The trip to the other passage was a short one. With the whole realm being around five to six miles wide in its largest section and no opposing winds to steer the ship away, they stopped underneath the desert passage hours later. No monsters came to investigate as they were either sleeping with a full belly or too wounded and afraid to get to the surface.

But now they had another problem. Sand was falling from the passage, a steady stream that spread out in a cone and rained down on the ship.

"Damn, I should've expected that," Noah said. "All passages to this realm are underneath lakes or wells, because the water used to push through the passage to equalize the pressure with the realm on the other way."

"And with the water gone, the desert is attempting to fill the hole left behind with sand," Fairy-Robert added.

"Attempting is a strong word. But yes," Noah agreed with a nod.

"I can go up there and check," Fairy-Robert said.

He remained in fairy form for the entirety of the trip. it was more convenient and weighed the ship less. Human-Robert was very heavy, with all that extra biomass he ate.

Fairy-Robert flew up through the cascade of sand, sidling away from the cone and up until he reached the passage. The sand wasn't raining down when he previously visited this location so something must have changed. When he saw the massive insect leg digging near the passage, he recoiled. Even though he was invisible, it was still something scary.

Especially since his fairy form seemed to have inherited some of the instincts and fears natural to fairies. His mind wasn't exactly the same when he transformed but the mental palace helped anchor his sense of self.

He watched the creature, yet another giant monster as it dug the sand around it, tossing it up and through the passage. Upon further analysis, he decided that the creature wasn't throwing the sand at the portal. It was throwing the sand everywhere and most of it fell through the portal because the passage was right next to the monster.

Armed with that information, he went back to the stone ship. The falling sand was gathering on the deck and other spots. After giving his report, Noah made a decision.

"It's a Button-hole Antlion," the teacher said with a straight face. "Don't look at me like that, I don't make the names. Anyway, it's a very aggressive and territorial monster. We need to kill it if we are to get to the desert. Robert, the manner of its demise is up to you."

With a mental tug, Robert called on his pets. Cotton and Coal had been blowing wind at the sails for the best part of the day and were exhausted. They were out of commission.

"I'll do it. You should move the ship away from the passage, because I believe a lot more sand will fall down here."

"Will do. Take your time and stay safe," Amanda said. "Freddy, we need more wind. We are moving away from this damned sand.

*

*

Fairy-Robert watched as the ship moved away from the cone of falling sand. He then pondered. Why was the sand spreading out as it fell? It made no sense. He understood it spreading out at first but without wind it should fall straight down. It wasn't the Wind magic from the non-human members of their party. Anyway. The Realms were full of mystery and only a fool would try to unravel the ones which had little effect on people.

He reached the passage and watched as the butthole antlion... wait. No. Button-hole. Goodness. As the insectoid monster worked on its nest, Robert saw flashes of its body. It had a huge pear-shaped abdomen, segmented and full of hairs and spines. He doubted any giant bird would like to peck on that carapace. The front body was long and thin, ending with a massive head with even more massive pincers. The two pincers were most likely as long as its butt. There, he said it.

Now, energy attacks didn't go through the portal. Or they did but the focus and intent imbued in the Ether got scrambled and dispersed by the dimensional transfer. The passage portals were meant to transport matter. But that was easy to circumvent.

Robert watched until he noticed a pattern of the antlion's movements. He seized one opening and pushed his hand through the portal. Then he fired a two-star void lance, nicknamed "zoltraak", which was quickly becoming his favorite attack spell.

Too bad that a hundred years in the future, it would become standard attack magic.

The beam flew instantaneously and so did Robert. He zipped to the side, pulling back his arm and flying to the other side of the portal. Hit and run was also becoming one of his favorite strategies. It was SO MUCH FUN! Seriously, he was having the time of his life. Now, could he go down and play a prank on those humans on the rock boat. Who makes a rock boat anyway? Rocks were meant to sink, not float. What silly humans.

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The antlion shrieked and poked its legs out through the gate along with a deluge of sand and gravel.

It shook Fairy-Robert out of its mischievous streak. What the hell? Why was he becoming so childish and... fey-like? He quickly captured the feeling and crystallized it into another prospective Fairy-affinity spell. He christened it "lead astray" for the time being. It would work somewhat like the Pied Piper, distracting and leading children... astray, or to goad people and suspend their critical thinking skills.

Great. Now, he had a bug to kill. Robert flew in an arc, coming to the side of the passage a good fifty feet away. He saw an insect leg and shot a normal void lance at it. The spell punctured a hole two or three inches deep into the monster and then stopped. Void lance would go along disintegrating matter and dispersing Ether until it reached its destructive limit. But since he didn't use his two stars, that's what he got.

He fired a fully powered zoltraak void lance. His void veins reduced the cost by a good amount – he still had to calculate how much – but he was still limited to firing five empowered spells before his essence reserves reached a critical level. Before the void veins, it was three but the effects weren't linear.

