Reed, Chora and I lay back on exercise mats, watching the stars above. It was still early evening, the air blue with only a hint of cool.
The way I saw them both had changed so much. They weren’t just confusingly dangerous yet alluring strangers—nor were they here just to smile and cater to my needs. They were erratic, angry and insecure. They loved me, and I loved them deeply.
Which made me wonder what was happening as summer changed to fall. The leaves rustled, a few of them edged with yellow.
…There wasn’t too much else I could wonder about there. Not without actually bringing it up in conversation to learn more about the wider world of Vencia, and I didn’t feel ready to do that. No more so than Reed felt ready to accuse herself of being “too weak” again, or Chora felt ready to, well, declare herself unworthy of love again. Maybe we were all sensitive.
So I lay back, in humanoid form, and listened as the people on either side of me talked about more comfortable subjects. Right now, that meant hearing them discuss whatever mystery novel Chora had read most recently. (Hey, I forgot she read those.)
“It turned out,” Chora said, “that the murderer had used some extremely rare and exotic poison and placed it on the stem of the rose.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” Reed said.
“Murder’s never fair.”
“No, I meant as a detective story. I mean…am I, the reader, supposed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of exotic poisons and their symptoms just to have a shot at figuring out who the culprit is?”
“…Hm. I never thought about it that way.” Chora scratched the back of her head. “To be fair, they did introduce this poison seven-eights of the way through the novel. Well, more like nineteen-twentieths.”
“That’s not fair at all.”
Chora sighed and shifted. “I gave up on outwitting these detectives long ago, Reed. It’s how I stay sane.”
Soon after she shifted, Reed shot upright. Chora stirred.
“Maow?!” I writhed.
Soon I was looking at what she was looking at: a silvery-blue butterfly coming right for us, nearly sparkling in the early night.
Reed was on her feet well before the rest of us. She reached behind her back, but when her hands came back, they weren’t holding her sword. Those had to be Spells in her fists. “You’d better not land on this roof,” she cried.
Chora put up her own fists. “So that’s her,” she said, squinting and wincing.
Obediently, the butterfly hovered near, but not on top of, the roof’s railing.
Tell them to relax. I don’t shed glitch scales involuntarily
“I WILL NOT TELL THEM TO RELAX,” I spelled out. “YOU STILL BEAT ME UP IN THIS HOUSE. NOT GOOD MEMORIES!”
Okay. Maybe that was excessive
We’ll fight outside next time and I’ll make repairs
This world’s money is gold?
I violently rolled my eyes and entire forehead. “ITS BASICALLY ALREADY REPAIRED.” And while I was curious about how much gold she might’ve gotten from Quests (or a corpse’s pockets), I wasn’t about to admit that. Instead, I moved on. “I WONT BE TOO MEAN, THOUGH. YOU DID A NICE THING. SCOUTING OUT A PLACE THAT WOULD BE HORRIBLY UNSAFE FOR ME. WHAT DID YOU FIND?”
The butterfly, gently flapping her wings, told what seemed to be the truth.
First there’s a big, steaming pit of constant aura the color of human blood. What starts as a slender tunnel expands more and more until it becomes an expanse as wide as the one that held the ruined castle, albeit with a bunch of rocky hills and ledges
I also found several plague rats down there
But if that were all, it wouldn’t be all that dangerous
We’d all be wiping the whole dungeon out right now.
No, that’s only the preamble
The aura from the pit was actually coming from myriad tiny holes, all smaller than my facehole
And I am ninety-nine-percent sure that these holes lead to our destination
“IF RUST IS THE COLOR OF TIME MAGIC…” My hand lingered on the board. I trailed off, wondering exactly what this meant. I looked to Reed and Chora, who were, of course, both battle-ready and distressed by the silence. Or maybe that look on their faces was just boredom, frankly.
Instead of summarizing what Logy had said just yet, I asked, “DID YOU FIND A WAY DOWN LOWER?”
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No.
A way could be made from anywhere, though. Just break the stone
I could try, but I’d run the risk of fighting enemies so strong they’d force me to lose Levels
“UM, WHAT ABOUT YOUR POWDER STUFF?”
Takes me and others anywhere I’ve been before in this life. If I choose
Has other applications, but those have a high chance of failure
Augh, I should’ve been writing this down with the help of my patented hand-eye coordination cantrip. Instead, now I had to sort through the knowledge and put it into a digestible form for my human friends.
At least something relieving came out of this. Specifically an enchanting smell of something like banana bread. Normally I didn’t like fruit, but tonight…truly Bayce and Heidschi were up to something devious downstairs.
I thanked Logy for her service, then asked Reed if I could invite her to “THAT THING TOMORROW.”
