After about an hour, we arrived at Cara's village. I removed my armor before entering the village as I thought it may be a bit intimidating. I now looked like a normal teenage New Yorker in a t-shirt, jeans and sneakers. I realized that this style of clothing would probably look a bit strange to them. I could just imagine them reading my t-shirt and thinking "What's a Starbucks?"

There seemed to be quite a lot of activity outside when we arrived, but the activity stopped almost immediately when the villagers noticed our arrival.

The village was a mix of people in human form and feline form, probably more a matter of what was most convenient for what they were doing. Some of the tribe was busy with artisanal activities or cooking or cleaning and for these they most needed the use of their hands and chose the human form. The children playing seemed to prefer the feline form and I was happy to see that the persons in their human form were all wearing some form of clothing although only the bear minimum.

Their village was composed of a large clearing and around the perimeter of the clearing, in the trees, was a network of interconnected tree houses. As I watched, I saw little by little everyone from the village started appearing in doorways of their houses to watch us. Some were curious and others, well, let's just say, if looks could kill I would no longer be alive.

I could see Cara looking at what appeared to be a couple of older people and some younger leopards and I could only assume that they were speaking telepathically.

"Your family I assume." I said also speaking telepathically.

"Yes, my mother and father and my little brother and sister."

"I will introduce you to everyone, in the village. They aren’t used to having visitors and many are probably suspicious of you. I am sorry if this makes you uncomfortable, but once they know you it should be fine."

"I guess that is normal, people are suspicious of strangers where I come from as well."

When we arrived in the center of the village, I was introduced to her family who all took the human form to meet me.

"Mother, father, I would like you to meet Matthew, Matthew, I would like you meet my Mother Ilha and my father Kitikat." I almost erupted in laughter when I heard his name. How I managed to retain myself was a miracle, but somehow, I managed.

"It is a pleasure to meet you both, but you can just call me Matt," I said bowing slightly as Cara had when she met me.

Cara continued with the introductions, "This is my little brother 'Disaster' and my little sister 'Trouble maker'.

"Mom!" her little sister and brother said at the same time."

"This is Xander.” She said, roughing up her brother's hair. “And this is Angel. A definite misnomer if you ask me." She said looking at her little sister.

"Mom!" Angel said again, and then turned back to Cara and asked "What's a misnomer?" at that, everyone broke out laughing and Cara took her little sister in her arms and gave her a kiss.

"Matthew is a very powerful battle-mage who saved my life twice today, so I expect everyone to be on his best behavior with him or you will have me to deal with."

Everyone looked at me almost at once. "You can all call me Matt, and actually, I saved her life only once. The second time was entirely my fault to start with, so it doesn't count."

Ilha and Kitikat were now staring at Cara. "What happened? Are you hurt?" They asked once they had gotten over their initial shocked silence.

"I am fine, Matt gave me some healing potions so I am as good as new. I will tell you everything, but first I would like to introduce him to the rest of the village. Would it be possible to prepare some food as neither of us has eaten and it has been a long day.”

"My excuses" Kitikat said, “you must be tired and hungry. It is time for the evening meal, we will prepare the table and you can tell us what happened, over dinner."

"He doesn't look like a battle-mage" Xander said, sizing up Matt with his eyes.

"Can you do any tricks?" Angel asked looking at Matt with wonder in her eyes?

"Yes, he's a battle-mage, and yes, he can do tricks, but when he does, you shouldn’t be anywhere near him, because you could get hurt. Now you both need to get cleaned for dinner." Cara said putting angel back on the ground.

"Here, let me introduce you to the people of my village." she said taking me by my arm.

I was introduced to just about everyone in the village and most of them were very friendly, but there were obviously a few who seemed to see me as a threat and I got definite jealousy vibes from more than a few of them.

To be honest, I could totally understand. Cara was stunning, and lastly, the way Cara looked at me would leave anyone who had feelings for her, understandably jealous.

I loved it when she looked at me that way, a mix of admiration and pride; no one had ever looked at me that way before. At the same time, I knew that I didn't deserve any of that. Everything I had, was given to me by the dungeon, none of it was my own. I felt like a cheat, and I realized that if I wanted to feel good about myself, I would need to work for it. I would need to improve on what I was given, but I was given so much that it wouldn't be easy.

After the introductions were finished, we just had time to wash up before the dinner was served. I was seated next to Cara and her parents were seated across from us. The table was large and everyone from the village had a place at the table, but the chairs the children should have been seated in were all empty and they were all pressing in around where Cara and I were seated, earning disapproving looks from their parents.

"Is it true that you are a mage? Can you make fire? Can you make me disappear?" "No, make me disappear! I asked first!" I found it quite funny actually, but I think some of the others were embarrassed and finally Ilha stood up and one look at the children sufficed and they immediately went silent and returned to the place at the table.

The food that was served was similar to a stew and the drink that was served was a sweet beer which was actually quite nice. Any fears I had as to what I would be eating were dispelled, but I wasn’t planning on asking what animal the meat came from.

