I awaken to Lil grumbling as he breathes fire on me. I’m also made aware of the sound of several of the rest of my allies chuckling or giggling. Cracking my neck, I joke, “Did we get ‘em?”

Even Gilmeshtu smirks. Prinrin limps over to me and drapes her right arm, her good arm over my left shoulder. She then turns to fall mostly in reverse into my lap, moaning in pain. I put up my telepathic walls as I hear her begin speaking privately to me, “Schism, the anger I saw in you. That was for me? I’m touched Schism sweetie. Maybe a little overboard though, don’cha think? I’m sorry, I’m kidding. I heard your whole battle in your head.”

Before I can respond, she adds, “Thank you for bailing me out. I couldn’t back down, or Orthral would have taken the brunt, and he would have gotten himself killed. With two of us, they picked mostly on the smaller target, whittling us down. Just—. Thank you for being a friend. You’re a pal, and most certainly a confidant, knowing and being invited to our Friday plans. I’m really looking forward to them Schism sweetie. Our Lady’s going to give you a task, and you’re not going to like it, but you’re going to do it, I know you will. Just come home safe after. Please? You’ll have plenty of reasons waiting for you at home.”

I’m really tempted to kiss her. I don’t know where we stand with that. I definitely want to make it home to Prinrin. Of course to my inner circle, to Lady Kinzul, to Illy as well. But this charming, endearing, not to mention absolutely gorgeous little lady is stealing away with my heart right now. Ah, cheeks. I can reciprocate the kiss she planted on my cheek. It fills me with a fair amount of joy. I can let back down my outgoing psychic walls.

Stretching and standing up, I check myself out. I show no signs of injury, and the only dragonforce I’m missing is from a brief activation of Honoris Causa. If anything, I took more than a few explosions to the face of my own doing than anything else. I wonder if I could trick Can’Z’aas into granting me a specific explosion resistance pain defense skill, to add another multiplier to the damage reduction I take from AOEs. Snrk. Get real Reggie. That’s not how the world works. I think. Maybe. Crap. Is it?

I think I might be able to get a blanket area defense skill. Hm. It would require blowing myself up a lot though. My inner circle can’t help giggling until they break into full on laughter as each of them imagines me blowing myself up, like I have several times in our lives. I sigh and chuckle along with them while shaking my head, unsure whether it’s incredulity, exasperation, or something else.

Flexing my left shoulder, it aches a fair bit from bracing against the Olashax eyeball explosion, but that’s just muscle tenderness from an infrequently used muscle. I guess I’ll rest it off tonight at home in bed with my beloveds.

Lady Kinzul, standing nearby, speaks sadly, “My beloved Schism, you will not be returning with us, as much as I am loathe to leave you to fend for yourself, to separate you from your beloved inner circle, you must make haste to Mount Horatzchi. Boetah and Shaylon will meet you outside the base of the stronghold just before daybreak. The Dormir will be on their way to join you, coming in through the roof as it were, just before daybreak as well. Theirs is a duty to prevent you from being overrun, to whittle down the leaders within, and herd them to you for a confrontation, preventing them from fleeing. You are quite well equipped to be on the opposite side of a crossfire from the Dormir without danger. Boetah and Shaylon will be your Shield and your Aegis as you break through. Leave rank and file, or casters, to them at your discression. They will undoubtedly eventually catch up to you. They are nearly unstoppable, if perhaps a bit on the slow side.”

Before I can ask for directions, Kinzul adds, “You have approximately two hundred fifty miles from here to your northwest to travel. I trust you can make it in time to rest safely nearby, or take your rest now, and make it before daybreak, beloved Schism. Please, defeat the strongest therein, claim their dragonforces, and return swiftly, safely, my love.”

My heart and world would shatter at the idea of another solo Reggie Shellcracker adventure, even though I know I’ll have backup somewhere nearby. Yet, Kinzul dropped the phrase that makes my heart flutter again. I’d almost think she did that on purpose. I mean, it’s our Administrator. Most of what she does, all of what she does, is on purpose. I just meant the intent *behind* the phrase.

I nod to Kinzul regardless, loosing a slightly sad sigh. This does mean I’ll need some provisions, so I’ll grab the dimensional pouch from Luni, and have her take my hyperdimensional haversack home to Mount Solace. When she’s there, She can toss some extra food and water in it for me, and another pouch of adamantite shavings, and the elemental bandolier.

