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Hello there, readers! I'm so happy to bring to you the newest chapter of The Fox's Path! This chapter has been proofread by the amazing and cuddly Trismegistus Shandy!

"Lily, I really don't need an escort," Taylor said as her adopted she-wolf sister held her paw while leading her through the front door. After Taylor had been released from the hospital, the family, especially Lily, had become much more protective of the vixen. Over the past few days at school, Lily, as well as Shaun, had taken to escorting the vixen from class to class. Lily, being a little more gung-ho about it, got startled by Jeremy, who had jogged over to Taylor to ask how she was. The she-wolf had a potion on paw, that she had apparently made herself, which she, without thinking, had used on the unaware bat boy to glue his feet to the tiled floor of the hall.

"What? I can't just hold my little sister's paw from time to time?" Lily looked away as she said it, her tail drooping a bit.

"Lilypad," Molly said with a small smile as she entered after the pair, ruffling the wolf's head fur, "it's adorable how protective you are, but Taylor's right. The Voider is long gone, as well as any traces of its influence."

Lily scowled as her fur was mussed up and batted away at her older sister's paws before fixing her hair. "Dad said that she needed plenty of reassurance and care."

"Yes, he did. But I don't remember him saying that you had to act as though our little sister is made of glass." Lily humphed in annoyance while Taylor rolled her eyes.

"Again, I'm pretty sure that me and the twins are the same age," the vixen said, her lips quirking up at the corners in a smile.

"It's a pack thing, Tay-Tay," Molly said, smiling a little mischievously.

Of course the nickname would stick, Taylor thought to herself. She made her way back upstairs to get started on her homework assignments. She gathered her text book and notepad and pencil, and started. As she got to work on identifying the different mathematical branches and sub-branches that fell in the classification of Shamanism, Taylor felt a light tugging sensation on her tail. She looked up to see Lily playfully batting the tip of her big bushy tail.

Damn, she's pretty stealthy, Taylor thought to herself.

"Uh, Lily," Taylor started, "I'm kinda trying to do my homework here."

"I know... but," Lily looked away for a moment, "I have so many questions."

After Taylor had told Lily the truth, the rest of the family had returned, so the two hadn't gotten any time to further discuss Taylor's old world.

"Can't it wait until after I finish these equations?" Taylor asked. Lily tried to give her the puppy eyes, but that only made Taylor giggle. Lily relented and agreed to wait until Taylor was finished. But she did manage to get Taylor to agree to let her keep playing with her tail.

And she calls me the little sister, Taylor thought before resuming her assignment. It didn't take her too long to finish her algebra homework, and she was soon closing the textbook and setting her sheet aside.

"Okay," Taylor said, taking her tail in her paw from Lily as she turned to face her. Lily's tail started wagging, once more a dead giveaway of her excitement.

"What's your original world like?" The question shot out of Lily's muzzle immediately.

"Well... it's a lot like this one, but like I said, no magic," Taylor answered. "Also no monsters and no Badlands."

"I can't even begin to imagine what that would even be like!" Lily bounced where she sat on the bed. "Do you still have technology like cars and stuff?"

"Well, yeah," Taylor said, "and airplanes and phones and games, and all that stuff."

"What's your former species like?" Lily asked after having taken a moment to try and imagine the world Taylor was now describing to her.

"We... or I guess it's they now..." Taylor took a second to think about her answer, "are called humans."

"Hue-manns," Lily repeated the foreign word.

"Yeah, and we're a largely hairless species, with two arms and two legs." Taylor then went on to explain other physical characteristics of the average male and female human, which Lily found fascinating.

"That sounds totally freaky," Lily said after trying to picture a human.

"Well, it's not like you guys were real easy to just accept right from the get go," Taylor defended, before the two shared a giggle.

"I'll bet. What about the other peoples of your world?" Lily continued.

"Oh, we--humans are the only sentient species on my old world," Taylor said casually, taking note of the shocked expression on Lily's muzzle.

"No way," the she-wolf said.

"Yes," was Taylor's response. "I guess living on a world with so many different sentient species, that can be a little weird to hear about too."

"A little?" Lily said, leaning forward, her eyes twinkling in excitement. "Oh no, we've gone and shot past just 'a little' and made an unscheduled stop straight in the heart of crazytown!"

"Again, it seemed really strange to me when I first got here too, y'know." Taylor crossed her arms.

"But... how does that happen? I mean, evolutionarily?" Lily pressed, not seeming satisfied with Taylor's arbitrary shrug.

