I tucked away the Mantle within my flesh, just in case this all was a ruse. After seeping out a small amount of blessed oils over their Seed, thereby preventing its degradation, that other precious piece of Kami followed. My interstitial flesh flowed around it, cupping them near to my valuable organs. Nightshade gathered up the minor river opals, while Sage satisfied herself by ordering the geckos to fan her with reeds.

They did so, happily. Still suspicious, I asked about their ‘betrayal’ of their Kami to Mookt, and then betraying him in turn.

“Those two?” The queen sniffed. She, it seemed had very little patience for fools. And she wielded that term most broadly. “We would have gladly given away the Mantle to the stupid catfish! But the two fought up and down the river, destroying our original home and ending up so far away we had no idea where they were!”

Nightshade and I exchanged a glance. He shrugged. I didn’t let my guard down. My next question was about the production of weapons and armor.

The king sighed. “Calling these armaments at all is misleading. Here, watch.”

The pudgy gecko king plucked up one of the discarded tridents. Without any apparent effort, he used his tiny hands to snap off one of the three prongs. Then he snapped the shaft. “This is clay shaped with camay. It seems threatening and it glitters, but it is heavier than it is useful.”

“Do you know how tiresome it would be to kill all the crayfish that wash ashore?” The queen sounded irritated. “Better to scare them off.”

To that, I genuinely had no rebuttal.

When the geckos offered, I accepted their invitation for a tour of their home. If they were going to actually betray us, it would be once we were isolated. My jelly vibrated, communicating my intentions to my fellows. Despite both clearly engaged with other things, they both answered; their focus didn’t waver. Well, Sage’s might have waivered a bit, but her Stats were the highest; she would recover quickly. So I followed the gecko ruling couple down into their burrow, my head scraping against the ceiling.

Not that I liked being bait, but my recent increases in Strength, Health, and defensive Stats meant I felt relatively confident of surviving, should I need to. The geckos might have demonstrated the decorative nature of their weapons, but they might still have other tricks. I remained vigilant.

Ah… I have a paranoia problem… I thought sadly. The metal gears in my head clicked once, assuring me it was the world’s fault, for being so fraught with danger.

My mood, if anything, soured further.

We followed a low tunnel for a short distance, but then we crossed a threshold into a wider cavern. I braced myself; if the ambush came, it would be here. My muscles were tense as I ducked down and stepped through, my tail purposefully relaxed-

I gaped. “Holy shit.”

“We apologize for the state of the place,” The gecko king said. “As my guppysuckle said-”

“Tedbert!” The Queen hissed. “Pet names are for the playhouse!”

“Ah, yes.” The King flushed. I felt oddly disgusted, hoping that playhouse wasn’t what they called their bedroom. “It was only a short time ago we relocated. This… is the best we can do with only a short stay here.”

The glittering cavern all around me was gorgeous. It was a Great Hall, ripped out of medieval times, somehow thrown together in a mud burrow along the river. The floor had been remade, somehow, into tile, covered in geometric shapes done in yellow, orange, and green. The walls were studded with minor river opals. Also, they had built up sizable braziers constructed with a partially translucent substance that appeared very close to colored glass.

My eyes flicked to the tables, to the primitive stools, to the pottery bowls and cups sitting in neat rows on reed shelves-

“You made all this?” I whispered.

“What you see is camay,” The King said, a note a pride creeping into his voice. “All practice camay, but few understand the beauty in their actions. To live is to breathe life into all we touch. All touch is literal and also spiritual. We Gyekki have been in this cavern for a short time, but even that brush is enough for the world to be changed.

“In our wisdom, our ancestors outlined the philosophy of camay. It is written and we follow its tenets to this day. It is why, we revered the Kamis, from the beginning. Because they are the personifications of camay. They are the aperture of touch, which is life, which is art, between the people and the land. We build because we are. We will never die, because some of our precious self lingers in all we have touched.”

I felt a strange stirring in my heart. Much more than any of the religions of my past life, this way of thinking spoke to me. We build because we are.

“Of course,” The sour Queen reasserted herself. She gave her husband a disappointed glance. “All in the world is not beauty and life. There is also muck and blood. Do not think us unaware of the possibility of fleshy death.”

“So long as our camay exists, so do we,” The King declared. The Queen rolled her eyes.

