Not far from a mop and bucket, a dish had been filled with more flavor cards.

“Mint, speckleberry, alpine grape, caramel, buttermilk, quartz. It’s all there!” Bayce said. “I’m sorry about what happened with the chocolate, but surely there’s something in here you find less gross.”

“THX BUT NO THX,” I spelled on a board that sat with me on a sofa. My body was still drained from deep, sneak-up-from-behind nausea, and once I’d sent the message, I flopped forward and yawned.

“That’s fine, no trouble.” Bayce filed the cards away, but not before sliding one in her mouth. I shuddered.

Reed came trotting over with a cat-sized tub of steaming water. I reeled—my instincts told me she was about to dunk me inside in the name of healing. Instead, she took out a washcloth, squeezed it out, and turned back to me. “There are healing salts in this, maybe it can…oh, wait…I’m not sure you like water.”

I rolled over to spell. “ITS FINE,” I said. “DO IT”

She dabbed at my face with the cloth, and for once, the water evaporating off my forehead wasn’t just cooling, but reinvigorating. If I wasn’t mistaken, so was the steam filling my nose from the tub. Was it really just, like, standard Epsom salt, or a magical blend you’d only find in Vencia?

She also offered cinnamon rolls to me. The idea of food made me gag.

“Or would you prefer rabbi—”

I hissed her quiet. While I didn’t mean to come off so snappy, I just…no thank you.

For the past few minutes, three strange and as-yet-unexplored things had been lingering around: I hadn’t brought up our “wonderful time” with the lepidot, Bayce hadn’t brought up any of the cantrips we’d discussed lately, and a mysterious guitar had been sitting around. Now, as Reed sat nervously next to me and Bayce sat across from us, one piece of the puzzle came into play at last. If she’d played the bass guitar years and years ago at the Coming of the Moon, I could only imagine how good she’d be on that guitar by her ankle now.

“This’ll help soothe you,” she said, bringing her legs up to sit criss-cross, guitar on her lap. She gave the strings some experimental plucks, a few scratches with long fingernails, and then strummed…

She was just whacking the strings. There was no attempt to sound good or melodic, and Bayce knew it, bobbing herkily-jerkily to the herky-jerky beat.

Reed turned to me with concern. She raised her voice to say, “Do you want me to cover your ears?”

I shook my head. Yes, this did slightly hurt my brain…but I was perversely interested.

Apparently Reed got tired of it before I did. She reached for the guitar, right over the tub of Epsom salt water, and almost fell in. Bayce cackled and pulled the intsrument away—they were both laughing.

I had enough strength to rise and pul the Spirit Board closer to me. “BAYCE WHY ARENT U GOOD AT THIS???? CHORA SAID U ALL…WAIT WHERES CHORA”

“Remember she went to the village?” Bayce said. The guitar was still hoisted over her head.

Reed had frozen mid-reach. “It has been a few days, but that’s not unusual. She’s likely gathering information, and more of it than she expected to find.”

“What’s it matter? The gray powder is gone, it’s dissipated. We’re all having fun now. The good cheer of a warm house, the enchanting smells of Reed’s expertly crafted baked goo—I mean, non-nauseating products…” Bayce’s nose took in a theatrical breath. “And the briny smell of the sea, kind of…” She sat back again, putting the guitar in her lap. “She’s fine where she is. Come to think of it, she may have found another place.”

“Um…” Reed winced. “Sure, she might have. But she’s fully welcome here.”

Bayce blew some pesky strands of hair out of her face. “Pff. Whatever. She’ll be here if she’ll be here.”

In the past, I’d wondered if Chora and Bayce would be more relaxed and a bit easier to get along with if they weren’t staying with each other, getting in each other’s way. Since then, I’d realized that no, it was a constant sticking point. Well, maybe for them, it was just business as usual. But it was a thorn in my side, and I wasn’t even supposed to be involved.

The more it happened, the less I could stand it. Yet…there was nothing I could do about it, was there?

“So this guitar.” Bayce pulled our attention back. “It’s not mine. I thought you’d know by the smear of pink paint over here and…here.”

