise. "Is zis true?"
Basil nodded. "I have the note here." He pulled it out and unfolded it.
"Yes. Zis does look like ze one Siren received."
"She… Siren said that… you might be able to help me find out what it means."
Rose Emperor frowned. "It vould mean zat you come wiz us. Vould you vant to become and adventurer and travel?"
"I…" Basil trailed off. "I have to. I'm not welcome in the inn anymore."
A scratching at the door made them all tense up.
"Who could zat be?" Rose Emperor asked under his breath as he went to answer the door, hand reaching for his weapon.
Then he laughed - a short, harsh sound, that of someone not used to genuinely laughing.
"I suppose I've found Frau Innkeeper's cat," he said.
The cat sauntered in, not even caring that he was trailing dried dirt and looked like an adobe cat sculpture.
"I overheard what you were talking about, Friend of the Hightower Militia," the cat said.
Rose Emperor paled in shock, dropping the hairbrush on the ground. "You-!?" he asked in shock.
The cat whipped his tail over the young aristocrat's mouth. "Save it for later. Long story short, I'm the one who got him out of the cellar, and I've gone and gotten attached to the kid. If he goes with you, I'm coming, too."
Rose Emperor still looked shocked. "Vhat do you vant?" he asked.
"I want to help," the cat said firmly.
"He'll just follow us if we leave him, Rose Emperor," Siren said. "Besides, look! He's such a cute little cat!" She began petting his ears.
"Tch, that has no business feeling that good," the cat said with a purr. "Looks like you're outvoted, peacock."
Rose Emperor took a breath and finally composed himself somewhat. "I suppose I am," he muttered. "Fine. You can come vith us, cat. Just don't make any trouble."
"Rich coming from you."
However, while the conversation with the cat ended semi-amicably, Rose Emperor still looked like he'd seen a ghost when Basil drifted off to sleep hours later.