“Wha? Um…” She looked troubled for a few seconds, and I totally understood. But I also figured I knew her thought process. It went something like this: Logy is dangerous, and nobody likes her…but she’s also powerful, and could be helpful.
Reed decided, “Yes, but maybe not in the…you know. Technology might not play well with her, uh…”
“I GET IT,” I said, meaning “I get that was a blatant lie.” “LOGY, TOMORROW WERE ALL HEADED NORTHEAST IN THE WOOD TO FIGHT…STUFF. PROBABLY FLYTRAPS?”
“And whatever they constrict,” Reed noted.
“YEAH ITLL BE DEADLY AND SERIOUS! YOU SHOULD SEE AND MAYBE PITCH IN A LITTLE”
I would, except that still goes against my whole modus operandi
I blinked. “OK THEN ILL JUST KILL TONS MORE FLYTRAPS THAN YOU, PROVING MY SUPERIORITY AS A RIVAL”
That would prove nothing.
I’ve killed more, explored more, endured more than you.
I highly doubted all of those statements! All the more reason for me to smirk, cross my arms, and then instantly un-cross my arms as I spelled, “GOOD, SO IT SHOULDNT BE A PROBLEM FOR YOU TO BEAT ME THIS TIME EITHER”
You’re smiling in a way you don’t usually smile.
“YEAH ITS AN INVITATION”
…Okay, then.
Well, it’s completely ludicrous for you to think this one competition would make you better than me
I’ll see you tomorrow
She flew up and away, and I thought, with a grimace in my heart, that Sierra really had taught me well.
I put the spirit board away and did something with no one-to-one equivalent for cats: I pumped my fists. “Meow!” I said, meaning “yay, yay, I got Logy to do more useful things for us!”
Chora stared into the space where a butterfly had once been. “I choose to believe that everything you two just said was good.”
“I’m just hoping she didn’t question our intelligence again,” Reed said with a faint smile.
“YES YOURE BOTH RIGHT! LETS GO EAT BREAD N THEN ILL SAY MORE”
“It’s been a…surprisingly good day, hasn’t it?” Chora said.
“THATS NEWS?”
“It is for me.”
“OH…OH YEAH. IM SORRY STILL”
“No, it’s okay. At this point I’m just glad we were both honest about what we were feeling.”
I could accept that.
We rolled up the exercise mats together, and I was amazed at how conventionally helpful I was being, what with my meaty human hands and all. My SP hadn’t even run out yet! I mean, it was drastically low, but that was the price I paid for lying on my back with hands behind my head, rather than front paws somewhat awkwardly folded on my chest.
Then, once it was solidly dark, we began heading inside toward that intriguing scent. First Chora went down the ladder, then Reed—but she stopped and looked at me.
“Heidschi sleeping in the den…are you alright with that?”
Yeah! Duh! What a weird question, I thought, until I realized how little I’d truly shared with her.
“I LIKE SLEEPING IN UR ROOM A LOT MORE,” I told Reed. “THE PICTURE OF ME IN THE DEN IS AMAZING HILARIOUS AND FILLS ME WITH PRIDE ALL AT THE SAME TIME. BUT ITS NOTHING COMPARED TO JUST BEING WITH U”
She simply stared for a moment. Taken aback.
I actually laughed—a giggling half-meow I hadn’t known my vocal cords were capable of. “IM SORRY I DONT TELL U THESE IMPORTANT THINGS”
“U-um, well, the most important thing, obviously, is straightening out everything about the threats to the Vencian Wood. And the being who kidnapped me. So it’s beyond understandable that you wouldn’t tell me”—she laughed, a dead giveaway for nerves—“something as minor as how much you like sleeping in my—in the foot of my—at the foot of my bed.”
My eyebrows twitched. “ITS NOT MINOR!” Rrgh, I wished I could clasp her hands in mine as I said this next part, but until I had another cantrip, I couldn’t multitask like that. Instead, I just said, “UR THE GREATEST ND I LOVE U!”
Reed laughed again. “We’re all here for you!”
“NO NO NO I SAID I LOVE U SPECIFICALLY! DONT ROPE IN EVERYONE ELSE!”
Oops. That made her even more nervous. She was definitely blushing, and blushing hard. Her eyes made her look dazzled, but less like a fantasy princess and more like a deer in the headlights.
“OH NO CRAP SORRY! DONT BE NERVOUS!!!”
Overcome with laughter, she reached up from the ladder and hugged me so hard I was yanked off my feet.
“Mreaow!”
“Sorry!”
“Maow!” I said—don’t apologize!
“Fine, I’m not sorry for this one!” She pulled me in further and squeezed so tight she groaned.
I swung my arms around her shoulders and squeezed all I could.