Through the jangling curtain of doorway chimes, a boy crashed into the den. His teal hair was damp and flat to his scalp, and his skin glistened with droplets, his drenched cloak dripping over the floorboards. He shook himself out, panting.

“Lochlan!” a voice roared from across the room. “Be careful with my door, I just fixed it!”

The boy named Lochlan gulped, shivering as he looked in the direction of the voice. “Sorry, Aunt Liz,” he stammered.

“Sorry don’t cut it,” said the woman who had spoken. Aunt Lizaris, was an imposing-looking woman. Not only was she nearly two metres tall, with muscular limbs and a broad build, but she also had the head of a lizard. Not a typical house lizard that you might find clinging to the rafters in summer, but more like that of a Komodo dragon and dinosaur combined, thick scaly hide and elongated, pebbled jaw.

The lizard-woman put down the ladle she was holding. She stormed over. She grabbed him by the collar of his sodden cloak, rage blazing in her veiny reptilian eyes—

—and pulled his cloak clean off him, leaving him in his shirt and trousers. It dropped to the floor, while Aunt Liz suddenly had a fluffy towel in her claws. She began to towel-dry the boy rather aggressively.

“Can’t any of you remember to dry yourselves after you go for a swim?” she chided, irritable, though she seemed to also find great joy in ruffling the boy’s hair as she dried it. “I know you’re more used to being covered with water, but your anthropine form isn’t! And you wonder why you get colds so often!”

Once she had deemed him satisfactorily dried, Aunt Liz picked up the boy’s cloak and began rifling through its pockets. “Now, what have you brought us?” She reached her claws in and inverted several hidden pockets. Out of those pockets came a few loaves of bread, several little trinkets of varying metals, two coin purses and a wallet.

“That’s all?” she arched a sceptical eyebrow. “You usually do better than this, boy.” Faint chuckles escaped from the Beasts at the table.

Lochlan pouted. “I was close to stealing an amethyne, but I was caught by an angel.”

“Caught by an angel?”

“I ran out of Lunaki,” Lochlan mumbled guiltily, looking down. “I had to use quite a lot on distracting the stall owner, as well as the angel who turned up right as I was pulling off the job. When she tailed me, I didn’t have enough charge for another one.”

“Hm. What rank was she?”

“Uhh,” Lochlan twisted about, trying to remember. “A golden ribbon. Insignia was… paired wings, double-lobed. A commander?”

Aunt Liz raised her brows. “You ran into a commander? Alone? How did you manage to escape?”

“From the moment I noticed she was following me, I ran into an alleyway that I knew would lead to a canal,” Lochlan explained. “I hid at first. But afterwards, she caught me.” He sighed deeply through his nostrils. “Medusa damn it, I shouldn’t have fallen for her bait… but I was too curious!”

“What bait?”

“She dropped her golden ring,” Lochlan said. “I couldn’t resist taking a look, and that was when she caught me.”

Aunt Liz’s gaze grew suspicious. “What kind of a ring was it?”

“It had a lotus engraving on it,” Lochlan recounted easily. “When I picked it up, it hummed with a strange energy. Oh, and when the angel was searching my pockets, she was able to summon it towards her by saying something. I couldn’t really hear what it was she said though. Uhhh… what’s that look supposed to mean?”

Aunt Liz’s scaly face had grown pale. The table had gone silent, all eyes staring at Lochlan.

“Let me guess,” the lizard-woman said. “Long pink hair?”

“Oh, yeah. Crazy long,” Lochlan nodded.

Aunt Liz’s face grew darker still. “Were you followed?”

“Huh? No, of course not,” replied the teenager. “I made sure to check that she had really given up before I swam here. But why the fuss?” He looked uneasily around him.

“Why the fuss,” another Beast laughed. “Oh, he really doesn’t know, does he?”

“Only the ones old enough to tackle Mount Casca at night do. The ones who tackle it, and live to tell the tale, of course…” a naga, half-snake and half-lady, hissed.

“It was just an angel, we run into tens of those on the streets every day.” The poor boy continued to look baffled. “What’s the matter?”

The table continued to chatter a storm in lieu of replying him. Meanwhile, Aunt Liz had shambled away, conversing with another Beast at the far end in hushed tones.

It was at this moment that the door slammed open again.

Aunt Liz whirled around, gaze storming. “I told you to be careful with my door—” but then, her voice cut off mid-sentence. As did the voices of every single other Beast in the den, once they saw who was standing below the silver chimes.

There stood a woman. She was dishevelled, her gold hair soaked through with rain and dust.

“I’m home,” she said.

“Jemi,” Aunt Liz’s voice came haltingly, amazed as she stepped toward her. “Jemi Garen. You’re… alive?”

In return, the woman named Jemi merely cocked her head and smiled. “It’s been something of a long week.”

She stepped into the den. The tension that’d been in the air snapped all at once, a recoiling spring: an explosion of chattering, surprise, relief, disbelief. Joy. All eyes of the Beasts followed her as she moved, lingering on her brown cloak and red scarf.

