While Reed and the gremlin watched the sights outside, Bayce actually became preoccupied with asking the new girl a gamut of yes-no questions to make sure she really knew what nodding and shaking her head meant. Was the sky blue? Were her feet touching the floor?

As they got off, Bayce had a sudden suspicion. Passing Outfronters and huts on either side of a dirt road, she asked, “Have you been a gremlin for all your life?”

The gremmy girl shook her head immediately.

“Aha! Okay. So you were cursed?”

She blinked. Then she started moving her head in a circular motion.

“Nonono. Move your shoulders up and down to signify that you don’t know.”

She just kept circulating.

“Bayce,” Reed sighed, “maybe this is a bit much?”

“No, but we’re getting somewhere! There might be a way to help my gremlin friend and your gremlin girlfriend break free from some kind of a curse! And this, um…” Bayce gestured toward the gremlin, and gestured and gestured until she finally snapped her fingers. “Wait! You’re saying both a ‘yes’ and a ‘no.’”

She nodded exuberantly.

Bayce started clapping. “Yay! I love linguistics, this is so exciting!”

Reed still wasn’t liking it. “I suppose as long as you’re not treating her like a pet…”

“Don’t worry, she’s gotten no treats for right answers.”

That actually made the gremlin girl frown. Distinctly frown, with her naturally upturned lips, for the first time. “Mraow,” she said.

“…We can get treats for right answers!”

Meanwhile, Reed got the distinct impression that the gremlin girl—or Gremphla, as she’d started calling her in her head—had no idea about the thin line between friendship and mockery…but this was a concern for another day. Frankly, the girl was having fun.

Until suddenly, seconds later, she wasn’t.

But that wasn’t Bayce’s fault.

A rupture appeared in reality itself. First the gash was filled with nothing but space-black void. Then it refracted and bent, shining like a star on bismuth.

And right in the middle of the stream of people.

Shrieks and howls filled the air, some from the villagers, many distinctly not. Sounds like teeth across glass cut through what had otherwise been a splendid spring day.

Then the rupture disappeared, along with many of the villagers.

Reality had sprung a leak and just as quickly patched it. For a split second, anyone with the bird’s-eye view of the lifts could see a distinct straight line of destruction running straight through the winding road, where no people or homes or plants were anymore. Nothing but settling dust.

Reed, Bayce and Taipha saw it all too—none too clearly, but more than enough to know there was trouble of a magical sort.

Split second over. The crowd moved, reacting again.

In the world of Quencia, magical disasters were not always worth hysteria. A few people cried, but others simply hurried away, stared around, or raised their voices in mere alarm. Like a tornado had touched down in its season.

Reed and Bayce stayed firm. It was Taipha who panicked.

An involuntary yowl left her throat. She shivered all over. Just looking at her, Reed knew that her every instinct was to run away.

But she wasn’t running. Maybe because she’d reached out and clutched Reed’s arm.

An odd feeling of pride came upon Reed. Was the gremlin girl sensing her strength and courage?

But maybe that was just wishful thinking. Either way, thinking about this kind of thing wasn’t appropriate in a dangerous situation like this.

Reed enveloped Taipha in a sort of hug as she ran away, following a crowd away from the rupture. She murmured, “Don’t worry, we’re leaving.”

“What?!”

She looked over her shoulder and, begrudgingly, stopped.

“Bayce!” she called out. The ent hadn’t followed her at all. “You’re not thinking of…”

Waiting for the rift to open again? She left that part unsaid.

Behind every rift was a dungeon. By the looks of this one, some unknowable entity was attempting to tear open a portal to their personal ice-and-space palace.

Reed was an amateur adventurer at best. Bayce too, technically. The Gravity Tree was a hivemind, sure—every ent passed on info to all the rest in the tree—but rarely did she herself fight. And while Reed loved her to pieces, she could get overenthusiastic.

Worse, if she did decide to brave that dungeon, Reed was going after her. That was a foregone conclusion.

Yes, Bayce could die, but at least the Gravity Tree could reclaim her memories and produce a new Bayce branch. Gnomes just straight-up perished.

So Reed stared at Bayce with challenging eyes. Was she really gonna do it?

