The forest blurred past as Shady bounded through the undergrowth like a caffeinated deer on steroids. North's teeth clicked together with each jarring impact, the chains and handcuffs rattling madly.

  "RUNNING CIRCLE!" Shady announced at maximum volume. "FAST SQUARES BECOME CIRCLES AT SPEED!"

  "Could you please," North let out desperately in Admiral Evelithria's voice, "run more smoothly?"

  She pictured smoother, more graceful running that was theoretically befitting a princess.

  "Run more smoothly!" Shady repeated, then immediately tripped over a fallen log as she processed the imaginary running technique, sending them both cartwheeling through a patch of ferns.

  They rolled into a ravine and crashed into a muddy creek with a spectacular splash. North found herself chained and underwater with a Wendigo sitting on top of her.

  "WATER CIRCLE!" Shady declared from above the surface. "Very wet! Much liquid! BEEP!"

  I'm drowning, you absolute moron! North thought frantically.

  "I'm drowning, you absolute moron!" Shady repeated above, not moving.

  GET OFF ME!

  "GET OFF ME!" Shady shouted, then finally managed to process the actual meaning frantically being pictured by North. "Oh! Mushroom needs air? But mushrooms don't breathe?"

  She stood up, lifting the chair as North heaved.

  "I'm crystalline-organic, not a fucking portobello!" North spat water. "I need to not be underwater to think coherently! It takes a century to crystallize fully! I’m not there yet!"

  "Portobello circle!" Shady nodded sagely. "Educational fungus facts! BEEP!"

  They continued their wet journey through the forest, Shady occasionally stopping to sniff things or chase her own tail while North desperately tried to maintain her role as educational thought-projector.

  The sky is blue, the grass is green, trees are green because of photosynthesis, North thought in Evelithria's voice, trying to give Shady basic concepts.

  "The sky is blue!" Shady announced, looking up at the darkening sky. "Except when it's not! Like now! Now it's gray circle wet!"

  It was indeed very wet, rain splattering down on them.

  Two plus two equals four.

  "Two plus two equals four! Unless it's five! Or elephant! Math is subjective like counting!"

  North groaned. This was going to be a long day.

  Math isn’t subjective, idiot Wendigo! It’s rational, logical, logarithmic, linear and multi-dimensional!

  A rustling in the bushes caught Shady's attention. A black bear emerged, probably investigating the noise. It took one look at the seven-foot antlered monstrosity wearing a wet vampire-chair-backpack and immediately decided this was not its problem, turning to lumber away.

  "BEAR CIRCLE!" Shady shrieked with delight. "COSTUME ACQUISITION TARGET!"

  She launched herself at the bear. What followed wasn’t a fight. It was more like the bear being thrown into a Wendigo-shaped woodchipper. In seconds North became covered in flying bear bits, soaked in blood. She absorbed the blood, satisfying her hunger. It was an awful, gross meal.

  "One bear acquired!" Shady announced proudly, holding shredded bear remnants.

  We need two bears, North thought. One for each of us. You have to be more careful, not slice it up completely.

  "We need two bears! Mathematics! One fungus, one princess, two meat costumes!" The insane Wendigo affirmed, draping the remnants of the shredded bear atop North.

  Whatever remnants of dignity North had were now thoroughly obliterated.

  Another few hours of roaming through the dark forest and sniffing produced a second dead bear and a very annoyed North covered in bear, pine needles, leaves and mud.

  "Now we make dis one hollow!" Shady declared, unceremoniously dropping the North-pack onto the ground. "Then the mushroom fills them with mushroom mushroomery!"

  "That's not how—" North groaned out, watching with a single bear-flesh free eye as Shady began the deeply disturbing process of hollowing out the second bear.

  North frantically tried to picture everything she knew about taxidermy, Thrall-making and skinning animals.

  "BEEP! Taxidermy circle! Very educational!" Shady narrated. "Remove organs! Fashion forward!"

  Twenty minutes later, North watched as the enthusiastic Wendigo attempted to fit the second bear remnants atop of herself. It didn't work. She was too big.

  “Hrm. My bear is too small,” she complained.

  "I'm going to remember this," North growled, eye twitching. "When I eventually escape, I'm going to remember every second of this humiliation."

  "Mushroom memory is good!" Shady bobbed. "Remember to think slow! Tree-slow! Sloth-slow! Glacier circle slow! Make bear flesh slow!"

