When the village was out of sight, a black owl landed on my shoulder with a hoot. It folded its huge wings and hooted again. The idea of an owl flying through the skies during the day was weird and unusual, but I went right on walking.
“Is this what you wanted? Really?” I asked in a whisper.
“Hoot.”
“Are you sure? None of them remember anything because of you.”
“Hoot.”
“Hey!” I said sharply, grabbing the owl and turning it upside down.
“Hoogwah!”
I stared at the panicking owl. The bird deliberately avoided my gaze.
This girl . . .
I shook it up and down until its eyes were spinning.
“St-stop that!” cried the owl, suddenly sounding like a young girl. “Stop shaking me!”
“Quit the hooting act! You can talk,” I said. “Don’t make me look like some weirdo talking to the birds.”
“But I’m an owl right now! Owls don’t talk! They hoot! Hoot!”
“Knock it off already! You don’t even sound like an owl!”
The owl struggling in my grasp had once been a villager, who in fact was a necromancer-vampire hybrid by the name of Nea. She flapped her wings wildly, so I tossed her over my shoulder. She then flew to Blurin and landed on his back. With a pop and a flash of light, she transformed into a girl with black hair and red eyes.
Nea no longer wore the dress she’d worn when we encountered her at the manor. Instead, she wore more modern traveler’s garb. It was clear she was prepared for a journey, and I couldn’t help but sigh at the sight of it.
“You’re serious about coming with us?” I asked.
“Of course. It’s a binding contract! Right?”
At the last word, she tilted her head, and with a cute, flashy gesture, she showed me her right palm. On it was a magical seal, like a tattoo made of light. I had the same seal on my own hand, and while it wasn’t visible now, it revealed itself whenever I poured a little magic into it.
“How did this happen?” I mumbled.
“I told you that you’d never get rid of me,” said Nea.
“But was it really necessary to burn the manor down?” I asked.
The contract between Nea and me wasn’t a curse and it wasn’t a hex. It was a familiar contract. However, the contract Nea used was an ancient one used centuries ago before more modern revisions were made. It was evil, essentially, and could be forced on someone or something at the cost of a blood exchange.
What made Nea’s contract especially troublesome was that it was stronger than the modern version. It could not be easily undone. It shouldn’t have been surprising that she’d know a spell like this. After all, she was intelligent. She’d already mastered a number of hexes.
However, I’d never imagined that she would cast a spell to make herself a familiar. On top of that, once I’d fallen unconscious, she’d wiped the memories of everyone at Ieva Village and burned down the manor she once called home. In other words, she’d made all the necessary preparations to leave and join me on my journey.
“Heh, what point is there to leaving a manor I no longer need?” Nea asked. “I took everything of importance anyway.”
She took a bag from Blurin’s back and opened it to show me. Inside it were several books with black covers.
“I knew I hadn’t seen that bag before,” I said. “So that’s yours, huh?”
“These aren’t like the other books. I couldn’t let them just burn.”
They looked to me like sorcery books. They had to be quite valuable, which I guessed was why Nea wanted to protect them.
“Well, whatever,” I said. “By the way, why an owl?”
“Because I’m a familiar,” Nea replied. “And more importantly, they’re adorable.”
“But aren’t vampires supposed to turn into bats?”
“Ew. No. I don’t want to drink blood as an animal too. If I’m going to transform, I want to transform into something cute.”
I guess she doesn’t think much of bats, then. Owls are cute; that’s for sure. But given that you’re the person inside of it, it’s so much less adorable.
Then again, the situation reminded me a little of Rose and Kukuru. I glanced at Nea, who was humming a tune while she patted Blurin. Perhaps because they were both monsters and perhaps because Blurin recognized that Nea didn’t mean any harm, the grizzly simply pouted and let her do as she pleased.
“Let’s make the future a bright one, Master!” Nea sang.
