40.2ᴘᴀᴛʀᴇᴏɴ.ᴄᴏᴍ/sᴛʀᴀᴛᴏᴛʜʀᴀx

Rain sighed and turned to the sleeping Lyra.

He shifted over to her and poked her in the shoulder with a claw.

"Don wanna, jus' one mo hour," she murmured incoherently.

Rain poked her again and this time she blearily opened her eyes to see Rain's big yellow eyes staring into hers.

She screamed and leapt upward like a frightened gazelle, somehow defying gravity to go from sitting to instantly leaping through the air.

"Don't eat meeeeee!"

She landed on her butt with a whumpff and scrambled away hyperventilating in fear.

Rain just watched in amusement.

"You, you bastard!" she said between heaving breaths. "You did that on purpose!"

"You said you wanted to get used to being around me."

"Giving me a waking heart attack is not that!!"

Rain tilted his head to the side.

"Oh screw off." She scowled and tried to stand. Her legs immediately turned to jelly however and she sunk back down to her butt.

"You and Opal have at least one thing in common. Unreliable legs."

Lyra set her lips in a line and glared at him.

Rain growled out a laugh and climbed to his feet. He stepped over the still sitting Elf-sheep and looked down at her. Sitting she only came up to his thigh. She looked up at him with round eyes.

"It doesn't help that you are so damned huge, on top of part of me being blood line scared of you. You're like part giant or something."

Rain leant down and opened a paw. After a moment she raised her hand for him. His paw engulfed her arm and dragged her into the air. He set her upright and let her find her feet. She immediately began to sink downward again and Rain had to hold her up. Her legs shook violently, fluffy knees nearly knocking together.

"I c-can't stand straight with you right next to me, holding me."

"You're going to have to get used to it, how else are you going to make me invisible."

"Damn you!"

He walked over to where Opal and Red were busily packing bags. Opal's rucksack was there, but it was joined by a new slightly mouldy and very old looking one seemingly taken from the undead levelers. The both of them were stuffed and overflowing with loot. He held one paw up in the air as he walked which Lyra dangled from, desperately trying to find her feet and keep herself upright under her own power.

Opal was busily slotting swords into gaps in one of the bags. The pile of fancy looking swords she was taking from wasn't getting much smaller.

Rain raised an eyebrow.

"I need them!" said Opal, noticing his expression.

"For what army?"

She held up an arm and slapped her bicep fiercely.

"These armies!"

Rain almost said something but instead let her get on with it. He couldn't stop the corner of his lip from twitching with amusement however.

Soon enough everything was packed, both Red and Opal carried large well filled packs on their backs that rattled with metal obnoxiously with every step.

Rain took one last look around the hall. The stone remained as it would no doubt for centuries more. An empty shell with nearly all signs of its ancient inhabitants lost to the ravages of time. The people who had created it gone and dead with only himself a sole lone life centuries after their light had been extinguished. He wasn't going to give up on figuring out what had happened, what these mysterious wolf people were, but he'd need to find some other approach. This ruin was clearly the nexus of the dungeon for the people who had built this place and it had given him nothing, he needed someone who could read their script, tell him of ancient history, he needed a scholar.

His eyes paused on the rags of the bone creature. A thing that had given up on revenge because it was too hard, instead choosing to indulge in its amusements and hobbies, hiding itself away from the world, choosing to forget. The very idea repulsed Rain, he had no interest in giving up, hard things were the things most worth doing, the most gratifying… A small thought seeped into the back of his mind, he instantly jumped on it, locked it away with the rest of the memories of his death. That thought had said the only way he could get rid of his trauma was by crushing its root, an uncomfortable thought with sharp edges, one that inspired fear, because what would he do if he could not?

Lyra glared up at him from where she half dangled from his paw.

"Can you let me down now please?"

Rain experimentally lowered her. Her legs wobbled, a look of hope crossed Lyra's eyes, and then her knees folded and she sunk down with a groan.

"How are you going to use your ability if you can't walk?"

Lyra didn't reply.