Chapter 12

The Intrusion – Part 1

All was quiet in the forest. Well, as quiet as it can be with insects and other animals making noise throughout the night. But either way, Olivia was able to lay asleep in the tent through all of it.

The fatigue from the day hit her harder than she would have thought, putting her straight to sleep once she hit the bedding she had laid out.

It wasn’t much to look at, but the shelter of the tree and the tent, along with the small bundle of cloth for the bed, was much better than if she had to lay on the cold, dirty floor.

As the night dragged on, the fire eventually died out, but Olivia was able to bear the cold as the tree kept the harshest of the wind out. It also helped that with her new body, she had a lot more meat on the bone, which improved her resistance to it as well.

Sleeping on her lonesome wasn’t the best idea, but it was the only option she had. Being by herself left her open to any number of problems. It would be better if she had a partner with her, one who could keep watch when she slept and switch midway through the night.

Given the dangers, she knew she would have to come up with some alarm system she could set up for the night, but for the time being, being without was a risk she would have to take.

Thankfully, the tree was a lucky find. It kept her out of view of most things and gave her shelter from the wind and rain. The hope was that the closed fabric of the tent, along with the surrounding tree branches, was enough to keep her out of sight of roaming predators.

The only thing it didn’t keep out was the very inquisitive wildlife.

.....

Or anyone up to no good.

…

*crunch*

The sound of a few sticks and twigs snapping nearby rang through the forest, seemingly having happened during a lull of insect and animal noises.

Although it wasn’t much of a loud noise, it caused Olivia’s eyes to shoot open. Having woken up at who knows what time in the night, she found herself in a bit of a daze and groggy from the partial sleep she had managed to achieve.

In her tired state, she looked around at what she could see, but all she saw was the darkness of the night. It would seem that while the tree provided her with a lot of benefits, it also blocked out most of the moonlight. Not a great thing in this situation.

*crunch*

‘That one was louder than before.’ She realised and decided she would need to move about to locate where it came from.

She couldn’t pinpoint exactly where the sound was coming from, but due to the crescendo since the last one, whatever was making the sound was getting closer. Her first thought was that it was most likely a wild animal. Whether it was there to get its fill for the night or just passing through was anyone’s guess. But while she could hope for the latter, she would make sure to prepare for the former. Which she did by taking hold of the dagger she had.

She did try to look for her spear, but with the blanketing darkness, she was unable to find it. Plus it would be unwieldy in this small tent, and from the shifting she did in her sleep, she couldn’t recall from memory where it was located in the tent. So, it was all up to the dagger to help defend herself.

A less likely thought occurred to her, that it may be a ‘someone’, rather than an animal wandering through the forest. But the more she thought about it, she could only wonder who would be travelling through the forest at this time of night. The darkness would make it nigh impossible to travel, it was also much colder and surely this would be the time to sleep rather than travel.

Thieves were a possibility, but for them to have found a lone tent, in the middle of nowhere, hidden by the tree, was hard to fathom.

Putting the thought aside, she tried to turn to get a good look around the tent. As her eyes scanned the sides of the tent, she saw no silhouettes or movements through the fabric. She continued to move her head and body in order to look at the entrance to her tent, and she made sure to do this slowly, not wanting to make any sudden moves and possibly startle the animal into attacking her.

As she got into view of the entrance to the tent, se was able to actually see into the outside world.

It took a short while to realise that that shouldn’t be possible, as she closed the fabric at the entrance once she entered it to sleep.

She wasn’t able to think about this for too long, as the view into the wide-open world, was quickly replaced by a silhouette.

A humanoid silhouette.

She only had a few seconds to think as she watched the silhouette raise its hand holding something that, while still somewhat blurry and dark in her vision, closely resembled the shape of a knife.

While she did have a dagger herself which she was currently holding, through the shifting of her body in the night, she wasn’t in the best position to use it. So, as if on reflex having seen the person and the knife, Olivia reached out and grabbed the person’s arm, keeping them from doing anything with their weapon.

“Ahh”

Her assailant cried out as Olivia manhandled them. With the knife now stuck in the air and unable to be plunged down into her, she decided to do the only thing she could from her prone position.

