“No. Not happening. Nah-uh. This is a horrible idea. Have you completely lost it?”

The day had already gotten away from us. Another trip to the Titlesmith, who made several more Wu Tang references just for fun, was followed by Foggy stocking up on as much food as he could from what few merchants still had operational businesses.

Finding Ak had proved to be more challenging than we anticipated. We searched the castle grounds, the main section of town, and even spent nearly an hour heading to the southern underbrush pass and back again before the Golem wandered up to us out of nowhere. It wore Daiki’s armor, the breastplate now fixed and fitted for Ak’s long, stone body, along with the gauntlets and greaves. It looked like the extra armor pieces leftover were fashioned into a new quiver for the comically large arrows. I wanted to give the Golem some serious attitude now that we were already approaching the afternoon, but decided against it; Ak most likely felt the worst about this journey back.

Which leaves me with our current conundrum. Conundrum? When did I start saying conundrum? Regardless, I glared at the old ass bee in front of me with the bubbling up tiger rage filling my… veins. Did I have veins?

Aspenoc looked back at me with a sense of confusion that really ticked me off. He was confused? Really? Pulling a stunt like this after forcing us on this quest. The nerve of this guy.

“Barry, calm yourself,” the Oracle requested, cautioning with his hands. “You must trust me on this. I have utilized my abilities and gleaned a vision of things to come, and my grandson will be necessary in the days to come. I am sure of this!”

“Your grandson thinks I’m a damn anti-christ!” I shouted, then realized that would make no sense to these people and backtracked. “A demon berry or whatever. He thinks I’m bad news, and his people all want me fucking dead. I’m supposed to trust him to not stab the shit out of me when I’m not looking?”

“The talking blueberry is not wrong, grandfather,” Aeronik added, which only soured me further. “I cannot vanquish the need to end this atrocity made flesh. This being symbolizes the vengeful wrath of our fallen savior and will be the end of us all. It was foretold by father!”

“Your father foretold lied! He brought Icaraz to the doorstep of their demise!” Aspenoc answered in fury. “Ask yourself, grandson, where is he now?”

There was a long silence between us. Wind whipped at our backs and rustled the lengths of underbrush ahead of us. Foggy, Ak, and I all stood waiting for the start of a journey we thought we had finished. As if going back to that place wasn’t a big enough curve ball, Aspenoc decided to meet us before we departed to drop off his whiny ass grandson. You know, the one who will definitely try to kill me at some point. We all know where this is going right?

“He did not deserve death as his punishment…” Aeronik said a moment later. He looked down at the flattened dirt path that we would soon follow. “He believed he was leading us to righteousness. He believed he was bringing us to our long deserved peace.”

Ah. So that explains the dead Oracle I got experience from. Huh.

Aspenoc shook his head. “Aeronik, I have lost a son. You have lost a father. All that has come of his intent has been blood and ash. I know the atrocities you claim the Mothric king has done, and I have seen most of them myself in our early travels. I saw the outcomes we would face and warned of the possible futures, and yet we pushed ahead regardless. Aeronik, my visions have never lied to me. You must go with them and travel through the Dead God’s Husk. It is where your truest future lies in wait.”

I folded my arms and offered a good old berry scowl.

“Don’t cut me out of this pep talk, old man,” I barked. “I don’t need some zealot with a pointy stick watching my back. And I definitely don’t want us to end up watching his.”

Fogwarth stepped in, all geared up and ready for the long road ahead. Here we go. Foggy won’t let me down this time. Right?

Something had been off about him this morning. It was like Foggy was wearing a mask, or just playing a role. He was himself on the surface, unpredictably predictable and unnecessarily jovial, but when he was quiet, when he thought no one was looking, the mask seemed to fall. His persistent smile dropped like wilted flowers, his starlit eyes turned dark, and an invisible weight seemed to crush his shoulders. Then, as the spotlight shined on him, he was back to himself like nothing ever happened.

Foggy…

“We shall take him, dear Oracle.”

Aeronik and I gave a simultaneous, “What?”

“You have got to be shitting me, Foggy! He’s insane!” I shouted, suddenly losing any concern I previously had about his mental state.

Foggy laughed. “Oh, sir berry. Your insistence on forcing my laughter is why we have such a bond.” He crouched down, placing a hand on what counted as my shoulder and meeting me at eye level with a friendly smile. “Your mother? Yes. Your father? Perhaps. Your brothers and sisters? Most certainly. But, sir berry, I most certainly have not, and will not, be shitting you. Now come! We are losing the light of the sun with each passing breath!”