…Bayce reconsidered. She came back, but with a serious look on her face.

“Okay, fine. We wouldn’t be prepared for this anyway.”

With Taipha in one arm, Reed reached out with the other, and rubbed Bayce’s hand with her own. “Thank you.”

“But we have to try it tomorrow.”

“…Come again?”

Bayce gestured to Taipha. Her shivering had gone down, but not the fear in her wide, darting eyes. “I’m just putting the pieces together. I mean, look at the trauma there! That’s deep trauma! Deep and specific! Bet she was trapped in the last gasp of a sealing rift. Kind of like an elevator door closed on her foot.”

“Come again?”

“Gremlin girl, did you recognize that rift?—See, yeah, exactly.” Bayce began her self-reply even before Taipha started headbanging.

In that moment, Reed was more thankful than ever that she and Bayce’s minds worked so differently. She thought she’d been trying to do the best thing for this girl, but she’d ended up ignoring what might’ve been the most important deed of all.

Time to be heroes!

***

Thip! Thip! Thip!

Reed launched arrows faster than ever before. With a new determination, she launched iron arrowheads into a row of apples. Her misses were many, but at least they hit the inert wood of a cart behind them.

Thip! An arrow hit an apple dead-center. Reed, single-minded, kept firing.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

The light of the forest was dwindling, but a few candles set alight by a Fireball sat on a great broad stump nearby. Also on that stump were the leavings of a delicious meal, or a disturbing one, depending on how you thought about graphic raw sparrow.

The strange thing was, despite her focus, Reed wasn’t un-distracted at all. More than ever she was thinking about that catlike girl. Only now that girl came with a purpose: to get as good as possible, and help her as much as possible. Talking to her and learning anything in detail was still like pulling teeth, but at least now she and Bayce had a direction. Not only that, but “Gremphla” had her own determination to wreak some dungeon vengeance.

It was like a feedback loop: Reed chunked arrows into apples until they looked like porcupines, and that inspired the catgirl to run off at speed, coming back at intervals, always ragged but victorious like some barbarian queen…and that inspired Reed to work harder…

Taipha was returning now. It was the smell of blood that told Reed, even before the footsteps. As wrong as she felt any killing was, far be it from her to tell this gremlin not to feed herself or seek her own fulfillment. Two rough-hewn sandals stopped, and a body was dropped. Something that sounded impossibly big.

Reed let her bow fall to her side. She turned. Taipha had brought back a wolf.

We are extremely ready, Reed thought.

She didn’t know what to say. She gulped and stood there for several seconds. What began as a magical, awe-inspiring moment became awkward. So, as much to clear the air as testify to Taipha that she was great and mighty, Reed coughed, then pulled out the blade secured to her back.

This was her primary weapon, dissecter of many stumps, survivor of many battles. Humbly, she ducked her head and offered it for the coming battle.

Taipha blinked, her smile placid as usual despite all the blood smeared across her face and hands, and spattering her shirt front. Maybe she would reject it wholesale—she already had her claws.

To Reed’s surprise, she accepted the gift. And the gift glowed with a golden charge the likes of which, Reed knew, could only be equaled by the sun…

***

Thip thip! Sh-h-h-rk!

Floods of merciless demons fell before their arrows and blade. Their silver, mirrory exoskeletons exploded into dust on impact, filling the air with a miasma that would have choked Reed and Taipha if not for the mage constantly swishing her hands in the air to circulate it.

“You are like ten times cooler than me right now,” Bayce observed from the back of the party. At least she had come in basic, vaguely cool bronze armor. But all of them had, so at best, that only made them even.

Reed called back over her shoulder, “You’re literally bending gravity.”

Bayce blinked upward. “Oh, right. Yeah, you’d think this would be wind. This shouldn’t even make any sense. Yet it’s happening.”

As she said that, approximately fifty-six more demons came scrambling down the silver incline of a dungeon whose every surface shone like a finely polished, incredibly disorienting mirror. Reed’s arrows and occasional Bonfire spell, Taipha’s radiant, arcing blade, the graceful movements of both—they all flickered in the mirrors to their left, right, floor, and ceiling, reflecting Reeds and Taiphas from here to eternity…

And thus they made their progress—Reed chuckling from time to time with a burst of fresh confidence, Taipha beaming when she pulled off a hard trick (or fell flat on her face)—until they hit what could only be the final chamber.

