Walking back to the whitan with Sania, I tried to activate the portal ring to test its usefulness. Despite having no clue what the hell I was doing, I managed to produce life from it… in the form of a brutal electric shock that dropped me to my knees in a spasming mess. It took a few seconds before I got my shit together enough to take in the new notification:

Meddling with an artifact empowered by a God that you do not follow is a punishable offense. One which allows the God to directly smite you with a 50% reduction to health. Each subsequent attempt allows for 75% and ultimately 100% reduction in health.

Warning: The Goddess of Destruction has accepted the opportunity to Smite you and has reduced your health by 50%

“Clive! What happened?” Sania said crouching down next to me and holding my shoulder tenderly.

“Fucking… bitch…smited me,” I stuttered out, slowly regaining my composure. I took a moment to flood my body with Neuma. First my head, to clear my mind fully, then each limb independently, before flooding my torso. It was an amazing feeling to be back to full health with something I could enact myself.

“It’s no fucking use,” I said bitterly. Pointing at the portal ring that now lay on the ground next to me. “It’s connected to the Goddess of Destruction and she’s not happy I tried to use it,” I groaned. “We need to either destroy it or bury it deep. I’m certainly not taking it back to the camp.”

“Shall I attempt to break it?” She asked, moving to pick the ring up.

“Don’t touch it. I’ll try and destroy it with Neuma from over here.”

I reached out a tendril of golden Neuma, sensing that the dark Neuma would have little effect. Once I was close, I attempted to cut though the ring much as I had with the trees yesterday.

The moment my Nuema hit the ring I was smashed with a bolt of dark crackling energy that shot from the ring into my chest. I dropped to the floor twitching, coughing up blood, and smouldering as if I’d just recently been on fire,:

Meddling with an artifact empowered by a God that you do not follow is a punishable offense. One which allows the God to directly smite you with a 50% reduction to health. Each subsequent attempt allows for 75% and ultimately 100% reduction in health.

Warning: The Goddess of Destruction has accepted the opportunity to Smite you and has reduced your health by 75%

“Bury it,” I croaked before once again setting about the process of flooding my body with Neuma to heal.

By the time I was back to health, Sania had dug an incredibly deep hole and was about to pick up the ring when I stopped her.

“Don’t risk it. Use a branch or something. I can’t even offer to do it myself, because the next hit I receive from the Arsehole of Destruction is a 100% health reduction, which I think we could all do without.”

Sania nodded picking up a fallen branch from the forest floor and flicked the portal ring into the hole before quickly covering it up.

I felt relief as it disappeared from sight, then my eyes fell on the ninja robes that lay on the floor close by.

“Should you risk using those if they are powered by Destructions magic?” Sania asked, noticing my gaze.

“I don’t think they are, otherwise, Joel and Mal wouldn’t have been able to use them. Though it’s not worth the bloody risk now for me to try, is it? I don’t even know if the building attacks relate to each specific artifact or any of Destruction’s artifacts?”

“I’ll try them on. The worst that can happen is a 50% health reduction, right?”

“It hurts a lot, and you can’t even heal yet. I’d rather…”

She wasn’t listening, already adorning the Shinobi Shozoku of Holding. It was instantly clear that they had grown to match her size as she dressed.

Once dressed, minus the headgear, she put the stick into the fold with a grin as it disappeared.

“They work!” I shouted relieved that they didn’t zap her health.

“Indeed they do. Congratulations, Clive, you now have robes of holding.”

I instantly felt bad wanting them for myself. Making her take them off to give to me would be very dickish. “You to keep them Sania. As long as one of us can store our gear.”

“They won’t work with my transformation and as you just said, as long as one of us has them. Plus, you have no real clothes to your name, though I quite like you as you are,” she said casting an appraising look over me as she stripped back off.

“I’m not a piece of meat Sania,” I said with mock offense.

“Oh, but you are,” she laughed, handing them over.

I put them on immediately. More than a little excited for both clothes that would actually fit and the all-important storage space.

I ended up in a struggle to get them on. When I finally squeezed into them with more difficulty than I had witnessed any of my friends. I couldn’t help but feel cheated. Still, it was better than nothing. I reached into the robe to pull out the stick and generally just have a look at what might already be stored in them, when I received yet another notification:

Warning. You are wearing Shinobi Shozoku of Holding that are attuned to another. As such, you are unable to access any of the properties of the item. Please remove the item until current owner is deceased.

“Un-fucking-believable!” I shouted at the sky.

“What’s wrong, Clive?” Sania asked with genuine concern.

“Oh nothing. Only that these robes are now attuned to you,” I said stripping back out of them and handing them back over.

“But they’re no good to me because of the transformation,” she said plaintively, as if it mattered.

“Well, they’re yours now, forever, unless I kill you for them,” I joked. “Anyway. You can’t know for sure that they won’t work if they are attuned to you. Why don’t you give it a go?”

She nodded and put them on again. I half hoped they would tear to shreds when she morphed, and I would happily sacrifice the holding aspect so that she wasn’t covered up in the demon robes. Even though she looked great in them, I spent most of my downtime gazing longingly at her body. I was a huge fan of the fur skirt and vest combination that were her current clothes.

