I wiped the sweat from my brow as we continued through the dungeon. We were working on capturing our fourth rat for Iris to kill. Normally walking through this dungeon would be trivially easy, but I was working on something a bit more delicate. I was maintaining the concentration necessary to keep multiple parts of my body shifted at once. Right now I was maintaining the transformation on my ears, tail, and claws simultaneously.

  My wolf ears twitched as I heard the scrabbling sounds of another giant rat off in the distance. "Another one in that direction. There are some slimes on the way there too, though," I told everyone.

  Piper and Maxwell shared a glance, and then Piper looked over at Iris and grinned in a way that I've associated with trouble. "How about we give you the chance for your first actual fight with some slimes?"

  Iris clutched the dagger she was holding. "By myself?"

  Maxwell shook his head. "No, of course not. We'll keep them at bay and let you fight one at a time. If we see you start to struggle, we'll kill them all off."

  "Don't worry, kid. I can heal you if you get burned," Piper reassured her.

  Iris took a deep breath. "Okay. Let's do it! I can do it..." Iris whispered the last part to herself quietly.

  We approached an oddly shaped stone on the ground where four slimes were... doing something, mostly wriggling? It was hard to describe.

  Aria kneeled down next to Iris. "Once Maxwell, Piper, and Helena take the attention of one of them each, go in and try and kill the last one with your dagger. I'll keep an eye on you the entire time and call out if I think you need help. As long as it doesn't cover your face, this monster can't kill you."

  "O-okay. I'm ready," Iris said.

  The three of us ran in with our shields up and split the slimes away from each other immediately. These ones felt slow and weak compared to the others I faced in Fallow, even disregarding all of my other improvements in fighting.

  I glanced to the side as Iris ran up and thrust her dagger into the slime. It was a good attempt. She had only missed the slime's core by an inch or two. She pulled it out and jumped back before dodging the slime's own leaping attack. Iris's movements were sloppy and she used too much energy to position herself, but she was smart enough to stay ahead of the monster and predict its movements well. Right as the slime landed from one of its leaps, Iris was ready this time. She thrust her dagger deep and pierced its core. After the magic that kept the monster stable was gone, the slime began to melt.

  Before she could appreciate her victory, Maxwell lifted his shield. "Second one, Iris! It's coming!"

  Iris shook off her surprise and dodged out of the way as the second slime leapt right at her. This time she tried to slash at it ineffectually before somersaulting forward out of its next attack. Iris was surprisingly nimble and dexterous. All of that wasted movement was from a lack of training or good instincts. She seemed to be improving throughout the fight though. Her heart was beating loud in her chest, and she was covered in sweat, but she managed to maneuver herself flawlessly to thrust into the second slime and pierce this slime's core too.

  "Third one incoming!" Piper said as she stepped out of the way of the slime she had been holding back.

  A look of panic covered Iris's face as the third one jumped past Piper at her. Since I thought she wasn't quite ready for this one, I reached out and slapped it away with my free hand before refocusing on the slime I was holding back. My hand tingled from the acid, but it wasn't even remotely comparable to the pain the other slimes had inflicted. Once I had regained a good rhythm with the last slime, I was able to see how Iris was faring now. She looked exhausted, but she was still managing to dodge out of the third slime attacks consistently. Right now she was focused on regaining some of her breath while keeping out of the way of its leaps. One of the jumps left the slime a little closer than expected, and Iris took advantage of the moment to thrust her dagger into the core of the third one.

  ("Helena, release your slime now,") Piper told me through the rings.

  "Iris!" I called out before stepping out of the way and letting the last of the slimes attack her.

  Iris clumsily rolled out of the way. Her exhaustion had sapped away a lot of the earlier grace of her movements. She continued trying to dodge, but after the third jump, she slipped in some sand and the slime and bounced against her face. Iris cried out in pain and her left ear looked painfully red when she regained her footing.

  ("Let her fight it out,") Piper told me.

  The mousegirl screamed in anger as she jumped after the slime. The slime dodged Iris this time and tried to circle behind her. Iris quickly realized that strategy wasn't going to work and went back to avoiding the slime while looking for another opportunity to attack. I winced a little at the burn mark on the poor girl's ear, but I followed my friends' lead in letting her fight through the pain.

  With a final stab, Iris shoved the dagger through the core of the last slime before falling back on her butt and panting. Piper was quick to move in and begin healing her after the fight. Iris sniffled a little from the pain but didn't complain or break into sobbing. She was a tough girl.

  "Good job, Iris. You got all of them," Piper told her.

  "You did well," Maxwell said, praising her.

  "I knew you could do it!" Aria called out happily.

  ("Good job, they did this to me too when we first started out,") Luna said to all of us through the rings with a giggle. ("You did better than I did.")

  Iris wiped the few tears she spilled away and smiled. "I did it. I fought them on my own..."

  I looked in the direction that I heard the rat earlier. It seems to have moved on in the commotion. "Let's take a break. Iris needs to catch her breath and I can't hear the rat we were hunting anymore."

  "Yes, please..." Iris said.

  Aria laughed before sitting down next to the girl and handing her a canteen.

  Luna came over to me and trailed her fingers through the wolf fur on my arm. ("These features make you look like a beastkin, you know.")

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

  ("Do you think I could pass as one?") I said while touching my ears.

  Luna stepped back and looked me up and down. ("Well... yes and no. I think the claws are a bit too much out in public. It isn't impossible for beastkin to manifest their animalistic parts like that, but it's uncommon. The ears and tail are quite convincing, setting aside the weirdness of your hood. The problem is the wispy smoke they give off. You also might look a bit strange to other mages...")

