Taming the Beast World with a Frying Pan

Ren woke up to a mouthful of white fur.

She spat it out, groaning as she peeled her face off the tiger’s belly. Every muscle in her body ached. Her neck had a kink in it that was going to haunt her for the rest of the day, and her hair had somehow tangled itself around one of his whiskers.

The fire had burned down to cold grey ash. Pale morning light spilled into the mouth of the cave.

The tiger was already awake. Ren wasn’t entirely sure he had ever gone to sleep. He lay exactly where he had been the night before, his head resting on his paws, his golden eyes fixed on the forest outside.

"Good morning to you too," Ren croaked, carefully untangling her hair from his whisker.

His ear twitched. That was all she got.

Ren sighed and crawled out of the cave on her hands and knees. There was a small stream trickling over the rocks nearby. She knelt beside it, pulled a fresh bar of lavender soap from her inventory, and scrubbed her face and hands until the last traces of smoke and rabbit grease were gone. Then she rinsed out her mouth with water from her waterskin and tried to finger-comb her hair back into something that resembled a human being.

It didn’t work. She gave up.

For breakfast, she pulled out the leftover tuber wedges she had stored in her inventory the night before. Thanks to the frozen time inside her digital storage, they were still hot and crispy, the garlic-butter greens still glistening with oil. Ren ate them standing up, blowing on each one.

She offered one to the tiger. He didn’t even look at it.

"Right. Carnivorous snob. I forgot," Ren muttered, and ate it herself.

When she was finished, she brushed off her hands, squared her shoulders, and turned to face him.

"Okay. Change of plans," she announced. "Before we go to the village, we’re going back to the clearing."

The tiger’s head lifted off his paws.

"For Vex," Ren clarified.

A low, rumbling growl rolled out of the tiger’s chest. It was so deep that Ren felt it in the soles of her bare feet.

She crossed her arms. "Don’t you growl at me."

Part of her wanted to leave the fox tied up in the dirt for the ants to eat.

But the other part of her couldn’t stop thinking about what he had said. That he was human, just like her. That he knew how to help the cub. If there was even the smallest chance Vex knew how to fix whatever was going on with Kael, she needed him. Plus, he owed her a lot of answers.

"He knows things," Ren said firmly. "Things about the Feral Madness. Things about you, maybe. And he’s the only one besides Altair who has any idea where Oreo is. So we’re going back for him. End of discussion."

The tiger stood up. He walked to the mouth of the cave and planted himself right in the middle of it, blocking the way out with his huge body.

Ren narrowed her eyes. "Really? That’s how we’re doing this?"

The tiger stared back at her, unmoving.

"Fine," Ren said. She marched right up to him, turned sideways, and squeezed through the narrow gap between his shoulder and the rock wall. It was a tight fit. She scraped her elbow and got another mouthful of fur, but she made it out.

She dusted herself off and started walking.

After about ten steps, she stopped. She looked left. She looked right. Every tree looked exactly the same. She had been riding on his back yesterday, rambling about her problems and picking fruit off branches. She had no idea which direction they had come from.

Ren turned around. The tiger was sitting at the mouth of the cave, watching her.

"Which way is the clearing?" she asked.

The tiger blinked.

"Please?" Ren tried.

He looked away.

"I’ll walk until I find it," Ren threatened. "I’ll just keep walking in circles. I’ll probably get eaten. Or I’ll fall in a river. No big deal."

The tiger let out a long huff through his nose. He stood up, stalked over to her, and crouched down low without ever looking her in the eyes.

Ren grinned in triumph and climbed onto his back. "Thank you. See? Communication."

The tiger set off at a brisk pace. He was clearly annoyed, because he seemed to find every low-hanging branch in the forest. Ren spent most of the ride ducking and swatting leaves out of her face.

It took them just over an hour to reach the clearing.

Ren slid off his back and froze.

The clearing was empty.

The neat pile of unconscious beastmen that Vex had left snoring in the dirt was gone. So was the bear the tiger had knocked into the ferns. The moss was flattened and churned up, and dark stains of dried blood were splashed across the grass where the tiger had torn into the first bear. Broken spears lay scattered on the ground.

But there was no Vex.

Ren hurried over to the spot where she had last seen him lying face-down beside Altair. The thick green vines Yurk had used to hog-tie him were still there, lying in a tangled heap on the moss.

She knelt down and picked one up. The end wasn’t frayed or chewed. It had been sliced clean through.

"He got out," Ren whispered. She wasn’t sure if she felt relieved or furious. Probably both.

Behind her, the tiger prowled around the edge of the clearing with his nose to the ground, sniffing at the churned-up dirt. His tail swished back and forth in slow, irritated strokes.

Ren stood up and turned in a slow circle, searching for any sign of which way the fox had gone.

That was when she saw it.

On the trunk of the towering oak tree at the edge of the clearing, something had been carved into the bark. The marks were fresh. Pale wood still showed beneath the scratches, and curls of bark lay scattered at the roots.

Ren walked over slowly. As she got closer, the scratches came into focus. They weren’t random claw marks.

They were letters.

SORRY ABOUT THE PIGEON, LITTLE ROSE.

I’LL MAKE IT UP TO YOU.

DON’T TRUST ANYONE.

Ren’s breath caught in her throat.

She read it once. Then she read it again. Then she reached out and traced the sharp, jagged lines of the letters with her fingertips, just to make sure she wasn’t dreaming.

It was English.

The only other English she had seen since arriving in the Beast World was printed across the cover of that trashy paperback romance novel buried in Syris’s treasure hoard. The Duke’s Forbidden Desire. A relic from her world that Syris claimed he had gotten from the humans a very long time ago.

Beastmen didn’t write. Whoever carved these words had either learned them from someone who came from her world, or had come from there themselves.

"He wasn’t lying," Ren breathed. Her fingers trembled against the bark. "He really is human."