"I dunno. It just did," was Taylor's only answer to that question.

"Woah, what about the deities of your old world? How do you think there being only one sentient species has affected them?" Lily asked, catching Taylor off guard.

"What do you mean?" Taylor asked, thinking that Lily meant the legends and religious stories that go with any faith.

"I mean, with only one species, how have the deity entities of your world been affected?" Lily explained further. Taylor frowned. Lily's question vaguely reminded Taylor of a few bits and pieces she had read in some of her textbooks at school. There had been some mention of different gods and goddesses, but they were sometimes mentioned as specific historical people. Taylor had initially assumed that she had just been mistranslating, as she first came across those bits and pieces of information after she started experimenting with reading without her enchanted glasses on, able to comprehend words and phrases and even the odd sentence.

"Uhm, w-well, there are lots of different religions on my world, with different gods, as well as different ideas of the same gods," Taylor said.

"Uh-huh," Lily nodded.

"And I guess that those beliefs were shaped in a way that's different to how many of the beliefs of this world were shaped," Taylor said cautiously.

"Okay, that makes sense... but what about the deities themselves? What are they like?" Lily said, cocking her head to the side as she saw the confusion on Taylor's face.

"Lily... are you talking about... gods... like they're... physical... people?" Taylor asked.

"Well yeah. I mean, they don't manifest in a physical form very often, except for maybe Judstio, but they do it from time to time," Lily casually said.

"A-And," Taylor started, amazed by this revelation, "do they... interact with people? Physically?"

"Yeah. Mostly their really devoted worshipers, but a lot have been known to make appearances just out of the blue from time to time," Lily explained, looking even more curious.

"And do you... I mean, we, do we worship any specific ones?" Taylor asked, her head spinning a little.

"Eh... kinda. I mean, I know we're not the most observant family out there, but I've heard Mom pray to Tuathula a few times, and Shaun always invokes the name of Azcore whenever I--I mean someone does something that annoys him," Lily said, trying to hide her grin at what were some fond memories of various pranks she had pulled on her twin, before looking back up at Taylor. "Why though?"

"We... I... well, humans... at least, humans from my old world... there's lots of religions and beliefs out there but... no one has ever actually met any deities! Or if they had, they can't really prove it!" Taylor explained, her mind now thinking back to the different pantheons of gods from the ancient Earth, wondering if any of them were actually real.

If they actually existed, then where are they now? she wondered.

"Woah," was Lily's wide-eyed response. The she-wolf seemed at a loss for words. "That just sounds so alien."

"Really?" Taylor asked with a half-lidded stare.

"What?" Lily asked.

"Do I really need to point out, once again, how strange your world is to me? Especially with this new information for me!"

"Hehe," Lily started to uncomfortably rub the back of her head, "r-right. I keep forgetting that you're from a different, and really strange, world."

Taylor rolled her eyes but gave Lily a reassuring smile. "That's okay. Have you ever actually seen one of them?"

"Who?" Lily asked, confused.

"One of the gods!" Taylor exclaimed.

"Oh, well yeah. Judstio." Lily said it just as casually as if she had been describing the weather.

"Really?" Taylor looked at Lily, amazed.

"Yeah, but it wasn't a big deal. He was just asking for some spare change," Lily explained.

"Wait, what?" Taylor asked.

"Judstio is a lesser god," Lily said before elaborating "his domain is those without homes and travelers."

"So that means he begs for money?"

"He asks for a hand every now and then, when he isn't traveling from place to place, looking for work," Lily explained.

"What kind of work does he do?" Taylor asked.

"Whatever anyone willing to hire him will pay him to do, provided it's something he doesn't disagree with morally."

"And people just hire a god, and don't think twice about it?" Taylor asked.

"Well sure, it's supposed to be good luck. But there are a lot of people out there who do turn him away, because of how devout to other gods they are."

"Wow," Taylor said, "I don't even know how to process all of this."

Lily's response was to pull Taylor into a sudden hug, making Taylor jump in surprise, and thus making her tail fluff out.

"This is weird for you," Lily said as she rubbed Taylor's back, "but is it any weirder than what you've already learned of our world already?"

"Uhm... not really," Taylor admitted, hugging Lily back.

"I thought not," Lily said, letting go of Taylor and looking her over with a smile.

"So, what was it like to be a boy?" Lily asked, completely out of the blue. Taylor actually needed to take a moment to process what had been asked.