  North adjusted her temporal processing, slowing her thoughts to a crawl. The world seemed to speed up around her, Shady's words becoming a high-pitched chipmunk squeak. The second bear became draped over her too.

  "Thiiiiiis... iiiiis... weeeeeiiiird," North let out slowly as she infected as much of the two bears atop her as she could and then accelerated herself again, glaring at Shady.

  "BEAUTIFUL DISGUISE CIRCLE!" Shady commented, pulling the second bear atop herself again. "We are definitely normal bears! No one will suspect!"

  They looked absolutely nothing like normal bears. Especially the Abyss-damned, massive, naked Omnid. The bear barely covered her.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “I’m going to find more bear to be more bear,” Shady concluded, taking off through the forest. "Teach Princess LIFE facts as Shady hunt for more bear!"

  First lesson, North thought acidly in Evelithria's voice, Princesses are sophisticated.

  “Shady needs to sound sophisticated! BEEP!”

  Princesses don't say BEEP every five seconds!!!

  "Princesses don't say BEEP every five seconds!" Shady repeated, then immediately added, "BEEP! Oh no! Habit circle!"

  Try replacing BEEP with something else. Like... 'indeed.'

  "Indeed! Indeed circle! Very sophisticated! BEEP—Indeed!"

  North wanted to cry some more. Or scream. Or possibly both. Or bash her head into a tree until she concussed herself from this horrid existence.

  Shady smashed through a tree, barely grunting.

  No, no, damn it! That wasn’t… Princesses don’t obliterate trees with their head! North thought furiously. Princesses are graceful, calm!

  “You princess, you not calm circle,” Shady pointed out. “Very angry square!”

  “Because I’m tied to a damned chair with a dead bear draped atop me!” North snarled, forcing herself to calm down. Repeat after me: 'I am Princess Aquillianne Quantivia Frontenachii.'

  "I am Princess Aquillianne Quantivia Frontenachii! Indeed! This is a circle!"

  No circles, damn it! No squares. Just the sentence!!!

  "No circles? But everything is circles or squares! Or triangles! Sometimes hexagons!"

  Princesses speak in complete, sensible sentences, you big antlerred idiot!

  "That sounds boring, you big square idiot. Indeed. BEEP. I mean, indeed indeed,” Shady replied. “I smell bear. Must smash and be more bear.”

  North looked back.

  In the distance, an eerie glow emanated from Mount Olympus where her family's palacial compound had been, smoke trailing across the vast forest as the wind moved southward.

  "Mushroom sad?" Shady asked.

  "My entire family is dead," North said flatly.

  "Oh. That's a bad circle. Indeed." Shady thought for a moment. "But mushroom has new family now! Bear family! And Princess family! And Emperor family!”

  What the fuck kind of dysfunctional…

  “Dysfunctional circle family!" Shady agreed.

  That's seriously not how family works!

  “Shady disagrees. Mushroom, Princess, Emperor! Saving Earth! Indeed!"

  North stared at the ridiculous Wendigo in an ill-fitting bear suit and felt a hysteric laugh bubble up. Her family of ancient, sensible, clever immortals, replaced by a brain-damaged alien princess and a human pretending to be Emperor of Earth. The notion was utterly insane, absurd to the Nth degree.

  “Square old family unclever,” Shady pointed out, making a noise of air being spliced by a falling Corpse Seeker star. “Tshhhhh! Big bada boom! Smoosh! Scrape!”

  "We're all going to die," North groaned.

  "At least we'll die as bears! Very fashionable n’ regal! Indeed! BEEP—Indeed indeed!"

  I stepped out of my house onto the gothic, damaged porch, the left side plowed through by Shady’s fight with North.

  Then, I closed my eyes, listening to the sound of the distant burning forest.

  Front mind: empty static, white noise, boring thoughts about needing groceries.

  Back mind: Surrender and introduce myself to the Frontenachii, become a distraction while Shady and North played bears in the woods. Hopefully redirect any search parties from the south.

  In a few more minutes of mental reinforcement, the sound I was waiting for finally arrived.

  Crystalline legs pounded against asphalt like a thousand massive champagne glasses being tapped in rapid succession.

  Front mind: What's that sound? Creepy and weird!

  Back mind: Corpse Seeker, right on schedule.