“More than a week. What took you so damn long, huh?” Aunt Liz was already grabbing another towel. She yelled at Lochlan to get changed and return for dinner, and the boy scuttled away obediently. “We thought that you had died for real! Good heavens! When were you going to send any of us a letter? Any kind of messenger?”

“Just thought I’d have a bit of fun,” Jemi shrugged, the picture of innocence. “Saw some sights, got some mementoes for the occasion.” She turned out her musty cloakpockets, bringing out a couple dozen bagels. She saved one strawberry-studded one in her hand and chewed a hole in it. “Man, I’m starving.”

A beetle-man snorted. “From the looks of you, I think the only sights you saw were marshes and swamps.”

“They’re pretty this time of the year,” Jemi said mid-chew as Aunt Liz began to pat her down, too, with the towel. Jemi was outfitted entirely in fine, obviously-stolen clothes, but the garments had clearly seen better days. “And we’ve got plenty of marsh-dwellers at this table who’ll tell you exactly that, Beezle.”

Beezle huffed, clicking his metallic jaws. “You’re full of manure.”

“When am I ever not?” Jemi swallowed her bagel with a smirk.

“Oh, forget about that,” cut in another, a yellow griffon. It twitched its eagle-head on its lion-body, beak snapping. “The others might not have good enough eyesight, but I saw it first-hand. Taking the arrow to your neck for that angel—Cockatrice, did you go out of your mind? Saving an angel?”

Indeed, this young, spirited woman was not just any Beast, but the Cockatrice herself. The very same that had miraculously escaped death on the battle for Casca one week ago.

The atmosphere in the den suddenly tightened again. Rumours had been abound for the past week, but there had been no one to confirm them. That their illustrious leader had died—and died to save the Graveyard Commander, no less.

To his surprise, Jemi Garen merely laughed. She walked around the table, taking her time. She stopped in front of the griffon seated at the table, and bent to get on his eye-level.

“Are you stupid, Neil?” she sneered, centimetres from his beak. Above that so-sharp smile, her violet eyes were cut jewels. “I’ve killed more angels than any of you here. Do you think I’d really spare the life of one for no good reason?”

“What, what good reason could there be?” the griffon laughed incredulously, though his voice quavered.

Jemi merely straightened herself once more. Then, with a great THUMP!, she jumped up onto one end of the table, her red scarf flying out behind her. From up above, she surveyed the den of Beasts. Every pair of eyes remained fixated upon her, and the griffon’s words went completely ignored.

Her smile breaking into a full, smug grin, she spread her arms.

“Apologies for not telling you all of the plan earlier; I couldn’t have any of you missing the mark. But what I did was to have the angels’ guards let down, have them think that I died. This is but a small part of our larger plan. The next time the Cockatrice attacks the mountain, they’ll be completely unprepared—and from there, she’ll take the entire Graveyard with her.”

The room erupted into rabid cheers.

“Leave it to the Cockatrice!”

“Hah! The Graveyard Commander may be strong, but our Princess escaped death!”

“How did you even do it? That death looked so real…”

“Awh, I wish I could’ve been there to see it!...”

“Did you see that stunt the angel pulled, though? It was crazy! She looked like she was on fire!”

“Speaking of the Graveyard Commander. How nice—you’re just the person who’s got to hear this,” Aunt Liz huffed. At this moment, Lochlan had come crawling down the stairs, dressed in a plain nightrobe. She jerked her head in his direction. “That boy over there just ran into Commander Zoleil in the undercloud.”

For the first time since she’d entered the den, Jemi stiffened. She took a step back, her smile faltering. “What did you say?”

Aunt Liz straightened. “He ran into an angel commander with long pink hair and a magical, golden lotus ring,” she said, tongue flicking out. “If that’s not Ennanis Zoleil, then it would be a remarkably accurate imitation.”

A dark look passed over the blonde’s face.

“Well, what do you say?” Aunt Liz asked. “I was discussing with Uncle Bern if we have to move to a back-up location.”

“I said we weren’t followed,” Lochlan piped up, insistent.

“There’s no need for that,” Jemi said, with a nod of acknowledgement to the boy. “If the commander finds the den, let her come. She’ll have to go through me.”

Appreciative murmurs rose among the crowd. Aunt Liz stared for a moment, then laughed, tossing the damp towel into a laundry basket with a thick, scaly arm.

“Oh, we trust you, Jemi. Go get changed too, and have dinner then—I don’t want you catching no colds, whether you’ve visited fifty marshes or zero. Uncle Bern made some soup; it’ll warm you right up.”

“Thanks, but I’ll pass for tonight,” Jemi said. She reached over and ruffled Lochlan’s hair affectionately, though much of her earlier cheer was diminished. “Eat well, Nessie; put some flesh on those bones.” Then she turned swiftly and clambered up the wooden steps. The red tassels of her scarf disappeared into the shadows, along with the rest of her.

~~~