  ("What do you mean?") I asked.

  ("Well, most people probably wouldn't be able to tell, but you have a lot of mana concentrated into the body parts you partially transform. I don't see mana the way you do through that blindfold, but I can feel it and others could too.")

  I touched the ears on my head carefully. ("Is that enough to give me away?")

  Luna shook her head. ("No, that's why I said it may come off as strange. It's not totally unheard of. Actually, the blindfold might be a good cover for that since it would make sense for your hearing to be improved to compensate for any 'lost sight' that you would typically have from wearing something like that.")

  ("So the biggest problem is the smoke, then?") I asked while looking down at my partially transformed arm. Like always, it gave off the slightest trail of black... something. Whatever it is, it's intangible.

  ("It is, I think. But... wait. Remember when that slime in the Fallow dungeon burned your arm?")

  I grimaced. ("How could I forget?")

  ("When you put your hand in it, it burned away most of your fur, including the smoke,") she said.

  I laughed. ("There's no way I'm going to burn myself like that again, but I think I see what you're saying. If it's a property of my fur, maybe I can make it not do that.")

  ("It might take a lot of control to restrict though.") Luna rubbed her chin in thought.

  ("Right now it's a challenge to even maintain these three partial transformations all the time. Making sure my fur doesn't 'smoke' too might be hard.")

  Luna shrugged. ("Maybe we should just go out into Ironcastle like that. See if anyone says anything. It's not as if delvers don't sometimes have weird things like this happen to them.")

  ("Do you think that would work?") I asked.

  Luna grinned. ("You seem really interested in passing as a beastkin. I'm definitely not complaining, but why the sudden interest?")

  I looked up at the false sky for a moment while I collected my thoughts. ("Well... I enjoy the improved senses for one... But I also think it kinda... makes more sense? For us to be together, I guess. They didn't say it outright, but I couldn't help but get the sense that Valkin and Norrik were looking down on us being together since I'm... since I look like a human.")

  Luna squeezed my hand. ("I love you no matter what you are. You're a good person, the rest of it doesn't matter. I also don't care what other people think about us. Let them be upset, and then you can throw them in the dirt like you did Valkin.") She giggled. ("I wouldn't be upset if you took on more of your wolfish traits in your human form though. I think your ears and tail are cute like this.")

  I leaned over and kissed her. ("Thanks, Luna... you always seem to know how to cheer me up.")

  "Are you two done flirting? It looks like we're ready to go looking for some more rats," Piper said.

  I looked over at Iris, who looked more relaxed and confident than I had seen her so far. That fight was a bit of a trial by fire but she seems to have come out the other side stronger for it. I was also happy to see that Piper's healing hadn't left any scars on her poor ear or face.

  "Are you ready to keep going, Iris?" I asked.

  She nodded. "I'm ready."

  ("We should try combining our magics this time,") Luna said to the group.

  Piper raised an eyebrow. "Do you think she can handle it already?"

  Luna nodded. ("I think Iris has enough mana to cast a few spells comfortably now. The kind of spell that I was thinking of shouldn't be that hard on her either. Come here, Iris. Let's look through your grimoire for a moment.")

  Luna and the newly added mage started paging through the grimoire and were speaking to each other using the rings. I opened my lantern the rest of the way to increase the mana regeneration effect to its maximum. I wonder if I could close three of the shutters and point the regeneration magic at someone like a flashlight. It was kind of a funny thought but it was worth testing.

  "More slimes then? Or should we search out a rat?" I asked.

  "Let's look for a rat next. It'll be a better thing to test the combined magic on," Aria suggested.

  We spent the next twenty minutes or so wandering and looking for signs of other rats. We crossed paths with a few groups of other hunters in that time but they were careful to keep their distance from us. I didn't bother hiding my partial transformations and none of them seemed to be especially interested in me. Maybe I could get away with leaving my ears and tail out transformed, but I would still need a lot more practice maintaining them if I wanted them to be convincing in the middle of the city, I think. It would be nice if I could find a way to have them stay transformed without having to pay constant attention to them. I've already found myself dropping them by accident a few times.

  "There's one up ahead, behind that stone," I whispered to the group.

  Iris moved to the front with Luna. "Luna says to let us start." There was a pause and Iris nodded. "Ready."

  Luna collected a ball of fire in her hand. The mana swirled there faster than I had ever seen her do before. It seems the practice with silent casting and her ring was helping. Mana swirled around Iris as well but she held it back for now. Once the mana reached a certain point, Luna nodded and lobbed the fireball at the rat. Right before it hit, Iris sent a gust of wind at the rat and the two attacks collided.

  The fireball exploded into a blast of fire and the gust of wind whipped the fire into a spiraling vortex that spread out in every direction and caught some of the nearby grass on fire. The initial explosion hadn't killed the rat outright, but the constant flames licking the monster caused it to burn to death soon after.

  Piper whistled. "That looked really effective."

  Maxwell nodded. "It was... but maybe we use that on slimes next time. You completely destroyed that monster's hide."

  Hello! Little mouse girl is gonna be stronk. Iris's fight in the beginning was bad for Helena's heart, but Iris proved that she can handle a bit of pressure. She's hungry for it. Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed!

  Here's a link to the community Discord:

  If you would like to support my writing on , you can read up to 10 chapters ahead there!

  Please leave a favorite and/or a rating so I can get my story in front of more eyeballs! If you really enjoy the story a review would help me a lot! I would greatly appreciate it!