“Accidental,” Reed threw in.

“THE STAINS LOOK GOOD THO. SOMEHOW”

Bayce chuckled. “‘Stains’? That’s low. I bet all wild animals think of most art as a series of stains.”

“NO WE DONT!!!” I said indignantly. “ART IS…SOME OF IT IS STAINS. OK ITS TRUE. BUT REED PAINTS FEELINGS AND ENERGY AND HER ANIMALS LOOK LIKE ANIMALS”

“Thank you,” Reed said with a bashful bow. Then she cried out—and I ducked—as Bayce lobbed the guitar across the table at her. “Yipe!”

Her hands scrambled to hold it…but once they did, their hold on the instrument was so natural.

I glared at her. “REED HOW MANY TALENTS DO U HAV”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Reed wouldn’t answer, only giggling and looking frantically in any direction but at me and Bayce. Meanwhile, Bayce rattled things off: “Carpentry, plumbing, anything considered ‘home ec,’ swordplay, fencing, foundational gymnastics. Childhood farm stuff. That and she knows a lot about art and games. I think we all wish we could marry her.”

“H-hey!” Reed cried as if the whole speech had been a litany of insults. “Most of that stuff is only foundational! I just have a lot of spare time in the woods, alright? I’m not a mage, for instance. And I’m not an academic. It’s not like I’ve done any one thing with…dedication.”

Bayce shrugged and grinned. “One skill you don’t have is the power to take a compliment.”

“U CAN WORK ON IT!”

“Now, play something!”

The two of them waffled around a bit more, Reed hesitant to show her skills after years of disuse (and without a guitar pick). But eventually, Bayce tossed her a pick and Reed sighed deeply.

“Here it goes,” she said.

Finally, a non-horrible new sensory experience today.

Reed began to play. The sound was simple, stripped-down, even earthy, and the twang of the strings under her swaying fingers was…well…I just ran out of truthful compliments.

O-on second thought, the melody was there, just buried under lots of stumbles. Like the tune was too fast and had too many notes, and her mind had only pulled half of them out of storage.

Thirty second in, she stopped with an outpouring of embarrassed laughter. Bayce laughed along. Rude! As Reed set the guitar away on the floor, I rubbed against her leg, trying to pluck up her spirits.

I wasn’t sure if I succeeded or not, because the next thing that happened was Reed rushing off to the kitchen. The last phase of pastries was done, and now that I felt less queasy, I gave permission for it to be brought to the den table. Everything could now be dished out and brought over in a buffet so blatantly big that all three of us—four of us—couldn’t finish it. Not even in three days.

But the sight was still beautiful. All the confections and spires of frosting stacked into three towers across three platters. And the cinnamon rolls reserved for me had a place of honor!

“Let’s eat,” Reed said with conviction, “and let’s goof off, and then let’s talk about something important.”

***

“…so you see, it’s really not that complicated once you start playing. All the scary big numbers are there to facilitate the journey!”

“As long as you are unafraid to explain the rules fifty times,” Bayce said, finishing a pastry filled with a frosting that smelled like rose, “then yes, I will play it with you sometime.”

Reed pouted. “You don’t seem very enthusiastic.”

“Don’t you have other games? Like, I’ve been waiting for something that uses figures, and a board. Didn’t we used to play stuff like that?”

“Well, storygames can use a board as a player aid, but then players’ imaginations can’t…”

I listened to the back-and-forth. Pleasant memories of the time I played a game with Reed came back to me—it went without saying that as long as she was running it, I’d try any game once. When the conversation died down with Bayce making a noncommittal noncommitment to maybe playing Cross-Universal Star Crashers, they turned to business.

“Taipha,” Bayce said, “you’ve been suspiciously silent. Could it be because you were unable to retrieve all the parts for the hand-eye coordination cantrip?”

“Mroww,” I said, shaking my head. She was only half-right.

Truth be told, that cantrip no longer seemed so important to me. Certainly it’d have its edge cases, but if its main purposes were to help me manipulate a painful sword in humanoid form, write better notes, and unlock doors, missing a single ingredient for who-knows-how-long didn’t bother me so much.