I stared back like a… well, like a grumpy blueberry. Fogwarth trudged along, beginning his humming as he took the lead for our party and began the descent back into the underbrush path. Aeronik followed, giving one last stare and sneer in my direction before turning around to move behind Fogwarth; his wings had been cut at the base and cauterized, leaving two melted nubs protruding from the back of his crude hide armor.

Ak gave me a nod and stayed back by my side, as Scrappy finally left Aspenoc’s shoulder and took his spot riding in the center of my new tiara. CROWN. I MEAN CROWN. The orchid clutched onto the shining points of the crown and stood like a pirate ship captain manning the wheel. With that, we started to press on into the underbrush.

“Here,” Aspenoc’s old voice croaked out beside me and pressed something into my free hand. “It is only right that you should have one as well.”

I looked down, couldn’t hide my smile at seeing the small, dark sack in my hand, and gave Aspenoc a thankful nod as we vanished into the shaded path.

[Item Received: Pouch of Storage. This is a soulbound item. Would you like to bind this item to you?]

Not a chance in this world or the next that I would have said no.

Hours seemed to stroll on by us. A late start had quickly thrown us off, leaving us wandering in the glow of a slowly setting sun. Ak-Lok had taken down three [Brush Tigers] with only single shots to each as we made our way south; none of us even noticed a single one. We stopped briefly after the first two hours for a quick break so that Fogwarth could set up another picnic and stuff his face, and I took the opportunity to have some water and lose some of my debuffs. Ak went on with his same meditation, cycling the ambient Mana or whatever it is it did. Aeronik pulled out some kind of dark jerky and a handful of peanuts, then chastised Foggy about his consumption.

Stolen novel; please report.

The big oaf just laughed, not being phased by the insults to both him and his people. I respected his outlook on it, since I would have gone ape shit on the little bastard if I were Foggy’s size.

Aeronik had yet to try something against any of us, although with Ak’s show of force by instantly slaying the tigers I wasn’t too surprised. When I thought about it I realized I could check everyone’s stats since we were in a party, and I went ahead and did so. I noted that Foggy had gone all the way to level 22, which made sense between the huge battle we were in, his father’s quest, and whatever fights they had while I was captured. Ak-Lol has progressed as well and sat at 20. Not seeing Fogwen in our group anymore kind of sucked, given what a powerhouse she was, but sitting there in her places was good old fuck boy himself, Aeronik.

[Name:Aeronik.

Title: N/A.

Race: Yellow Jacket Wasp, Evolved: Infantry Wasp; Melnibonean.

Level: 11.

Class: Soldier.

Rarity: Abundant.

Equipment Level: N/A]

Ha. You weak fucker.

Aeronik was barely higher than I was in level, and he was also considered abundant just as my tier 0 race had been. All I needed was to push forward, to work and grow and evolve. I would outmatch him in no time, then I could leave my back a little bit more unwatched.

The sun had now moved further in the sky, preparing to set within the next few hours. We made it back to the clearing from before shortly after Foggy’s picnic break. The mist had pulled back, greatly increasing our range of vision around us. I could now see the death zone that was our battlefield before clearly for the first time

The devastation was evident.

Chunks of mortar and stone littered the flattened earth, and now the destroyed portion of the wall was fully visible before us. The farmland and crops here had been burned and slashed, the blackened skeletons of scattered farmhouses peaked over the once lush fields, and there had been more bodies buried amongst the ash that we could now see; moth and wasp alike. Oddly there weren’t any mushroom infested creatures around us, but shit I wasn’t complaining.

The southern wall, no longer shrouded in most, was incredible. The structure of smooth gray stone seemed to rise for miles, nearly as tall as the castle itself. I got an odd sense of vertigo from just standing beside it. But the enormous gaping wound in the wall took my breath away.

A gash seemed to rip the wall from ground to sky. Jagged teeth of stone rose in the shape of a V, as if it were a log chopped by a lumberjack’s axe. There was lingering mist just outside of the wall that still blurred it just a little bit, but outside of the wall seemed… normal. I could only base what I saw off of shadows and shapes, but the trees, grass and bushes I could see seemed regular sized instead of the massive stalks I had grown used to here.

We searched the inner perimeter of the wall for a while, following it as it bent around to either side but not seeing anything resembling a dead God’s body. I assumed it had to be pretty big, most likely bigger than Foggy, so it shouldn’t be too hard to miss. Still, other than the normal-ish dead bodies there was no God to be found.

“Now, if I was the long deceased and desiccated corpse of a slain God that was buried to hide the possible crimes of my late father, where would I be?” Foggy said as we approached the opening in the wall again, hand cupped to his chins as he pondered.