At this point, Amako, who had been walking along in a stony silence, kicked the smiling Nea in the shin. Nea yelped and promptly fell from Blurin’s back.
“What was that for?!” she cried.
“Don’t get a big head, Batty,” said Amako.
“B-B-Batty?! You rabid beastkin! Let’s get this hierarchy sorted right now!”
Nea pounced on Amako, but Amako saw it coming. She dodged Nea’s leap and, on top of that, tripped her over. Nea went sliding right along the ground on her head. This was followed by a few seconds of silence, after which Nea sat up, rubbed her eyes, let out a moan, then made another attempt to attack Amako.
It was like watching two cats fight. But I figured it was fine for them to sort it out themselves. I’d heard something somewhere about people being so close they fought like siblings, and this seemed like a sterling example.
“We’ve got a real weirdo tagging along now,” I muttered.
Aruku laughed.
“It’s certainly gotten livelier, hasn’t it?”
“But aren’t you against this, Aruku? I mean, Nea took complete control of you.”
“Well, love it or hate it, she’s coming with us. She’s a member of our party now. I’m not going to let my feelings ruin the harmony of the group. I think it’s fair to say that she paid the price for what she did.”
“Paid the price, huh?”
The dragon had put Nea through a world of pain, and now the villagers in Ieva had completely forgotten she existed. Nea had erased their memories herself. In that sense, she really had undergone a unique kind of punishment of sorts.
“I also think that her powers will come in handy,” said Aruku. “Call it a hunch.”
✦ ✦ ✦
I nodded. The guy had a point. She had a binding hex and a resistance hex, and while these weren’t attack-based, they were still helpful. The binding hex rendered an opponent unable to move, and the resistance hex was a strong protection from attacks.
“Oh, hang on a second,” I said, thinking. “If I have Nea put me in her binding hex, maybe I can get a workout from just moving around normally.”
“I never would have thought of something like that,” remarked Aruku. “Using a binding hex as a workout? No ordinary person would even imagine doing something like that, but it’s very you, Usato.”
Is that . . . a compliment? It must be. It has to be.
I grinned at Aruku. Then Nea leaped away from her battle with Amako, and jumped onto my shoulder, back in her owl form. Given that she was covered in dust, I had a pretty good idea of who had won their little scrap.
“Oh, right,” I said.
I reached into my coat and grabbed something that I’d just remembered. Amako peered at it from my side and let out a gasp.
“That’s what you found inside of the dragon,” she said.
“Yep. In my world this type of sword is called a katana,” I said.
It sat inside a leather scabbard the villagers had made for me. I could feel a strange power in it even from just holding it in my hand. Nea looked at it with a wide-eyed curiosity.
“That was written about in the old record,” she said. “You should take very good care of it, Usato.”
“Hm? Why?”
“That weapon was wielded by the hero. It might come in handy later on your journey.”
I didn’t use swords, so I didn’t think there would be that many opportunities for me to use it. But if I gave it to Amako, it would only be extra weight for her to carry, and Aruku already had a sword of his own. For those reasons, I decided to wear the sword on my own belt. I thought it would come in handy for cutting fruits and vegetables. I put the sword back in its scabbard with a sigh, then glanced at Nea.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Hm? Oh, it’s nothing,” I replied.
She’d controlled both the living and the dead to assuage her own loneliness, but now Nea had decided on a different path. She had thrown away all she once knew and embarked on a journey to the outside world. Whatever reasons she had for doing that, it wasn’t important now.
I thought about when I’d talked to Nea early in that one morning when I’d been working out. She’d hungered for knowledge then, but the truth of the matter was that she’d hungered for much more than that, too. Now she was finally taking the first steps to get there. The girl who had once toyed with the living and the dead was gone. So too was the girl who protected Ieva Village. All that was left now was, well . . .
“Just a quirky little familiar, I guess,” I said.
Nea was a little loud, and a little annoying too, but the rest of her wasn’t so bad.