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Sam didn’t have time to react. Raindu slipped out of his shirt, dashed towards the three blue reptilians—one standing, the other two sitting at a table—and tapped all three of them in quick succession with its furry paws.
“What did that furry thing just do?” Wendy asked, her eyes widening as she glared and hissed at Sam.
“I, I don’t know,” Sam said and swallowed. After a second, he added, “sundak.”
Three thumping sounds rang out as the reptilian guards fell to the floor. Sam’s gaze shifted onto Raindu, who was inspecting the stone tablets and round chips on the table. The ferret pointed at the objects and looked at Sam with a puzzled expression. Sam shrugged before pointing at the three reptilians on the ground. “What did you do?”
Raindu swiped its paws all over the table, storing the chips and tablets away into its fur before touching the three reptilians. They vanished as well. Raindu chattered at Sam and nodded, patting its chest with its front paw.
Sam swallowed because of his dry mouth and looked at Wendy. “He did what he had to do,” Sam said, his head shrinking back into his shoulders as Wendy glared at him.
“Are they still alive?” Wendy asked.
Sam looked at Raindu, who crawled up his arm and onto his shoulder. After it was comfortably seated, the ferret shook its head.
“You do remember what we said about disappearing reptilians, right?” Wendy asked, her expression turning stormy.
“Yes,” Sam said. “It’d ruin the plan once they’re discovered to be missing.” An awkward expression appeared on his face. “Did, uh, the plan get ruined?”
“Yes,” Wendy said.
Sam bit his lower lip. “So, what do we do?”
“I’m thinking,” Wendy said, looking at Raindu. A frown appeared on her face as she looked towards the top corner of the room where a green orb was situated. “Everything was recorded.” She frowned at Sam. “If a human pet harms a reptilian, they’re punished according to the severity of the injury.”
Sam swallowed. “If a human kills three reptilians, how are they punished?”
“Isn’t that obvious?” Wendy asked. “They’re put down if they grievously injure someone. Killing three government workers?” She snorted. “You’re going to be euthanized, and I’m going to be slapped with a large fine. If those three have any dependents, I’ll be responsible for them until they’re of age too.”
Sam swallowed again before looking at the exit. “So, since the plan’s a bust, how about we get the heck out of here?”
Wendy stared at Sam. It was hard to tell what she was thinking even when he read her vibe. She wasn’t going to accept the punishments doled out by the law, right? After all, they could always retreat to human society.
Raindu’s gaze shifted from Wendy to Sam before the ferret leapt off of Sam’s shoulder, landing on the floor. It made its way over to the wall, and like a cat climbing curtains, it scrambled up the sandstone before touching the green stone in the corner, causing it to wink out of existence. Raindu leapt down and skipped over to Wendy’s side. It reached into its fur and held out the green orb, offering it towards the blonde woman.
Wendy took the orb and tapped on it. A video was projected out of the orb onto the ceiling. It showed the three reptilians moving the stone tablets and round chips on the table. Then, the sound became garbled, and the video cut off. Wendy stared at the green orb for a bit, leaving it on, and turned towards Raindu. “You stole the video feed?”
Raindu thumped its chest with its paw and bobbed its head up and down.
Wendy exhaled. “Go back up and steal the statue,” she said to Raindu. “It knows we entered before these reptilians disappeared.”
Raindu tilted its head but didn’t move its feet.
“You want to complete the mission, don’t you?” Wendy asked. “If you don’t clean up the mess you made, you won’t be receiving your reward.” She tossed the green orb to Raindu. “Also, store this wherever you put things. I can’t go walking around with it.”
The ferret sighed as it stored the orb in its fur. It climbed up Sam’s body and onto his shoulder before pointing towards the set of stairs leading up to the statue. Sam’s expression darkened. He was pretty sure the ferret could move faster than him, so why was the furry creature using him as a mount?
“We’ll go together,” Wendy said as she walked towards the black screen of light Raindu pointed out. “We’ll pretend the statue and guards were missing before we got here.” She disappeared from view as she passed through the screen, and Raindu tugged on Sam’s ear, urging him to follow the blonde woman.
