Chapter 6: Arrival at Samariarl, the Prayerlands!
With our new companion Nea along for the ride, things had gotten . . . tougher, in a manner of speaking. For starters, she was a three-piece combo of noisy, annoying, and clumsy. To top it off, she never stopped arguing and fighting with Amako. The fact that Amako had long stopped caring about her made it seem a bit like Nea was mostly fighting with herself, but that didn’t make her any less of a racket.
Thankfully, after a few days on the road, Nea calmed down a little. I should stress the word ‘little’. Nea had a motor mouth on her. It never seemed to slow down. Today was no different.
“Hey, Usato! Tell me about the world you came from!”
Nea was sitting on my shoulder in her owl form, prodding me to open up. Her words brought a sigh out of me. I really didn’t want to. Don’t get me wrong; the talking part was fine. It was only natural that Nea wanted to talk about my home. That was the whole reason she wanted to capture me in the first place. But the girl was obsessive about her interests. I knew I had to tread cautiously. If I wasn’t careful, she’d be throwing questions at me all day and all night.
“Come on, say something!” Nea said. “It’s boring just walking in silence!”
Do you have to sound so condescending about it? You’re not even walking. You’re riding on my shoulder.
Nea started poking me in the cheek with a wing. It was starting to annoy me, but I grinned at her.
“Well then, how about I tell you about the vampires from my world?” I suggested.
“Wow! Vampires from another world!”
She took the bait, hook, line, and sinker.
Now to let her play on the line some.
“Vampires in my world can lift boulders with ease and can suck their prey’s blood just by looking at them. They swoop into people’s houses like sparrows in the night, sucking their prey dry and leaving them dead. They’re monsters in the truest sense of the word and practically the lords of the night.”
I mixed a little fact with a lot of fiction and Nea flinched in awe.
“Wh-whoa,” she uttered, “They’re uh, really something . . .”
“And that’s not all. They can fire rays of light from their eyes and breathe a blue poison gas just like a dragon. They can increase their size at will and turn into a mist so that no wall will ever stop them. If you ask me, vampires in my world are the most dangerous creature known to man.”
“Is that even a vampire though?!” exclaimed Nea. “It sounds like something entirely different!”
“Are you calling me a liar?” I asked.
I was a liar, of course. But Nea had to learn her place. Because I spoke with something of a toneless voice, Nea believed me and shivered at the thought of these nonexistent vampires. Clearly, she was shaken by the idea that the vampires I described entirely eclipsed the powers and abilities of the vampires she knew.
I was having so much fun.
“Y-you’re just playing around, right?” said Nea. “Vampires couldn’t possibly be so monstrous, right? But wait. Does that mean that in your eyes, I’m as puny and miserable as vampires get?”
“Well, if I’d been telling you the truth, then yes,” I admitted.
“Huh?”
“And you’re not puny. More pathetic.”
Nea turned to me, frozen as she finally grasped the meaning of what I’d just told her.
“Ahhhh!” she cried, flapping her wings. “The nerve! How dare you lie to me!”
Nea spread her wings wide and made to peck at me with her beak, but right before she hit me, she froze as if bound by an invisible chain and slid off my shoulder with a pitiful moan.
I caught Nea in my hand and looked down at her; her eyes were spinning in a daze.
“You’re the one who made the contract, so you’re the one who decided you can’t do harm to your master,” I said, exasperated.
“I forgot for a second, alright?!”
“But you cast the spell. How did you forget?”
Nea was forbidden from doing me any harm. The familiar contract that bound us had many conditions, and one of those was that she couldn’t hurt me. The extent of that harm was something that I, her master, could decide at my own discretion. So if I gave the order, she could work her magic on me. This meant that I didn’t have to worry about her ever trying to hurt me. But I never would have imagined that she’d forget the conditions of her own spell.
“You dumb bird . . .” muttered Amako.
“What did you just call me?!” shouted Nea, fired up.
Amako was walking with Blurin ahead of Nea and me. She turned back to Nea with a look of disdain.
“Just spouting facts,” she said. “Now I know why you’re riding Usato’s shoulder all the time. You’ve probably forgotten how to walk already.”
“Hoo hoo! Ever since we left the village you’ve been making a fool out of me, but no longer! Hoo!”
Nea sprang from my hand and flew at Amako at tremendous speed. In response, Amako simply tilted her head and, when Nea flew straight by, caught the owl in one hand and whipped her around in circles before throwing her back to me. It all happened in a few seconds. Nea transformed in mid-air, landing on the ground in her human form.
This happens every single time. When will she learn?
“D-damn you,” Nea muttered. “I’ll get you next time, I swear.”
“You’ve got guts, I’ll give you that,” I said, “but Amako can see the future. How do you beat that? And in your owl form? You’re bound to lose.”
“Shut up! This all started because you lied to me! Why would you do that, you bully?!”
“Oh, come on, you don’t have to cry,” I said, and then: “Alright! Alright! I’m sorry, okay?”
Yeah, it was my fault, but Nea didn’t have to attack Amako like that, either. She could have just fired something back, but she had to take it a step farther and look where it got her.
Nea rubbed her teary eyes, transformed back into an owl, then flew back to my shoulder.
“In the end, it’s always my shoulder, isn’t it?” I said.
“Hmph. Well, I am your familiar, aren’t I? This is my rightful spot.”
Over the last few days, Nea had tried Aruku’s shoulder, then Blurin’s, and then the horse that carried our stuff. But in the end she’d decided that my shoulder was her preferred place to sit. It was like her throne. I didn’t mind as long as she didn’t talk my ear off, but sometimes she’d brush my ear or neck with her wings and it tickled. Then there was the matter of the heavy, reproachful gaze Amako was always shooting at me.
“Hm, makes me wonder . . .” I muttered.
I’d heard that Samariarl wasn’t particularly welcoming of beastkin people, so I wondered how they might receive someone like Nea. She was a familiar who could take a human form.
The best person to ask is Aruku, I guess.
“Hey, Aruku?” I asked.
“Yeah? What’s up?” he replied.
He was at the front of the party, leading our horse, but he slowed down to walk by my side.
“I want to ask about Nea,” I said, pointing to her. “We’re linked by our familiar contract, but are human-type monsters allowed into Samariarl?”
Aruku thought about it for a moment.
“Familiars are allowed from what I understand,” he said. “But monsters of Nea’s type are exceedingly rare, so I can’t say for certain either way. There’s a chance the citizens of Samariarl might think her a beastkin and see her unfavorably.”
I’d heard about Samariarl’s feelings about beastkin, but now we were in a position where we might need to hide both Amako and Nea. It was a real pain.
“Human-type monsters have the intelligence to understand human languages,” quipped Nea proudly. “Monsters like me are so intelligent we’re considered on the same level as beastkin!”
“Right now, I regret letting you join us on this trip,” I uttered, and then it hit me: “Wait. Does this mean people might think that Nea is my slave?!”
Aruku laughed.
“Well, it’s certainly possible.”
No way. What a burden to have to bear.
Nea was the one who forced the familiar contract on me, but I was the one who’d end up looking like a slave driver. Not only that, but Nea didn’t have a strong control over her alternate forms. When Amako had swung her earlier, she’d turned back into her human form just like that. If things went bad, we’d be looking at more than just being driven out of Samariarl. In a worst-case scenario, they’d be on the hunt for her, and I’d end up behind bars.
“Then we just have to make sure we don’t get caught,” said Nea. “I’ll just stay in my owl form at all times. Easy.”
“Please, at least stay in your human form,” I begged.