Kaia the Argent Wing Chapter 60 (Patreon)

We were having what little food was left in the house as breakfast in the morning, because as a group we’d just decided to stay the night here. I’m sure someone was getting worried back in the much-shrunken Edgewood town, but none of us cared too much.

“Hey, Kaia,” Alec asked, chewing on some stringy smoked meat. “Why haven’t you just come out with your identity? I mean, I kinda get not telling everyone who you are when you were a dude, because bigotry and stuff, but you got turned into a girl in your non-Silver form anyway. Plus, nobody could take you in a fight, you’d wreck them. I don’t really get the point. Seems kinda dumb.”

Alec was back to normal, although there was an undercurrent of confused anger and hurt in him now.

As for his question, I just stared at him. “Have you seen how people treat me when I’m Silver?”

Maybe it wasn’t as obvious as I thought, but surely he could rub one or two brain cells together and figure it out for himself.

“They like, adore you,” he said uncomprehendingly. “Most of them, anyway.”

I glanced at April, purely on reflex, and saw she was pinching the bridge of her nose. Okay, at least the smartest person I know also thought the question was silly.

“Alec…” said Cam as he tried to wrestle with some stale bread. “There’s more to this situation than bigotry and physical danger. We’ve only seen her in public a few times, but the moment it isn’t obvious she’s busy, a crowd of people swarms her, wanting shit from her. Pastor Thomas and his cronies do their best to stalk her when she’s inside the town wards, too. Imagine if everyone knew she was Silver, except when she’s Kaia. How much crafting would she get done? Shit, we’d all end up being her body guards just to keep people from begging her to go and track down their lost husband or dog.”

Alec frowned and prepared to hit back, but stopped when he saw everyone was staring at him. “Okay. I guess I get it…”

“Trust me,” I said, grinning wryly. “You’ll see when you have to hang out with ‘Silver’ anywhere near the high.”

“Fuck me, you can be dense sometimes, Alec,” Scott muttered, shaking his head. I gave him a sharp look. As the only person who was actively still giving me shit, Alec had earned the full ire of Scott. I was doing my best to get him to chill out though, because it was definitely not helping.

With a sigh of resignation, I said, “Scotty, it's okay. It's a reasonable question, and it's been answered.”

“Yeah, sorry,” he grumbled.

The only sounds that were made over the next three or so minutes were the chewing and crunching of nasty, stale food. After my chat with Cam and Ollie in the early morning, they'd been chill with me. Alec was relatively calm, but then he'd say something that was just a little off. Immie was… quiet. I needed to chat with both of them, to be honest, try to make it up to them.

April cleared her throat. “So, we should get our stories straight… What were we doing out overnight?”

Everyone stopped eating and looked at her. Nobody said anything. I guess we were all a bit mentally preoccupied.

My blacksmith friend rolled her eyes and said, “So, since nobody is coming up with ideas, how about this? Kaia went to get some materials for her tinkering, but Scott was worried. He grabbed us all and we headed out. Kaia was fine, but by the time we found her, distracted and clueless about the danger she was in, we decided to camp out in a house for the night.”

“That's fine, but that means we need to actually come back with something,” Scott pointed out.

I agreed with a nod, then said, “Actually, I've been meaning to cut some trees down from that new woodland. What if we do that?”

“How will we even get them back?” Cam asked, sounding dubious about the plan. “It'll take us all day to drag a couple of logs home.”

I laughed. “You're forgetting something.”

His brows furrowed. “Huh? What?”

“I could carry at least one by myself, I think,” I said, flexing my itty bitty crafter-form biceps.

He snorted. “Oh, right. I guess since people don't know how strong you are, the time you cut off the trip with your strength will make the idea that we took a day to drag them back plausible.”

“Yay!” I said, clapping excitedly. Then I mellowed when I remembered something important. “Uh, is that okay with everyone else?”

It was okay with everyone else. We snuck away and made the trip to the woodland as easy as pie. It was actually only a twenty minute walk, assuming there wasn't any snow. With snow, the time increased, and if you wanted to do it without attracting the ire of any nearby monsters, it took even longer.

The woodland had a lot more snow on it now, and there were signs of animal and monster life everywhere. It was the animal life, however, that saw us first.

We were picking out three trees to fell, when a low ‘mroww?’ was heard from nearby.

“Kitty?” Ollie squeaked, instantly revving up to maximum excitement.

At her obviously friendly tone, we saw a little tuxedo cat poke its head out from behind a shrub. ‘Mrew’ it chirped, inspecting us for signs of treachery. Evidently, it didn't find any, because it began to approach cautiously through the snow.

Ollie was practically vibrating with excitement when she knelt and offered it her hand to sniff. The cat obliged, then when it found her scent okay, it rubbed its head down her arm.

The poor thing was kinda skinny, like every meal had been a struggle since the Storm hit. I suppose it probably was, considering—

The cat stopped suddenly, ears perked up and rotating. Eventually, they settled on a direction further into the woods.

“It's heard something,” Immie said softly. “Everyone, get ready.”

Shit. I wasn't in my armour! What could I do? I still had my axes, but… oh! I had four attribute orbs to spend. Thinking quickly, I looked through my stats and made some decisions. One went into Precision, to allow me to block more effectively, a second went into Wit, to speed up my thought processes, another went into Perception, so I could perhaps see what was approaching, and the final orb was added to power, so my abilities would come off their cooldowns faster.

Now I just needed to decide… did I go angel or smol, for this fight? Angel, probably, despite my instincts telling me not to transform out in the open like this.

I shifted, shimmering with energy for a second while I stepped up beside Alec and Ollie. I glanced at them both and gave them a toothy grin. “We ready?”

“Yes!” Ollie said. “I'm excited to fight beside you knowing it's my bestie behind that gorgeously chiselled face.”

“And you?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at Alec.

“Dunno, I'm not sure what to do now that there's someone tankier than me and Ollie with us,” he shrugged.

I gave him a quizzical look. “Aren't you like, a bard?”

“Yeah, but Ollie is more of a brawler, and none of the others were going to do it, so I just…” he shrugged awkwardly.

“He hypes us up and holds the enemy in place at the same time, like a professional wrestler or whatever,” Ollie explained. “When it's needed. Sometimes the enemies are just small critters we can handle without a tank.”

“What constitutes a small—” I began to ask, but… another cat had arrived.

This cat was not here for jerky and head rubs, however. It was roughly seven feet tall at the shoulder, with a dull green and orange coat of fur that shimmered faintly when it caught the light. Around its head in a small mane was some sort of hard green bone-like shield, like a mane that'd solidified into armour. Down its spine and over the outer faces of its limbs were similar sickly green armour plates. When it roared, it sported double rows of shining metallic pink-orange teeth.

“—Critter…?” I finished, my voice rising into a squeak of alarm.

“You know what, I think I'll resign from my temporary role as tank so that someone more experienced can step in,” Alec said, trying and failing to affect a calm demeanour as he backed away, patting me on the shoulder as he went.

“Shit.” I said, clenching my axe and shield in twin death grips. I really wish I'd put my armour back on.