By the time he came back from the mathematical rabbit hole, an insect's leg was crashing into the waters below. Since the antlion was offering its legs still, he went and cut another one. Four to go if it was an insect, six if an arachnid.

The antlion withdrew his other legs and then shifted, poking its head out, pincers twisting in every direction trying to grab something, anything. The monster was awfully dumb and Robert fried its two-neuron brains with another well-placed beam. Then he touched the monster and went to the liminal void with it. Or at least that's what he wanted to do. What really happened was that the part of the monster poking out of the passage went while the rest of the body remained in another world.

And the head was too heavy for Fairy-Robert to hold onto. It fell, dragging him with it because he didn't let go. Only at the last moment did he remember to open his hand and use his wings to arrest his fall. The head slammed into the solidified ocean and bounced, cracking one pincer.

Robert sighed. He needed to curb his impulses if he wanted to spend any amount of time as a fairy and not act stupid. And now he had to wait until it was time to return. He landed on the ocean to rest, and then realized he had made yet another ridiculously bad decision. What would happen when he returned on the ocean and the water was no longer solid? The acidic, silly, caustic, stupid, corrosive, and pleonastic ocean?

Goodness. Even his thoughts. Robert flew to the ship and sat on the deck. There. A good, firm place. Then he went to his mental palace to train with his spear for the next five months of subjective time.

*

*

When he returned to the passage, he had a front-row seat to a decapitated monster body oozing fluids through the dimensions, from the desert realm to this ocean realm.

Fairy-Robert was growing tired of these passage roadblocks. Could he please get a free pass at the next one? Let the challenge be just reaching it, not securing the conditions to cross through. Ugh. He shoved his tiny hands into the yucky insect flesh and cast Void Punch. A sphere of insect flesh was disintegrated while the outer layer exploded outward, showering him with gore.

Eww.

Oh, the head. That one was lost. It remained behind in the liminal void. He didn't care about that dumb head even though Noah told him he could make some good weapons or even a shield with the carapace. He was NOT hauling that disgusting thing...

He had no way to clean himself. Robert flew back to the ship.

"Amanda, can you please, pretty please, wash me?" He begged with a whiny voice.

The girl conjured a ball of water and threw it at him. She sloshed it with him inside and then drained everything. Most of the gore came out in the water along with Robert's dignity, and then she tossed it in the ocean.

"Better?" She asked with a grin. She did it on purpose!

Robert's vision was spinning. "Yeah, I guess," he shrugged, trying to act cool.

It failed, because Amanda giggled.

"I'm going back upstairs to clean up more of this mess," Robert grumbled.

The problem with the void punch was the void punch. He should've used a zoltraak.

*

*

Passage clear, he latched the grappling hooks on one another, making them go around the portal and tying them at the back. With four of them, they made a X-shaped lattice of ropes that hugged the portal and came down and out in the middle. On the ocean side, a big loop of metal allowed Amanda's vines to latch onto and grow down.

Amanda was hanging from the puffblooms as she enticed the vines to grow. Cotton and Coal were struggling to keep her afloat but they could do it. it was just that they were too tired of blowing wind to move the silly stone ship that was too heavy for its purpose because it was made of stone.

"So, once you finish growing the vines, I'll take you down and you can help Noah carry Freddy up," Robert said.

"Yeah. I don't look forward to climbing these vines,' Amanda said, rolling her eyes.

"It is what it is," Fairy-Robert said with a sigh.

"Or not. You see, what about I cross the passage now since I am already here, and keep watch over the rope so it won't slip while you and Noah help carry Freddy up the one hundred and fifty feet of vines?"

What a great idea! Robert stared at Amanda, awestruck. She laughed.

"Or better yet, why don't you let Cotton and Coal lift Freddy, you fly up here, and Noah climbs the vines?" She suggested with a shit-eating grin.

"Whoa!" Fairy-Robert said.

"Hey, Blossom! Can you hear me?" Amanda said, speaking rather loudly right next to Robert.

"She doesn't but what do you want to ask?"

"Ask Blossom if she can factory-reset your brain, silly," Amanda said with a squeaky voice. "You don't even realize what you're doing, right?"

"What? What am I doing?" Robert asked.

"Silly. You're being silly. At first I thought it was an act but you are not that good an actor anyway and this was lasting too long to be a prank."

"Whoa!" Fairy-Robert said.

"Never mind," Amanda waved a hand. "Can you check if Cotton and Coal still have stamina enough to fly Freddy up here?"

"Of course, they do. I just need to share some of mine with them," Robert said.

"And can you do that?"

"Of course, I can," He replied, putting emphasis on "I". "I can heal with my fairy magic!"

"Oh, can you now? I doubt it!" Amanda teased.

Robert put his tiny arms akimbo, staring at her. “I’ll show you!”