“I GOT EVERYTHING,” I said, “EXCEPT VINES. DIDNT SEE A SINGLE FLYTRAP! WHERE R THEY???”

“Uh, didn’t you go northeast?”

“YEAH OF COURSE! …WAIT NO, KINDA JUST WENT EAST”

“There’s your problem.”

“What about the other one?” Reed said.

“Right. The intelligence cantrip!” Bayce whipped it out, quite literally. It hit the table and barely avoided smacking against a miniature custard pie. “Sorry if it’s a bit low-impact and not that stylish. This was more a test to make sure that, you know, it actually works without giving you brain damage. Give it a try when you’re ready.”

With my paw, I dragged it over. The cantrip would snap around my neck, much like the first one, but instead of a gemstone, it bore a few cockleshells and one half of an exceedingly small clamshell in the middle.

I put it on and checked my Stats. It remained to be seen whether this would work in combination with the Debug Blade, and I wasn’t quite ready to try that, but this was a start:

INT 98 (+5)

So the cantrip gave me a flat boost. As long as that applied after the Debug Blade subtracted points, that was perfect! Well, 5 points in a Stat was never “perfect,” but you win some, you lose some.

That being said, it would all be for naught if wearing this just ended up giving me its own headache. Then stacking the two would just provide me a double headache, and I’d be recovering for about eight hours after prolonged use instead of four. So to try and rule that out, I’d wear this cantrip for at least a day straight and see what happened.

“IT WORKS GREAT!” I told Bayce. “UR INCREDIBLE”

“Thanks! Can you do algebra now?”

“STILL NO”

We moved on to the more nerve-wracking subject of what-all Logy did and what the heck to do about it. Fortunately, we weren’t as anxious about the subject as we’d been before. It was distant, literally, and I also got the feeling that Reed and Bayce were confident I’d get strong enough to take her on if she did happen to reappear. Probably too confident?

“SHE WAS REINCARNATED FROM EARTH. LIKE ME. BUT MORE EVIL, ALTHO I DONT RLY THINK SHES TRYING TO BE EVIL. JUST RLY SUCKS AT BEING GOOD. ANYWAY SHE WANTS ME TO HELP SAVE HER ARKMAGUS, WHOS TRAPPED BENEATH THE FOREST. AND I DONT THINK THEY CAN TALK TO EACH OTHER. SINCE SHE SAID HER SYSTEM IS BROKEN, W/EV THAT MEANS, AND THAT HER ARKMAGUS LEFT HER INSTRUCTIONS INSTEAD OF JUST…SAYING THEM”

Reed was stern: “What does this mean for you?”

I hesitated. “SHE WANTS ME TO HELP HER FIGHT DOWN HERE N THATS IT”

“You’re going to do it?”

“I DONT HAVE A CHOICE”

“Yes you do. You need to remember that there are people Bayce and I can call on to help you, people who are stronger than all of us combined. We have contact with my advance mage mom and other people at her university—it’s their off season. As soon as I tell them how overwhelmed we are, they’ll be here. We even have DeGalle. Taipha, people are getting actively invested in this…this mess. It’s shaping up to be a mess.”

Bayce looked pensive. “I don’t know, Reed. If we misjudge the danger here and pull tons and tons of people in, either Taipha and Logy will just kill the villains themselves really quickly, or tons and tons of people will die.”

“Alright, fine.” Reed sounded surprisingly frustrated by this—like she didn’t want to brook any argument, for fear she might explode. “We’ll continue this thread once we have at least a taste of how strong the threats underneath the Vencian Wood are. Or even what they are. Does she know?”

“SHE DOESNT KNOW. WELL, SHE SAID EVIL PLANTS, EVIL FISH”

By the look on Reed’s face, I could tell she wanted to complain about how unhelpful that was.

“When do you see her again? Do you know?”

“WANTS TO SPAR WITH ME TOMORROW. OUTSIDE THIS TIME”

That in itself was an uncomfortable idea, on account of her being able to murder me. “…When she visits you, tell her to learn more,” said Reed. “Command her to.”

I nodded. I’d do my best.