"Take Dean with you."

Lisa blanched. "Who?" She had been planning to go out alone. By herself, if all she had to rely on were physical abilities, she didn't feel equipped to take on a small army. But since she was a kursi, she felt fairly confident in her ability to get in and out unscathed. Now Bath wanted her to bring someone?

"Oh, and Nimesh."

"Wait wait wait," Lisa said quickly. "Who are these people?"

Bath raised an eyebrow, suddenly dropping his serious demeanor. "You need to get used to calling intelligent entities sapients."

"But they're...wait. Wait wait wait--"

"How many times must you say 'wait' in a single conversation?" Lepochim grumbled audibly, to Lisa's chagrin.

"Bath. Who, or what, are Dean and Nimesh?"

"You'll love Nimesh," Bath said, refusing to reveal any details.

"Bath!" Lisa growled, running over to the balcony where he was reclining. "I can't make a good plan if I don't know what's going on."

Bath then gave a fairly melodramatic sigh. "Very well," he drawled, turning around, a playful glint in his eyes.

"This isn't the time to mess around!" Lisa spat. "You were just about to go after the US army yourself and rip them to pieces for encroaching on our territory! Now you're just...what the actual."

"I'm just excited to see what you three will do," Bath replied cheerfully. "Now, to answer your question. Dean is my suitemate from Alens. And Nimesh...I'll just show you her in a second."

"Your suitemate? Didn't you mentally traumatize all of your suitemates so badly that our college Dean decided you needed to be psychologically evaluated?"

Bath gave her an innocent look. "Nevertheless, he's the most enhanced human aside from you so far."

Lisa's eyes grew wide as she quickly came to a logical conclusion. "You...you seriously used your suitemate as a boon test subject? Can't they trace that back to you if anybody finds out he's received a ton of boons?"

"Well, since he's in school on a sports scholarship, he has incentive to keep any boons hidden," Bath noted swiftly. "Regardless, we're getting off topic here."

Lepochim gave both of them rather dubious glances. "This was a serious meeting until about two minutes ago. Can we just conclude so I can get back to the actual logistics of figuring out how to deal with the thousands of people waiting to be admitted?"

"You're dismissed," Bath said, his tone clipped. He turned back to Lisa. "Come with me to Nimesh."

---

In a minute or so, Bath had led Lisa to the underground of The Anima. Their destination was an enormous room filled with countless cages and high-walled pens. She couldn't see much of anything. However, clearly visible in a spacious cage with its door open, was a beautiful white wolf. Lisa's breath caught as she saw it.

"It's...you," she breathed. The wolf looked absolutely identical to Bath's white wolf form. It was huge, big enough to ride. Lisa's couldn't tell, but Bath had even altered the wolf's bone structure to properly fit and support a humanoid rider.

"Not quite," Bath chuckled. "But she'll be with you while I'm here. This is Nimesh."

Lisa tentatively walked over. The giant wolf seemed rather aloof as Lisa drew near.

Lisa looked back at Bath. "How do I...can I touch her?"

"Do whatever you want. She won't hurt you," Bath promised. Nimesh wasn't intelligent enough to naturally interact with humans, but Bath considered Nimesh to be a sapient. Nimesh had a sense of self and understood basic thoughts and ideas. She could think and plan ahead, develop goals.

Of course, Nimesh was very young, and hadn't had time to do much of any of those things. However, Bath knew that the potential was there; after all, he'd instilled the potential himself. He was quite eager to see how Nimesh ended up developing.

Critical to that development was going out into the world and having experiences.

"How old is she?" Lisa asked while she scratched the wolf's ears.

"A few days old," Bath replied. "I sped things along, made some changes as I went."

Lisa wasn't surprised, but felt even more impressed by the wolf's massive size and calm demeanor. She would have thought a wolf with the mind of a pup would be bouncing off the walls with curiosity at the world around her.

"I'll leave you to get familiar with each other. I told Dean a few minutes ago by phone to get over here. He'll probably take, oh, two or so hours. Lepochim has the upstairs covered; take Nimesh to the training facility a floor down.

"Training facility?" Lisa felt like every word that came out of her mouth at this point was a question. Bath had certainly been busy while she was getting today's logistics together.