I swap my hyperdimensional haversack with Lu’s dimensional pouch, and ask, “Lu, every half hour or hour or two, can you check for notes from me? Make sure there’s one of those endless quills, parchment, food and water in the haversack. Um, oh, we can maybe try using those living paper pets, to see if they can figure out how to climb out of the bags from inside of them. We could send messages back and forth pretty easily that way. They’re not very strong, so we’d probably have to keep at least one pouch flap partially open.”

My beloved Luni, My Anchor, smiles as she confirms my request, “You got it, my Hero. I hope the paper pets thing works out. We really, really need a method of long distance communication, you especially. Oh Reggie. I don’t want you to do this. I don’t want us to have to do this. I don’t want there to be fighting. I just want you back and safe. I miss you. I love you.”

With sad, wet eyes I gaze lovingly at Luni as we approach each other for a tight embrace, while I carry Prinrin, smooshing the adorably tiny lady between us. Prinny chuckles, and I make sure to not bump her broken left arm. Kissing Lu softly on the forehead, I hand Prinny over to her. Sighing, I gaze north-westward. Lady Kinzul psychically helps me determine the exact angle.

The regal, divine, beauteous Administrator, our Lady, paces around those of us collecting our wits and bearings. She comes to rest in front of Teuila and states, “It seems, my dear Tenith, that with your new dragonforce, that sky dragon is not an appropriately powerful enough Honoris Causa for you. Instead, I Administrate a change within your titling, and grant you the Honoris Causa of Lunar Dragon. My beloved Tenith, tomorrow you, Hunter, and Revinth the Dark, and Gresog the Quick will take down the Guldstrom Stronghold held by Heironymous Guldstrom. A frost giant whose blue dragon wife Misildyr aids Terrorzin’s forces at every turn.”

Kinzul turns to the rest of the party and commands, “My beloved Sun, my beloved Muse, my beloved Vivant, take a day of rest. For in two days hence, you will be coming with me to attack Laotzxhi Citadel. For now, all but Schism comb the battlefield, wipe out the rest of the stragglers if there are any to be found, collect anything of interest, and meet me at the northeast corner of the northeast quadrant in your fullest size. We will open a slightly less inconspicuous hole in the sky to return home.”

As Kinzul begins transforming to wing away to the northeast section of the battlefield, picking up scale and trinket, tooth and claw, she sends telepathically to me, “Please, beloved Hero, be victorious, do so swiftly. Bring my daughter home to me my love. Comfort her when she realizes her feelings over the loss of her sister. I beg of you my love above all else, bring yourselves home safely.”

My heart skips beats before fluttering. Our Lady’s affectation for me is cementing towards one that has more romantic connotations, and I can’t help letting my mind and heart cling onto that feeling, despite how ridiculous it must seem to anyone else. I feel lightheaded and flush, and I won’t have any food or drink until Luni makes it home and stocks my hyperdimensional haversack. Though I did eat several hundred pounds of dragon hearts, and drink gallons upon gallons of dragon blood. How the hell does that work? Where’d the matter go? Where’d the mass go?

Oh well, northwest we go. I gaze back over my shoulder longingly at those loved ones I’m leaving behind. Hm, I think I’ve just worked out another advantage I can give myself, but I need to calculate how many runes or S P I’ve used up today. First Steel Body dropping down on top of Olashax, sixty six there. One more for an empowered fire rune against him. Another Steely Body spell on the way to help out Fen, so another sixty six there. A G S E, a Greater Shadowy Evocation against Vanathar, so another sixty six there. Two G S Es and an extra frost rune against the magma worm, that’s what, a hundred thirty three? Something like only three hundred thirty two?

Hm, I wonder if I should spend the rest learning runes, working on advantages, or saving it in case I get jumped and get into trouble. What’s the right option? Genre senses are saying at least thirty five percent chance I should save some resources. Not horrible odds, but I’m starting to really trust them. There’s— ooo. Retrocognition time. Just a brief glance at the map I’d seen with Nala, then back out. If I recall correctly, I’ll be passing over an area of a Terrorzin loyalist. Yes, okay, retrocognition in paused time says yes after reconstructing the map in my mind. I’ve returned, so I do have to be careful. I could also snag another dragonforce on the way.