She pulled.

The hope was to bring them down to the ground and then they would be in the best position for her to use her own dagger.

Using all of her strength, she pulled her assailant into the tent with her. Her assailant ended up toppling over her body and falling into the fabric of the tent. As they fell, the knife slipped out of their hand and fell, plunging into the ground and thankfully not Olivia’s body.

As they fell, this knocked all of the precarious wooden poles down and caused the tent to collapse, where it then followed the trajectory of the person as they continued to travel.

Given that it was a tent that had no bottom to it, as her assailant rolled into the tent, twisting up in the fabric, this caused Olivia to be exposed to the elements, as she lay prone on the bed roll she had been laying on.

“Err, okay. Didn’t expect that, but sure.”

Her attacker struggled, punching, kicking and pulling at the fabric, as they tried to untangle themselves from the tent. As they flailed about, several groans and grunts, followed by hissing rang out from the perpetrator.

Olivia took this as an opportunity to get the upper hand, not that she didn’t already have this, where she ran and threw herself at them, holding them to the ground. A groan and a cry of pain, feminine in nature, rang out from the tent as they collapsed to the ground, unable to move given the massive block of meat on top of them.

“Get off of me you beast.” The assailant cried out as they tried to push Olivia off them. This was quickly followed by the sound of tearing as several very sharp nails, almost like claws, pierced through the fabric and ripped it.

“You attacked me first, so why should I,” Olivia replied.

Her response caused her attacker to suddenly freeze, surprised by the reply.

“What?”

“I said you attacked me f-”

“I heard what you said,” was the muffled reply, “It’s that… how is it you can speak.”

Olivia just sighed, realising she would have to go through the whole rigmarole of explaining who she was and how she could talk. As she realised this, she could only wonder why her assailant would ask that question. Why would they be surprised that she could talk. The only reason she could think was if they knew she was a monster of some kind. But how they would know this having seen her in the complete darkness around them, she didn’t know.

Putting that aside, she needed to figure out how to deal with her attacker first before she went into who she was. That was assuming they could have a civilized conversation, and not end up having to have full-on fight to the death or something.

“Before I get onto that, why did you attack me?”

While it would be obvious that if her attacker had seen what she was, they would attack her. But given the time of day, surely they only saw her silhouette, so how would they know what she was. Because of that, it seems like they entered her tent with the intent to just kill whoever was in there. If that was the case then they may have done so before, and that was not someone Olivia wanted to deal with lightly.

“Why? Because you are a monster. Why else. I was afraid that you would wake up and kill me. So I decided to kill you first.”

“But it’s completely dark. How could you tell what I was? Or did you plan to just kill whoever was in the tent.”

“What? No. I saw what you were. I can see in the dark very easily. I am a cat-kin.”

‘A cat-kin.’

From her knowledge of fantasy novels, that was surely a cat girl of some kind, which would make some sense that they could see well in the dark as they had some traits similar to cats. Such as being able to see well in low light.

While Olivia did know that beast-kin were in this world, she had yet to see one. As far as she could recall, there were none at the entrance to the town. Saying this, from Ameril’s stories, beast-kin had not had an easy life, which may be why none were at the ‘human’ town.

Now that things made a little more sense, Olivia decided to continue the interrogation.

“So, did you enter my tent planning to rob me then, expecting me to be human or something?”

“I…N-no.” The cat-kin said in quite a quiet voice.

‘Well, that was clearly a lie.’

“You’re not a very good liar. It’s clear you came to rob whoever was in the tent. My question is whether you planned to do so using that knife of yours.”

“No! I have never hurt anyone. I always get away unseen. The knife is just for protection in the forest.”

As far as Olivia could tell, it sounded like she was telling the truth. It almost sounded like her honour was being besmirched by assuming she had hurt people.

Now that she had the situation under control and could reasonably tell that the cat-kin hadn’t planned to kill who she was going to rob, it made her feel a little better about it all. Hopefully, they could continue this conversation and not end up having to fight each other.

Who knows, things may even end up as they did with Ameril. Attempted assault and **** aside.

But one thing was clear, Olivia was not going to get the rest of her sleep back.