"It's marked with arrows and signs," Bath assuaged, taking that moment to create said arrows and signs. "There; you should be able to find it."

"Thanks," she chortled. As she turned towards the arrow leading toward a door, Nimesh got up from her seat and padded over to Lisa. With that, they set out for the training room.

---

Dean arrived at Basalith completely out of breath. He'd ran all the way from Alens to this demented, middle-of-nowhere spot in Virginia, only to actually find the huge dragonleaf city on the horizon. Part of him had been expecting it to be a fabrication, a mirage. Since when did giant, leafy-green cities pop up on the map? Even Google Maps didn't have the Church of the Dragon's location listed!

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Then again, since when did your suitemate nearly give you PTSD, then give you superpowers using weird microorganisms? And then tell you that if you don't help out with a few tasks from time to time, he'd take your powers away and leave you alone? What the hell kind of person did that?

"Bath," Dean grumbled as he launched himself over a section of the wall that Bath had kept standing for the sake of privacy and defensibility. Bath didn't even try to hide that he knew Dean had arrived and appeared suddenly behind him.

"Dean," he smiled saccharinely.

"You called?" Dean panted, fairly put-out. Bath had told him nothing about why he was coming here, just that something needed to be taken care of.

Suddenly Dean found himself pinned against the ground With Bath over him, his face eerily predatory. "Know your place," he hissed softly, his face far too close for comfort as Bath bent down over Dean's flattened form. "I'm still waiting for you to earn what I've given you. I told you before and I'll tell you again: in a few days, you'll have a better understanding of how blessed you actually are.

Bath now turned back towards the lake. "You are to assist The Church and Nimesh. The three of you will deal with armed US military forces."

Dean gave him a blank look. "Wait--"

Bath held up a hand. "Don't...say another word." He sighed, then continued on: "Just go with them. The Church will tell you everything you need to do."

And with that, Bath walked off and instantly disappeared upon losing his line of sight with Dean.

---

Dean had been utterly confused by Bath's words. 'The Church is a person? And Bath knows them?' Dean didn't have doubt that Bath was somehow connected to the now famous Church of the Dragon. Bath had even, somehow, remotely given him a set of boons. Clearly, Bath was a high-ranking member of the organization. Not that Dean understood how that was possible since they'd just appeared a few days ago and Bath was just a first-year college student.

Dean looked around, feeling helplessly lost. "I'm supposed to find the Church and Nimesh?"

Suddenly, glowing arrows appeared on the ground in front of Dean. He was currently at the far border of the city where residents hadn't yet moved in, so the area was deserted. As he walked forward following the arrows, he began to encounter more and more people. By the time the arrows led him to the Anima, the throng of people was huge, even though it was around midnight. He couldn't see very far because of all the buildings and people, and the arrows adjusted to be just under his feet so that they could still point him in the right direction. Not unsurprisingly, they pointed for him to go through The Anima doors.

Bath watched on from afar with a fair bit of annoyance. 'Can he walk any slower?'

Of course, Dean was hyper-sensitive to the boons that Bath had given him. Or rather, he was hypersensitive to anyone finding out he had them. Bath had actually given Dean many powerful physical enhancement boons, the kind that most Church of the Dragon recruits would never be able to access. As a result, Dean had a great deal of trouble getting used to his strength. In fact, Bath hadn't given Lisa as much physical power for this very reason: adjusting is difficult when your strength is such that merely tapping a door causes it to slam closed.

She didn't need extreme levels of physical strength when she had her kursi abilities. Dean on the other hand? Bath didn't feel very invested in him, nor more than a basic level of attachment. While he wanted Dean to make all the boons work, which in itself was a test for whether or not he deserved to have them, Bath didn't really care if Dean succeeded in keeping low key.

The arrows eventually led a robotic-walking Dean down a flight of stairs and into an extremely confusing basement area. After walking for a minute or two, Dean arrived at a large door, which he opened as gingerly as possible.

"Hello?" a voice called out from within. "Dean?"

"Yes," he replied back, fully opening the door as he spoke. He saw within a large training room a woman and a huge white husky. The room was filled with all kinds of workout equipment, with everything from bench presses to ellipticals. Off to the side, filling nearly a third of the entire space, was a square court slightly depressed about two feet into the ground. This is where the woman and the dog were.