A sigh escaped from Sam’s mouth as he walked through the black light and up the flight of stairs. It was even harder going up than down, his thighs burning by the time they reached the statue once more. When they approached, it slid open automatically, revealing the sunlight as grains of sand sprayed onto the first step. Raindu touched the base of the statue, and just like that, it disappeared from existence.
Loud shouts filled the air, and two figures hit the ground beside Wendy and Sam. Two very familiar reptilians with dark-purple scales and silver eyes scrambled to their feet. “What in the desert sands?” one of them asked.
“Where’d the statue go?” the other one asked. “It just disappeared.” The dark-purple reptilians turned to look at Sam and Wendy. “Aren’t you the delivery woman? What did you do to the guardian statue?”
Wendy frowned. Why did more witnesses have to show up? Actually, where did they come from? “Were you two troublemakers playing on top of the guardian?”
“No, of course not,” the two reptilians said at the same time, instantly denying Wendy’s accusation. One reptilian cleared its throat. “More importantly, what happened to the statue?”
“I just got here,” Wendy said with a straight face. “I activated the guardian to let myself in, and it vanished.” Her eyes narrowed at the two reptilians. “I have a feeling the two of you have something to do with this; after all, you already broke the law by hunting without a license. It’s not a stretch to conclude you’d make our main security system disappear.”
“No, that’s a huge stretch,” one of the reptilians said. “Besides, we didn’t see you approach. We were here first. Maybe it was y—”
“Here first playing on top of the guardian?” Wendy asked, cutting the reptilian off.
The other reptilian frowned as the protesting reptilian fell silent.
“Why don’t you tell me your side of the story,” Wendy said. “We got here and passed the guardian’s test. Then, it vanished, and you two appeared from the sky.”
“We were just hanging out,” the first reptilian said. The two reptilians exchanged glances with each other before nodding. “There’s a crevice at the top of the guardian, and no one uses it, so we turned it into our secret base. We were playing there when the statue suddenly disappeared.”
Wendy nodded. “So, neither of us knows what happened,” she said. “Either way, we should report this to the guards down below. Let’s go.”
The second reptilian’s frown deepened. “What if we don’t want to go with you?”
Wendy shrugged. “Then I’ll tell them about two chumps I encountered hunting without a license and how I bumped into them again as soon as the guardian statue disappeared.”
“You’re threatening us,” the second reptilian said.
“Yeah?” Wendy asked. A slight smile appeared on her face. “Who told you to hunt without a license? You exposed your weakness, and you expect me to not take advantage of it? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“You’re just a half-breed,” the first reptilian said. “We’ll go down there and tell them you made the guardian statue disappear. Who do you think they’ll listen to?”
“Me,” Wendy said as she took out her blue stone with glittering substances inside of it. “Do you know what this is?”
“A seer pendant?” the second reptilian asked, its silver pupils widening. The reptilian pointed a clawed finger at the blonde woman. “You’re Bastard Wendy.”
“Bastard Wendy?” the first reptilian asked.
The second reptilian nodded, keeping its eyes trained on Wendy. “She’s the great seer’s daughter. Even if she’s a half…reptilian, if she cries to her mom, people will listen to her instead of us.”
Sam shifted his eyes, glancing at Wendy while keeping his gaze on the ground. The great seer? He’d have to ask Wendy about it later, but he had the feeling she wouldn’t tell him anything; if she wanted him to know, wouldn’t she have informed him earlier? In that case, he’d ask Tamara after becoming the reptilian’s pet. There was bound to be an opportunity to have a conversation with Tamara…, right? If he had to pretend to be Tamara’s pet the whole time even when they were in private together…, well, five hundred million credits was five hundred million credits.
Wendy nodded her head. “You know who I am,” she said, her gazing shifting from one reptilian to the other. “Who are you?”