Obviously, I realized how selfish this made me, but the path to righteousness was a long one. I wasn’t entirely convinced that I was on that path, either.

As soon as Sania was fully attired in the robes again, she intelligently began pulling the things that were stored inside, out and laying them on a fallen tree near us. I had to admit she showed a lot more common sense than I would have.

An impressive amount of coins came out, far more than the first lesser demons we’d killed. Grashuyk also had a couple of half decent weapons. A rare demon horned bow, which was kinda fucked up if the horns that it was made up of came from an actual demon's body. There were over 100 arrows with it, too. There were a good collection of knives and shuriken’s, and a weird skeleton. It was humanoid in shape, but with spiky bone protrusions. It was about six inches in height and the bones were stuck together extraordinarily well. There were no descriptions or notifications that popped up with it.

“Okay. I am ready,” Sania said distracting me from my inspections. Before I could respond, she morphed. The robes didn’t fall to the floor, and they weren’t visible on her wolf form, though her fur seemed notably darker.

When she morphed back, she was still dressed in the robes as before, and my heart broke a little.

“Well, that’s awesome,” I said with a smile. “Did you know they made your fur darker?”

“I didn’t know if they would, but I did notice the difference when I changed.”

“Best put all this shit back into the robes then,” I said scooping up the bow to hand to her.

“Everything but the creepy skeleton, Clive. I do not want to carry that thing around with me.”

“I wonder what it is,” I mused inspecting it again.

“It may be nothing, though I suggest not trying to find out. I shall dig another hole and we will bury it.”

“Agreed.”

The rise and fall of Joel’s mood was an impressive thing as we re-entered the camp around the whitan. I explained what had happened with Grashuyk and then what had happened with the portal ring. He didn’t seem convinced that it had been necessary to bury it.

“Could I not have used it? Perhaps it was just because of your alignments.”

“Joel. Destruction attacked me directly through the ring. I have no doubt in my mind she was aiming for the kill. I felt the malice in the attacks she sent through. If she did want me to live previously, she definitely doesn’t now for some reason.”

“Maybe because you killed her messenger?”

“Nah. Because he’d changed his tune since we last spoke, too. I think it’s because I refused to go and speak with the demon lords. It was one of those do as I say or we’re gonna kill you type conversations. Trust me mate, it was the right thing to. There was no way home with that thing.”

“Fair enough,” he sighed. “Would have been good to have it and try to figure out though.”

“Trust me. I did have it. I did try to figure it out. And it was anything but nice, mate.”

After further cajoeling, he finally accepted what I’d told him with a shrug. I sensed part of him felt I’d intentionally hidden it the ring from him, despite my promises that we would make it to the dwarves of Nuinaer as soon as we could.

As he walked off to continue organizing the new palisade wall, Sania leaned against me. “He’s very eager to return. I wonder how Lierin will cope in your world.”

“I’m sure she’ll be fine. Considering the predicament we’re in, you can’t blame them for wanting to escape.”

“Would you, if you could?” If you weren’t transformed by the Demon aspect and if Destruction wouldn’t hunt you?”

I put my arm around her and squeezed her into me a little. “There’s a saying on Earth. Home is where the heart is.” I felt no more needed to be said, which was just as well as Grastad appeared behind us. His deep voice booming out.

“You not working again, lazy demon man? This wall is your idea!”

“Do you know the morning I’ve just had, Grastad?”

“I hear! Wandering around in the woods playing with little demon friends,” he laughed.

“A guy just can't catch a break with his mate around here can he?” I said to Sania who was laughing at the boisterous Nystiobek.

“I’ll see you later Clive,” she said, followed with a kiss. “I’ll take the next watch at the wall, when Grigor returns, too.”

“Damn, I already forgot about that.” I gave her a quick kiss back, not wanting to be parted from her. Then followed Grastad off to where a large group of Nystiobek had already begun felling trees. There were at least a hundred adult Wultr working. Helping out with the de-branching process.

I had expected Joel to use the stream that ran down the valley as the central point of the compound we were building, which would make use of the limited flat land we had available to us. But he had us clearing trees up the side of the valley instead, and by the marks he’d had Scralex mark out, the trenches for the palisade only passed the stream by a few feet or so.

Briefly glancing around, I realized there wasn’t an idle pair of hands. The older members from all of the packs, sat together making rope or preparing for the hunters' return to provide food for all. Even the children were collecting stones and rocks as they played happily.

It was both strange and invigorating to watch them fighting, and running around, randomly morphing into their animal forms and back out again as they jumped and climbed and laughed.

As we moved further up the hill, Grastad happily pointed to a stack of trees that had already been felled and stripped of their branches. “Joel needs them the same size as the wall we built in the pass. 25 foot long. Best get started.”

I shook my head in disbelief. Technically, I was the bloody alpha of the whole pack. I’d beaten Tyl, Niko, Grastad and technically Grigor in combat, yet here I was, receiving my orders from Joel, through the giant piss taking Nystiobek. I felt a grin creep on my face. It wasn’t so bad compared to what we’d faced since coming to Falritas. And I’d killed Grashuyk, which gave me an enormous sense of wellbeing.