I thought about a second chance at life, one where I lived without regrets. I thought about the city I wanted to build, a place in the wetlands where the different groups could gather together and interact. A place, perhaps not beyond the reach of the bloody philosophies of taking and growing, but at least above them.

I looked around at the pottery and furniture present and felt a great deal of admiration. And a little bit of greed.

In my second chance, I won’t blind myself to the possibilities. I’ll listen, adjust, and create something better than what came before. And these geckos…

Opening my mouth, I prepared to make a pitch for the geckos to come join our association underneath To and Fro. Yet then I remembered that I wasn’t alone, and that my strengths lay elsewhere. My jelly pulsed.

A minute later, Sage slithered into the little cavern and looked around. She was all smiles as she took in the decorations. “How quaint.”

Over the next half hour, Sage described the sort of horrific world in which we now lived. She whispered of Mookt’s thirst for vengeance, the growing population of bloodthirsty squirrels in the area, and the pathetic tragedy of weapons that splintered when your foes called your bluff. I saw the blood draining from the King and Queen's faces. Meanwhile, the rest of their retinue, which had been lurking behind us, were entirely still.

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Because, very truly, Sage had undulated her tails until she seemed to have become the personification of all the inevitable woe of life.

Despite her Chimera Core form, I could see Sage in all her previous life’s majesty. She was a Skyrage, speaking with an almost chant-like cadence. Her words were not simply opinions about the world, but a prophecy. The force with which she spoke wrote all these threats into existence.

“A pebble kicked from the summit might be small, but as it clacks and cracks its way down the mountainside, it ushers a stampeding parade of brethren,” Sage said. “The Kami’s have reawakened. Our Kami rises to primacy… and all others covet even an ounce of flesh, to cut into that advantage. Pray your camay is enough to earn the mercy of a swift death when they invade to plunder.”

Yet then, almost as an afterthought, Sage pivoted to me and mentioned the long walk back to our sanctuary, bemoaning ambushes from zombie toads, fat beavers, and general malaise of death that spreads across the land.

“This Sanctuary,” The Queen interjected. I can almost hear the capitalization in her voice, desperate for hope. “What is it?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t like it,” Sage waved a tail. “It’s a glorified trading exchange. I mean, the Kami’s temple is there. As well as Brother Tallum’s newly developed infrastructure. But you are satisfied here, no? Don’t worry about it.”

It took only five minutes for the geckos to begin begging for protection on their passage to Sanctuary.

Watching the process, I felt something warm multiplying in my heart. Okay, the methods are a bit manipulative. But … with their labor, I can really build a home here in the wetlands that I’m proud of. Just like I have my siblings' help, and the spiderlings, this will be easier with allies. We can create… well, maybe Sage has the right of it.

We can create a Sanctuary, and polish it until the whole wetlands covets entrance.

The geckos gathered up their possessions, soon standing in line with woven reed knapsacks like we had liberated a reptilian orphanage. I couldn’t help but be impressed by how thoroughly they had stripped down the art and pottery from their temporary home.

Definitely, as a laborforce-

Tsk, will I need to figure out wages…?

As we began the journey back, Nightshade cast me an amused glance. “Did not one of the Kami heads directly request you satisfy yourself with simply accomplishing the mission without embellishment?”

“Yup,” I said cheerily. Sage cackled next to me.

The first part of the journey was a quiet one, with us, the geckos, and the sound of wind through reeds. I wondered if the peaceful, scenic side of the wetlands on display would make the geckos wonder whether they really needed to follow us. Especially because I was considering renting them a stretch of land… and requiring them to build their own housing as payment for that rental.

Must… resist… impulse… to become a slumlord…!

Tallum, you are better than this. Think of what Mimi would say.

My slightly guilty daydreams, and the peacefulness of the situation, were cut off by a sharp notification.

Your Skill (Earned) Detection has grown to Level 25(+29).

My armored spine straightened. I rose to the fat toes of my new legs. Nightshade and Sage sensed my reaction and also stilled, gesturing for the geckos to do the same. My Innate Mana Attunement sniffed the air, but couldn’t find any strange flows of energy. For a few seconds, only the reeds around us moved.

Just when I began to wonder if Detection was misfiring again, three Reanimated Bloat Toads hopped out of the brush. Their eyes swiveled sideways in the sockets, locking in on all the living they had stumbled upon.