The two reptilians exchanged glances with each other. The second reptilian spoke first. “My name is Winton,” it said. “This is my sibling—”
“I’m Hampter,” the first reptilian said before the second one could introduce it. “We were born in the same clutch.”
Wendy nodded again. “Alright, Hampter,” she said. She turned towards the other reptilian. “Winton. Let’s report this unusual event to the guards, shall we?”
“Fine,” Winton said, following after Wendy, who hadn’t waited for a response before heading down the flight of stairs. Hampter glanced at Sam before descending as well.
Sam scratched his head and followed after the reptilians. So…, the plan was salvaged despite Raindu causing the disappearance of three guards, a guardian statue, and a recording device? Not only that, but two witnesses had been roped in by Wendy to strengthen their alibi. Sam wasn’t sure how she did it, but it was amazing; perhaps it was the wisdom that came with old age. Sam went down the flight of steps once more, hobbling along, doing his best to keep up with the reptilians ahead.
The group reached the black screen of light and passed through. Obviously, there were no guards to be found. A frown appeared on Wendy’s face as she looked around. “Where are they?” she asked before looking at Hampter and Winton with an accusing expression.
“Why are you looking at us like that?” Hampter asked. “It’s not our fault no one’s on guard.”
Winton looked around, the reptilian’s silver pupils flickering. “They were here not too long ago. I can still smell them.”
“There should always be one guard on duty,” Wendy said, the frown on her face deepening. “Before you went out to hunt without a license, did you see them?”
“Can you not say that out loud?” Winton asked. “There are … cameras … in here?” The reptilian looked around, scanning the eight corners of the cubic room. The reptilian’s tongue flickered, poking out of its mouth before receding back inside. “The cameras are gone.”
“That’s wild,” Hampter said, looking around the room as well. “Everything’s disappearing.” The reptilian’s eyes widened as it looked towards the black screen on the other end of the room. “What if we go down and there’s no one there? What if everyone’s gone, and we’re the only reptilians left in the world?”
“You watch too much nonsense,” Winton said. “Maybe they noticed the disappearance of the guardian, so they went to report it.”
Wendy nodded. “Whatever happened, we won’t get answers by standing here and speculating,” she said. She marched towards the black screen, passing through and disappearing from view.
“She wastes no time, huh?” Hampter asked.
Winton shrugged. “Let’s follow her.” The reptilian glanced back at Sam. “She’s really not worried about this thing running away, huh?”
Sam didn’t appreciate being called a thing, but he wasn’t going to protest. What if they attacked him and Raindu disappeared them as well out of self-defense? He’d ruin Wendy’s efforts. As such, Sam kept his gaze trained on the ground, only moving after the two reptilians disappeared into the black screen as well. He was greeted by more steps on the other side, but unlike earlier, there weren’t any carvings or murals on the walls. In fact, the flight of stairs wasn’t very long; he could see the bottom from where he stood. At the base of the steps, there was an archway with light pouring out of it, illuminating the stairwell.
Wendy had already gone halfway down the steps, not waiting to see if she was being followed or not. Close behind her, the two dark-purple reptilians were marching without a sound. Sam took in a deep breath and followed the group as they descended the last few steps and went through the arch. Red and orange light filled Sam’s vision for a brief moment, and he couldn’t help but look up towards the sky. Well, it wasn’t really a sky; after all, they were underneath a desert. The ceiling, if that’s what it could be called, was emitting a bright light as if there were a sun up there, but it was like the light from a sunset, pleasant to look at without hurting Sam’s eyes.
Sam lowered his gaze, and a furrow appeared on his brow. According to Wendy, reptilians were supposed to be more advanced than humans, so why did Et Serpentium look so … primitive? Everything was made of stone: the road, the geometric buildings, the signs on street corners. Not only was the place primitive, it was deserted too, the red and orange streets devoid of reptilians.
“Everything’s still here,” Hampter said and patted its chest. Even after knowing their names, Sam still had no idea if the two reptilians were male or female. They looked like Tamara but with scales of a different color.
“Of course,” Winton said and rolled its eyes. “Like I said, you watch too much nonsense.”