While eating, we were interrogated over the events of the day. While Cara explained what happened, everyone kept looking from her to me in disbelief.

"I stopped briefly to rest in the territory of the giant spiders and I must have fallen asleep. I woke to a pain in my shoulder and found a giant spider standing over me, with its fangs in my shoulder. I tried to get away but the spiders had already created a web to keep me from escaping and the venom had already weakened me too much. I found myself suspended in webbing and bleeding where the strands sliced through my skin and there were so many spiders. I have never seen so many in one place, and my head was filled with that infernal clicking noise they make. I knew that I was about to die, I had no doubt of that, and the spiders were all around me, just waiting for me to die to eat me."

"I heard something approaching and the spiders hid themselves in the trees. It was Matthew. He was wearing a pure white suit of armor and was holding a sword that was so bright it was impossible to look at. I thought I was hallucinating. Never have I seen anything so beautiful." Everyone stared at Matt in a mix of awe and disbelief.

"I struggled to find the strength just to beg for help. 'Please, help me..'” she imitated herself quite well. “Matt cut the webbing as though it was made of silk, and took me to safety before giving me one of his healing potions, and not a standard healing potion, it was a high quality potion. The moment I took it, my whole body was healed and the effects of the poison were completely gone."

"The spiders came out of the woods, there were at least seventy of them and they were angry. He first attacked a spider with fire but that just made them angrier. He then shot out a bolt of lightning and killed the spider, and that is when all the spiders charged at us at once and things got very dangerous.

He created a barrier of wind and lightning but the pressure of his aura became unbearable for me and after a little while, I passed out. My last memory was seeing the blue sky was fill with black clouds as hundreds of bolts of lightning shot down all around us. Next thing I knew, Matt had given me another healing potion and when I looked around there were dead spiders all over the clearing and in the forest as well."

"No one could face of that many of those spiders and survive, battle mage or no battle mage", Fenon asserted, smashing his mug onto the table loudly. "And no aura is strong enough to make a healthy member of our clan fall unconscious, and certainly not Mr. Starbucks here. And now that we are talking about it, what in the world is a Starbucks?"

And there it was, the question I had been waiting for since I entered the village. It was apparent to me that he had had too much sweet beer, and that this one had some definite issues with me, most likely related to me being Cara’s hero of the day.

It seemed important to Cara that everyone believe her, and to be honest, I don’t think that Fenon was the only one who was having doubts about the accuracy of the story. I knew that in my t-shirt and jeans I didn’t exactly give the message “powerful of a battle-mage.”

“Matt, show everyone the giant razor-web spider cores you recovered?" Cara said, intent on proving that what she said was true.

I thought it best to do as she asked. The plates had already been cleared from the table, so I retrieved of all the spider cores from my storage and placed them in the center of the table. There was an audible intake of breath from just about everyone around the table and I heard some of the kids saying "Woe cool!"

"There must be at least 70 there!" Kitikat said. "This is something that I would not have believed if I hadn't seen it for myself. We are honored to have such a powerful mage in our village, and our whole village is in your debt for saving our Cara."

"I don't know where you got those cores, but I still don't believe you were capable of that." It was again the young alpha named Fenon who seemed determined to be right, and alcohol typically encouraged that sort of thought pattern.

I returned the cores to my dimensional space and looked Fenon straight in the eyes. I was starting to have enough of his attitude. "It doesn't really matter if you believe what I can or can't do," I said trying to sound as relaxed, "but I find you being disrespectful to Cara and I don't think that she deserves that, especially after the day that she has had, and I think that you owe her an apology." I spoke casually, but as I spoke, I was focusing my aura on Fenon and only Fenon, gradually increasing the gravitational pressure on him with each word.

At first, he looked confused, then he started resisting, and finally he was struggling to sit upright at the table until finally his stool collapsed under the pressure and he ended up on the ground lying on his back barely conscious."

It took a moment for the others to grasp what had happened, but the children caught on quickly and again started saying "Woe did you see that?" "That was so cool! Do it to me!" "Can you do that to me?" "I think you owe her an apology! Mwahahaha" one of them said faking a deep voice, imitating me and making me sound like some evil wizard.

Fenon managed to get back on his feet apparently much humbled and a little sobered. "Cara, I am sorry, I made of fool of myself as usual. And Matt, I am sorry for doubting you."

"No harm done" I said, inclining my head again "Even I find today's events a little unbelievable. And by the way, Starbucks is a place on my world where we go to get a lot different flavors of coffee and a muffin or a cookie. Where I come from, when we like something, we make a t-shirt of it to show others what we like. I know, it is a really strange custom."

In the ensuing silence we heard another one of the kids saying "I think you owe her an apology! Mwahahaha..." and everyone broke down laughing; the seriousness of the moment before was broken.

A few of us talked a while longer, most of the children having already been put to bed, and it was time for me to get to bed as well. This had probably been the longest and most eventful day of my life. "I think it is time for me to get some sleep" I said, shifting my stool back and standing up from the table. I saw that Cara was doing the same.

Ilha stood as well when suddenly we heard a blood curdling scream from the darkness near the edge of the village.