Before the geckos could even panic, Nightshade roared forward. His squirming body kicked up a wave of mud over the King and Queen of geckos. Then he was amongst the toads, his Heron-head, stabbing forward. I felt a flash of Mana and then the body of the toad tore itself apart to get away from the beak of the Corrupted Bog Heron.

The other two toads hissed. But weirdly, they hopped sideways, as though trying to avoid Nightshade and get at the rest of us.

One of Nightshade’s serpent heads exploded in size until it could chomp down on the toad and rip it in half. The other toad mewed and spat out a tongue, but the squirrel head totem pole gnawed its way through the toad’s front half.

Just as I could feel the twinge of disappointment in Sage’s jelly that Nightshade had claimed them all, four more toad mobs shambled their way out of the reeds. As I looked at them, I twitched. Gymellicka… I thought you wanted to handle the problem? Is the undead plague spreading again?

Sage danced forward. Her tails slithered forward and cut like blades, reaping the limbs of the necrotic creatures. Which left the torsos to her, which she took great pleasure in squelching. Meanwhile, I remained still. Through unspoken communication, I lingered back. My eyes might be on my siblings fighting, but my energy sonar pulses through the groups of geckos behind me, watching for any treachery.

They seemed a meek people upon first meeting, but hadn’t Mookt thought the same thing? Were they planning on stabbing us Chimera Cores in the back, given the opportunity?

The geckos just clustered closer behind me, trembling in what I assumed to be fear as my monstrous brother and sister minced the enemies. They didn’t reveal any hidden weapons, activate any strange blessings, or even make any attempt to sneak away while we were distracted.

Well, maybe they are just looking for weak spots on my armored back?

Once the toads were defeated, we moved forward again. We made quick time back to our base, our suddenly named Sanctuary. However-

Your Skill (Earned) Mana Attunement has grown to Level 18.

That’s weird, I thought. The energy… seems less thick than when we departed?

I removed the pitch reed, the Mantle, and the massive Minor River Opal covered in my Blessing, the Seed, and passed them both to Nightshade to return to the temple. I wondered if we would be able to random the Seed back to the Plasm of the Kami to the South, or whether we would let it waste away.

Shivering at the heavy decisions that lay across my shoulders, I gestured for the geckos to follow.

“We are in the restructuring phase,” I announced, gesturing to the small blight road and the area cleared of reeds, which would be our central plaza. Thirty geckos followed behind me, their feet making small impressions in the mud. “Tearing down the old to shape the new. Now, this portion-”

I led the geckos to an area tucked between the mud mounds of Gymellicka and her toads to the North and the spiderling zone. A few spiderlings scuttled forward to greet me and waved a foreleg. The geckos watched them curiously as I waved back. “This portion currently has no claimants. However, it is an extremely valuable property, both due to the proximity to the central hub and also… uh, to the spiderling facility here.”

“What is this?” The Queen whispered, her eyes flicking from the dense webbing, to the pile of nutrient-rich muck on one side, and the flowing water on the other.

“I… cannot tell you that,” I said. Mostly, because I didn’t know. And also because I didn’t want these new arrivals to have any strange experiments of their own with my oils.

“We accept this location,” The King spread his arms happily. “A new home, such resources-”

“This place is fine. Just fine,” The Queen hastily cut in. I might not be Sage with a lifetime of experience negotiating, but her bright eyes gave her desperation away. “Hum, while we are on the subject, is it possible to purchase some of that spider-silk-”

“Brother Tallum,” Nightshade manifested at the far end of the area, causing a few nearby geckos to jump.

I took great pleasure in waving a squirrel hand at the geckos. “Oh, we will need to continue the negotiations at another time. For now, familiarize yourself with the area. There is also a communal fly farm in the middle area if you require sustenance. Help yourselves.”

I clapped Nightshade on the back when we moved away. “Excellent timing. They will be shaking in their- well. Their scales. And you- wait, is something actually wrong?”

“A storm has washed upon our shores, Brother Tallum.” Nightshade intoned. “While we were away, an odious pilferer stalked into our home. You might have tasted the scent of vulnerability in the air. All of the Mantles that we have acquired for our Kami have been stolen.”

“What!” I bounced up, unable to contain my shock. “How could that happen?”

“...Apparently your Isolation Arrays were too effective,” Nightshade shook his head. “The Kami didn’t detect the loss until our land had already begun to suffer. If the Mantles aren’t recovered within the day, our Kami’s Plasm will perish.“