"Who are you?" he hollered, struggling to be heard across the vast room.

"I'm The Church," she replied with a grin. "And this is Nimesh. We three are going to be partners, apparently."

Nimesh took this moment to walk forward, gracefully leaping out of the square court and then trotting over to Dean, who was standing uncertainly in the doorway. Nimesh seemed to raise a furred eyebrow when Dean took a step back at her approach.

"She's not going to hurt you," Lisa yelled from across the room. "Just get in here and we can talk things out a bit."

Dean inclined his head, then rushed forward, no longer concealing his strength.

Lisa looked on with a bit of shock as Dean reached the court in as little as four seconds. Dean was definitely stronger than herself. She wondered exactly which boons Bath had bestowed upon him...

As Dean came closer, Lisa realized that she recognized him from some lecture she was taking. Of course, the recognition wasn't mutual: Dean wouldn't recognize her currently modified face.

"We should get you a proper mask," Lisa remarked as Dean approached. "Dragon, I know you can hear us; change his face." Lisa wasn't sure what Dean knew about Bath, but she was fairly certain he didn't yet know that Bath actually was the deity of the Church of the Dragon.

A rumbling voice now called out: "Your request has been granted."

Dean suddenly felt the skin around his face begin to change. However, after experiencing all the boons first-hand from Bath and watching as they changed his body...Dean didn't even flinch.

Lisa was highly impressed by Dean's stillness; when she'd had Bath change her face, she'd been squirming everywhere. The experience was incredibly uncomfortable.

"So," Lisa started, seeing that Dean and Nimesh were both regarding her. "I'm the Church. What does that mean? It means that I have the power to influence people's hearts and minds. Additionally, I have a great deal of strength and durability, making me difficult to physically harm."

Lisa then looked pointedly at Nimesh. Lisa had realized almost immediately that Nimesh could technically talk to her since she had a translator. Bath had been right when he hinted that Nimesh was a sapient. Lisa prepared herself to translate for Dean.

Listening to Nimesh was odd because the translator largely interpreted Nimesh's body language and converted this into speech. So, instead of seeing someone like Lepochim actually talk, Lisa saw a fairly stationary wolf and disjointedly heard English.

"I am not the most intelligent, but am fast and strong. And vicious." Nimesh licked her lips. "I enjoy a fight, a challenge."

Lisa didn't know how reverse translating worked from her own English into something Nimesh could understand, but it worked somehow. "Hold on, you're only a few days old. When have you seen any fights?"

Dean just looked on confusedly, wondering how the Church could randomly talk to this giant white dog called Nimesh.

Nimesh's eyes gleamed. " In truth I haven't, but understand the concept. I want to fight; I feel the desire."

Lisa sighed and shook her head. "Fine. Technically, neither of us has been in any fights, either. I guess this will just be a learning experience."

"Uh..."

Lisa turned to Dean. "Oh, sorry. Nimesh said that she wants to fight, but since she's only a few days old, I asked her how she knew, to which she essentially said instinct. Anyways, I think its time we think of a plan using all of us and our strengths. So, Dean, introduce yourself."

He gave Lisa a penetrating look before starting. "I'm Dean. I, uh, I'm a student at Alens. Just about three days ago Bath gave me boons from COTD. And...then he told me to come here. I have strength and durability, for the most part. I can, um, also sense heat signatures. And I can make hard spikes appear on the backs of my hands and feet." He gave a quick demonstration, coating the back of his right hand in a bed of sharp, angler-fish-teeth-like spikes.

Lisa knew she wouldn't want to be hit by that.

"I also play basketball, so I'm pretty good at teamwork stuff," he admitted, looking at Lisa and Nimesh. Lisa instantly quashed a desire to challenge Dean to a one-on-one match.

Lisa now turned to Nimesh and summarized what Dean had said. Turning back, she now said, "You need a better name than Dean. At least when you're wearing the flesh mask."

Dean nodded. "Any suggestions?"

"Well, Nimesh is the Wolf. I'm the Church." Single word, single syllable.

"I can be the Knight, I guess," Dean replied.

"Sure, that works," Lisa responded, not too picky about what Dean wanted to call himself. She now cleared her throat, indicating that they were getting down to business. "So here's the situation..."