I really want to note down somewhere that I think I can do a very cheeky permanentifying enhancement enchantment onto the elemental bandolier’s knives. We all know how much empowering a single elemental rune without a spell causes massive backlash in me, but I could put a permanently regenerating single empowered rune, one of six different elements, onto those six knives. They’d no longer have the random property, instead they’d have a massive area of effect of that element. It’d be dangerous as effing hell to toy around with, and I’m not sure it’s wise to do it while out in the field, but, if I’m ever going to succeed at it, it might as well be sooner rather than later, so I can rest off the horrid after-effects.

Let’s see, what are the knives’ elements again? We had one, acid, two, cold, three, fire, four, lightning, five, poison, six, thunder. Okay, if I do fire first, I can survive it, and it’ll keep me from succumbing to the backlash of cold. I can probably handle lightning’s backlash just fine. I’m not so sure about poison. My Can’Z’aasian resistance to it is decent, but not enough that I’d want to risk it going straight into my internals where the neckchain of the ever-breathing can’t prevent it. Acid I’m really, really not sure about surviving. Thunder would be a mixed bag. If a sonic boom starts inside my chest or my skull, that’s probably the end for me. If it just bowls me over from the outside, that won’t even bother me. I’ll have to spend some time in retrocognition running scenarios and percentage likelihoods before I try anything out.

I’m going to need to scope out the stronghold that I’m headed to. Who were the dragons again? Tinth and Shiz? That name pair has got to be embarrassing. I mean, I say shiz instead of fecal matter pretty often. Oh, gross. I hope it’s not some sort of golgatha-dragon fecal-dragon, ew ew ew. Anyway, that’s pretty unlikely Reggie you goon. True. True.

Two hundred odd miles to go. Why would anyone trust a four month old to travel two hundred fifty miles on their own in a day? Snrk. Sorry, that’s pretty silly. I mean, I spawned as some sort of indeterminate age, with the ability to shapechange, and a head full of applicable knowledge, and a head full of empty broken memories of how things are supposed to work, but don’t. Probably not the best time to get into this with yourself Reggie. I know, but I don’t really want to go back to fawning over or mooning over a bunch of pretty dragon ladies or whatever. Like, do you *remember* how much Farzee was trying to seduce you, and how ungodly hot she is? Cough. Yeah. I remember doofus. Let’s maybe think of a different topic, or at least a different person. Sure, sure, whatever.

The gal with the emerald tresses in the hall, she called me what, an ugly little troll who thought they owned the place? And she misgendered you. And she misgendered me! True! I don’t really care though. Her opinion doesn’t mean anything to me. I mean, the fact that she just goes spouting “he,” is enough to invalidate her opinion of me. Maybe we should grow the boobs back though. Or at least a little bit of a rounded chest ridge, like the Draconiac ladies. Yeah, we should be able to manage a rounded chest ridge as a permanent change over a night or two. We’re five foot seven now as a base height too. Probably going to take longer and longer to get much taller in cherubic Reggie form though. I could evolve, but I really don’t want to be reaching out to Can’Z’aas without Kinzul around. I might ask her to do that for me though, um, to hold me while I evolve.

Err. I know, I know, that’s not what you meant, right? Yeah. She has to Administrate my Latent, and might also need Teuila Lil and Lu there too. Then I can use Can’Z’aasian power safely. If I do move up to my second stage, I’ll have more strength and stamina as a baseline, and a higher base height to work with. I could possibly snip out cherubic Reggie entirely so that stage two is my baseline from that point, so that I don’t keep getting knocked down to cherubic Reggie randomly. I’m not sure I want to do that though.

Anyway, I’m going to need to breathe for a second, phew, been holding my breath and leaping around northwest, skirting just under the clouds so that I shouldn’t be spotted easily. Plus, if I am spotted, I’d like to see them come up here to get me, where I can just don a number four and be treated to almost endless lighting. I am tempted to make that my training that I do tonight though. Just find a cliffside really near the clouds, put on number four, and keep my electrokinesis channeling the lightning back into the cloud that it came from.

I’m getting a little excess ambient ionic charge up here, so I can afford to do some L B Bs to pick up some speed. Maybe I should conjure a ghostly steed for that flat expanse down there though, because leaping across dozens and dozens of miles is fuggin’ tiring for cherubic Reggie.

Reggie, I swear to gumshoes if you say, “What’s the worst that could go wrong?” I will beat you senseless. Snirk. Guess what you just did goofus? F%^&