  A crystalline centipede emerged from the main road onto my driveway. It was sleeker than the units dominating government buildings, somewhere between the size of a limo and city bus.

  The creature slowed next to the abandoned Paccard and its side split open into a doorway, and three figures emerged from within.

  The one in the center was clearly in charge, wearing a fancy, commissar-style cap. A Pradavarian feline, with a spotted fur pattern and big ears, looking similar to a… Serval cat. She wore a more elaborate uniform than the wolves I'd seen from the news and resistance reports.

  As she moved closer, I noted that her captain's hat bore the Frontenachii antlerred skull three-eyed insignia. Behind her, a black panther and a tiger casually flanked her position, weapons held at the ready.

  The serval leader had a square-ish, smaller gun in her hand, but it was her smile that was incredibly disarming.

  Front mind: Oh god, big alien women in my driveway. Should I run?

  Back mind: Good, just gotta play a confused civilian.

  "Thrall residue," the panther growled, crouching to examine the stain on my driveway. "Fresh. Less than twelve hours."

  The tiger walked behind the serval, looking left and right as if actively searching for threats to take down. The panther stuck her head into the abandoned Packard, sniffing the interior. "Human transport, smells like a young Crystalloid and four thralls. The fungi were here."

  The serval simply looked at me with evaluating expression, golden eyes with black tear marks running up and down over my entire body. She moved differently than the other Prads I’d seen thus far. Where Piotr's wolf girlfriend moved with militaristic rigidity, this cat swayed her hips as she walked, each step deliberate, threatening and sensual.

  "My," she purred, stopping uncomfortably close to me. "What do we have here? A human… witness?”

  She bent down, bringing her face level with mine. Her breath smelled of mint, cat fur and copper.

  "I am Marshal Commandant Nexxali of Division 881," she said, one claw tracing along my jawline. “Do tell me what you’ve seen here, little human?”

  I felt invisible hooks scratch across my mind in the shape of her alluring, perfect voice, trying to dig in. Unexpectedly, they were different from Shady and North’s. Instead of pulling at information, they seemed to pull at my mouth.

  Front mind: Sitting in my kitchen watching the news about the invasion, shocked, scared, making coffee with shaking hands, hearing a noise outside

  Back mind: Fuck, fuck, fuck, what the fuck, her voice is impossibly perfect, pure, absolute. This is some kind of a magical trick, an illusion, a mental effect. Don’t fall for it. No, wait… pretend to fall for it. That’s it.

  Front mind: Wow, your voice is perfect. I’m in love. I love you, catgirl commissar. What kind of feline cutie are you? I don’t even care. Your voice is like…

  I realized that I wasn’t actually thinking these things, but ranting out loud.

  “...your voice is like a river, an ocean of pure happiness!” I ranted. “Never stop talking. I’ll pay you everything I own to hear you talk some more. All five dollars and twenty two cents in savings! Then, I'd max my credit card out for you!”

  Nexxali's large ears perked forward, a satisfied purr rumbling in her throat. "Oh, you sweet little thing. Tell me about the thralls that were here."

  "Thralls? I don't know any thralls but I'd thrall myself to you right now!" I gushed, my front mind producing heart emojis while my back mind contemplated how to take advantage of this development. "Your fur pattern is like... like lovely nebulae and space constellations!"

  The panther snorted. "His mind smells of pure devotion. Your Charmchain's working well, Marshal."

  "Of course it is," Nexxali preened. "Now, little human, the crystalloid vampire. Where did it go?"

  "Vampire? The only thing sucking the life out of me is being potentially deprived of your voice!" I declared, taking a step closer. "Please, say 'crystalloid' again. The way you roll the 'r' is transcendent! Also, what’s a Crystalloid?"

  Nexxali’s tail swished. "Focus, human. The vampire."

  "I can't focus on anything but you! Your lovely captain’s hat! It frames your lovely, feline face like... like a military halo! I’d salute to you all night long, oh Captain, my Captain!"

  The tiger made a choking sound, sounding like she was trying hard to suppress laughter. Nexxali threw a glare at her and turned back to me.

  "Just tell me what happened here."

  "What happened is I fell in love!" I proclaimed. "Also there was some other stuff, but who cares about that? You're here now! Do you like coffee? I make terrible coffee but I'd learn to make good coffee for you!"