“Come along now, children,” Wendy said, making a sharp turn towards the nearest building. “The sooner we get this over with, the better.”
Unfortunately, with the two tagalongs, Sam couldn’t ask Wendy any questions, and as a human trafficker, it’d be out of place for Wendy to explain things to Sam. As such, all he could do was observe. There were signs on the buildings, but they were adorned with curving script that he had never seen before, so he couldn’t learn anything by reading either. Wendy approached a building and placed her hand on a stone slab. Her eyes narrowed, and a second later, the stone slab shifted to the side, revealing an opening.
Sam swallowed as he looked at the stone slab before following the reptilians inside. What had he gotten himself into? For a second, he really felt like a feral cat brought into someone’s home. He didn’t even know how to open doors in Et Serpentium, so how was he going to steal a heavily guarded national treasure? It was like telling a dog to install a new drain in a house; Sam had so much to learn before he could consider stealing the GMC.
A gush of hot air blew past Sam’s face as he stepped inside the building. It was much more spacious than he had expected. From the outside, the building wasn’t that big, but the interior was enormous. The space inside took up much more space than it did outside. Dozens of reptilians were seated on stone benches off to the side, and up ahead, there was a long counter separated into separate sections. It reminded Sam of the government building in human society he had gone to in order to get his identification card.
A chill ran down Sam’s spine as dozens of reptilians turned to look at him, piercing his body with their stares. He felt like a rabbit that had entered a den full of snakes. His neck shrank into his torso as his shoulders hunched, and he focused his gaze onto the ground, following behind the two dark-purple reptilians. He wondered how Wendy was dealing with the stares, but he couldn’t see her expression.
“That human smells delicious,” one of the reptilians sitting on a bench said, its words composed of long hisses. “Are you selling it?”
Winton blinked. “Oh, this thing isn’t mine,” the reptilian said. Winton gestured towards Wendy. “It belongs to Bastard Wendy.”
“The great seer’s daughter?” a different reptilian asked. “It’s really her. Damn.”
Sam’s brow furrowed as a majority of the reptilians made their way towards their group. What was going on? He thought Wendy’s mom was supposed to be an influential figure, so why did it seem like a group of reptilians were about to lynch Wendy? Contrary to Sam’s expectations, the reptilians passed their group, and fled through the open door as if they were avoiding a diseased individual.
“What?” Hampter asked, looking around. The dark-purple reptilian grabbed another reptilian before it could flee. “Where’s everyone going?”
The red reptilian blinked at Hampter. “What’s wrong with you?” it asked, shaking off Hampter’s hand. “You like having your mind read?”
“Huh?” Hampter asked, the dark-purple reptilian’s gaze shifting to the blonde woman up ahead. The reptilian’s silver pupils widened. “She’s a mind reader?”
“She’s a mind-reading, shit-stirring, no-good bastard,” the red reptilian said. “It’s too bad she didn’t die outside.”
“You’re talkative, huh?” Wendy asked, turning to look at the red reptilian. “Why don’t you tell the world what you did in the evening three weeks ago since you like blabbing so much?”
The red reptilian fell silent before turning to leave without saying another word. The reptilians who remained, the uninformed ones, quietly made their way to the exit as well. Wendy snorted and walked up to the counter. There was a line before, but after the red reptilian had spoken, the line was no more.
Sam swallowed as silence seemed to press in on him from all sides. So, it turned out Wendy was a mind reader. He hadn’t thought anything offensive about her, right? …Right? He wasn’t sure; after all, who kept track of all the things they thought? He might’ve thought things like she was old and scary, but she was thrice his age and adults were intimidating, so she shouldn’t have been offended by his completely normal thoughts, yeah? After all, it wasn’t like he thought she was a freak just because her eyes were demonic looking. In fact, she was far from being a freak. She was beautiful and had a nice b—
“Shut up, human,” Wendy said. “You’re thinking too loud.”
…butt. Sam gulped, his face burning red. If only it were that easy to get his brain to quiet down.