“I was informed your party had visited this location!” Aeronik spat. The little bastard had complained most of the day at this point. “Reports of your feats against these so-called Flesh-Cursed beasts seem to be extraordinarily exaggerated!”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, shut up already,” I said, pressing a hand to my brow and squeezing. “Just shut the Hell up, bee.”

“I will not!” Aeronik answered, jabbing his spear into the ground. “We have wandered these grounds for hours! It is clear my grandfather has lied about this just as he lies about all things to protect Mothric!”

I pointed my sword at him. “You’re not the only one who doesn’t want to be here, asshole!”

“See here, Fogwarth’s Fearsome Friends! You must sheath your tempers and open your eyes! Only the bond of our teamwork will assist us now!” Fogwarth said.

“Quiet,” Ak-Lok chimed in.

“Fearsome what? What is that now?” I shook my head. “Whatever. Listen, we are getting nowhere with this. This pale-ass bee doesn’t want to help so I say we let him go back to his gramps with his stinger between his legs like the whiny little puppy he is.”

“Fogwarth’s Fearsome Friends!” Foggy said again with even more enthusiasm. “Have you not viewed our Adventurer Party tab yet? Every good fighting force needs a ferocious title!”

“Huh?” I said, bringing up the menu as he said and seeing the party tab. I somehow grew even more annoyed by this. “For real? You could have named us anything and that’s what you picked?”

“I refuse to be aligned with such foolishness!” Aeronik shouted.

“Quiet,” Ak-Lok said again.

We were scrambling over one another to argue, each of us trying to out-voice the other. We were tired and filthy, each of us still trying to mask how emotionally drained we were on top of it. I didn’t care, I wanted to keep arguing with the bee. He doesn’t get to treat me like some kind of villain, shove his way into our party, then complain about the whole thing. No way. I don’t care who his gran-

The snap of a bowstring broke our arguing as a great arrow carved the air between us. It forced its way between us, causing us to step by as it flew out through the torn hole in the stone wall and vanished into the darkening mist. We were all silent for a split-second, and I wondered why the Hell the Golem chose to waste a perfectly good arrow just to split up our disagreement; I wondered that until I heard the wet puncture of the arrow colliding with raw flesh somewhere within the mist. The sound carried out, each of us hearing it and turning the face the direction it had come from.

“Ak, what is it?” I said under my breath, sword clenched tightly and abilities running through my mind in preparation to be cast.

Ak opened its Golem mouth to speak, but before a single word could pass its rocky teeth there was a long, writhing tendril of read spearing its way through the mist at a break-neck speed. The red whip, slick and glossy, was wrapped in pulsating thin blue veins that spread over it like ivy chewing away at an old New England home. It was fast, the tendril reaching out in a mere few blinks and wrapping around Aeronik with incredible accuracy and precision. We each charged on instinct, preparing to slash at the tendril and sever its connection to Aeronik, but whatever it was had been far too fast.

Like the tongue of some fucked up tree frog nightmare, the red tendril stuck to Aeronik and began to yank him out into the thick mist like a tasty little fly.

Or bee. Frogs eat bees, right?

“Gah!” Aeronik grunted, jamming his spear into the ground and fighting against the force pulling him in. It was no use, it was all happening too fast, and the annoying yellow jacket lost its grip on the spear and began to be dragged back into the mist. “Unhand me! Release me, creature!”

“Hurry!” Fogwarth said, beginning to charge in pursuit of the captured member of our party. His plump form shook the ground with each step as he charged forward with his Pearl sword. “We have to free him!”

I held my own sword high, but I did hesitate. “Uh… do we have to, though! Like… do we really? I mean he isn’t part of the main cast or anything. Sort of a red-shirt, right?”

“Yes! Yes you do!” Aeronik shouted, slowly fading away into the mist behind the wall. He dug his feet into the ground and pounded on the tendril in an effort to slow it down. “Get off of me! Get off!”

Ak loaded up another arrow and let it fly, hitting whatever hid up ahead.

“Have no fear, grandson of our Oracle! I, Fogwarth, The Blubberous Champion of the Orchard, will set you free!”

I’m going to kill that Titlesmith.

I sighed, but ultimately I gave in. With Ak at my side, Scrappy on my head, and Fogwarth leading our charge, we chased after the contorting and fighting form of the yellow jacket as he vanished into the pale white of the mist. Our footsteps fell like cannon fire, carrying us further away from the protection of Mothric’s wall and out into the blind wilderness that was the unknown mists.

Again.