"Uhm, it was different than being a girl," Taylor answered lamely, making Lily roll her eyes.

"Yeah, I figured, but how is it different?"

"Uh, well, for one, no skirts or dresses," Taylor said, starting to think over the differences between her current gender and her previous one, "and I never used makeup or any kind of nail polish stuff before."

Lily listened attentively, now hugging her own tail close to herself.

"I guess one big difference is how everyone kinda sees me now, like I'm more... delicate. At least, that's how it feels. And sometimes I feel really vulnerable, like when that guy made me sit in his lap."

"Barry," Lily said the name with a grimace; "he's done stuff like that before to a lot of girls."

"You too?"

Lily nodded. "Yup, no one knows where the hell he got the idea that that could ever work, but yeah, he pretty much forced me into his lap too. Of course, I had a special potion on hand that made him regret doing that."

"What'd you do to him?" Taylor smiled at the mischievous twinkle in Lily's eye.

"First off, as far as I'm concerned, he did to himself. I gave him fair warning that he'd better knock it off, which he didn't. Secondly, my little mixture was something I had been experimenting with. It basically made his body give off a powerful scent that attracted apparently every hox in a five mile radius," Lily said with a giggle, noticing Taylor looking at her curiously.

"What's a hox?" asked the vixen.

"They're these little flying stinging insects that live in a hive. They're bright blue and really, REALLY, aggressive," Lily explained.

"Oh wow! So I take it that Barry wasn't happy with that?"

"Nope, especially not since I dumped the majority of the potion on his crotch. It soaked right on through and, well, guess where the hoxes stung him the most." Lily started to laugh, Taylor quickly joining in. "And the way hox venom works, in addition to the pain and swelling, is that it makes the vocal chords constrict, making the stung person's voice a really high pitch!" They both laughed hysterically after that.

"Wait," Taylor said, wiping away a tear, "why did you have that stuff on paw?"

"Hmm? Oh! I wanted my own hox hive, so I was planning on buying a fish tank to keep them in. They make a lot of interesting alchemical ingredients," Lily said, Taylor now rolling her eyes.

"But Mom and Dad found out after that little incident and said no, so no hoxes for me." Taylor giggled at that. She then took a moment to think about this strange conversation she was having with Lily.

So we went from talking about my old world, to talking about religion, to talking about me being a boy, to Lily getting Barry to back off. Wow, Taylor thought, smiling at her adopted sister.

"Were they mad about what you did to Barry?" Taylor asked.

"Not really. He'd already done the lap thing with five other girls, and word had already gotten around to most of the parents. They were honestly more concerned with me trying to get my own hive of hoxes," Lily said.

"I'm pretty sure I side with them on that," Taylor admitted, making Lily chuckle. Lily resumed asking Taylor about being a boy, and Taylor did her best to answer, although blushing at certain points. Lily seemed satisfied when Taylor pointed out that she needed to get some more homework done, although she did let out a huff when the vixen observed that Lily should probably get started on her own assignments.

Seriously, how am I the little sister? Taylor watched as Lily trudged downstairs to go get her backpack and get started on her schoolwork.

Taylor then cracked open her history book, reading the assigned pages. It was interesting for Taylor to learn about the history of her new magical world. While most other students seemed to be bored with the lessons, it was downright fun for the vixen. It was almost like reading a very detailed fantasy novel. After a while, Taylor started to get thirsty, and so made her way downstairs, her ears perking up as she picked up on a conversation between what she identified as Laura, Ben, and Molly's voices, carrying out from the garage

"So, it's confirmed that soldiers will be on the ground for an escort, in addition to the mages?" Laura asked.

"Oh, yeah, the Guild isn't taking any chances," Ben said. Taylor slowed her approach down the stairs, her curiosity getting the better of her.

"You mean aside from sending a handful of teenagers, children, out into the Badlands!" Laura shot back irritably.

"Well... yeah, aside from that," the tiger awkwardly said to his big sister.

"The trip has to happen," Molly interjected, "and the students have to go."

"I... I know... but it was dangerous before all these creatures started getting riled up and finding their way into the city! And I've heard from Abe about how patrols out there have been getting attacked more and more frequently. Something is wrong," Laura said.

"You're right," Ben said, "something is wrong. But the trip has to happen. The ritual has to happen. And Shaun has to go."

Taylor stopped, a pit of ice forming in her gut as her tail tucked itself between her legs.

And there you have it, folks! I certainly hope that you enjoyed the new chapter! Be sure to let me know what you think!