Three mystical young ladies stood before the ornate sapphire door. Wrought edges with the color and sheen of silverfish curled into the handles. This door was sized for humans, so its handle was significantly higher than they were tall.

Hundreds upon hundreds of demons had been slain mere moments ago. The gravitational currents of Quencia itself had been twisted. But here was a puzzle they struggled to solve.

Bayce stared longingly up at the handle, grasped at it, tilted her head like a child pretending to crush someone’s head between their fingers. Sorry, Bayce, but perspective? It doesn’t work that way.

Reed was more industrious. She stood on her tippy-toes and reached upward with her bow. If the end of it could tap that handle, then maybe, just maybe, she could twist it and shove. “Ihh,” she groaned, over and over. “Ihh…”

Taipha stood still, taking in the problem.

(She was, you see, originally a cat, and cats can’t really open doors. This problem had assailed her many times in her past. And the solution was so clear to her!)

As she traipsed twenty strides backward, Reed and Bayce didn’t even notice, so entranced by the problem were they. Then Taipha took a running start. She ran, galloped, and finally leaped—

“Ow!”

“Yeargh!”

Reed and Bayce’s heads made for a nice springboard.

—and she managed to grab that handle, albeit with the rest of her body swinging. Soon she used that to her advantage, kicking her legs out harder to carry the tip of the handle down. They all heard the click of the latch. This door was not locked, there was no key; the boss was waiting for them.

Reed’s eyes shimmered. Bayce’s eyes glowed.

“Thank you!” Reed raved as Taipha sailed back down to earth, almost into her arms.

But given the roar that rocked the mirror-ground, they had no time for celebration.

Inside was a something part jester and part war-tank. A head with a harlequin’s jingling cap smiled down at them through a gray mask, with crescent mouth and eyes. Behind the mask holes burned a furnace of malice, an intense red aura glare that contrasted with the chipped sapphire paint of the rest of the machine. Along the hull were several incredibly deadly weapons…maybe. They were wacky wavy metal tentacles with gloved hands at the ends.

Yet nobody was laughing, especially not when Taipha, at first sight of the thing, froze up and nearly dropped Reed’s blade.

The jester laughed, and each laugh sent a puff of aura-steam through an otherwise pitch-black vault. “Who dares disturb Ygele?” said the final boss, arms twisting in midair as if preparing to wring their necks.

Reed took a defiant step forward. With one of her few remaining arrows, she pointed in the jester-tank’s face. “I do,” she intoned in her most formal voice. “I am Reed the Gnome, defender of Quencia and all its inhabitants. Reverse what you have done to this gremlin here or you will not live much longer.”

“No,” said the jester.

“Then you would ask for death?”

“Sure,” said the jester. “If that’s what you think is happening.” Ygele’s hands did look awfully strong and wringy right now.

“So be it,” she said, nocking an arrow. “Then face the wrath o—”

Fwing!

The first attack to sail through the air was not Reed’s arrow. Luckily, it wasn’t a gloved hand, either.

A blue apple almost as large as the tank itself banged into its hull. The jester crumpled, heaving smoke.

Behind Reed and Taipha, Bayce un-morphed from her catapult form. The first time she’d exploited Reed’s dramatic monologues to stage a surprise attack, it had hurt Reed’s pride, but now, several tries later, she recognized it for the killer maneuver it was.

And yet this was only the opening move. Ygele lashed out with full force, arms becoming a rush of weapons as dense as any missile volley.

The battle raged for longer than any of them had anticipated. Ygele had counted on a minute at best; Reed had predicted ten, Bayce fifteen; Taipha guessed thirty, thinking she knew better than anyone else how deadly this enemy was. But even Ygele’s first victim was wrong.

It was a true battle of endurance for all of the girls. Healing plimpberries that had been all but chugged earlier were rationed strategically. Legs moved only as much as they had to. Whenever Bayce managed to hold back the arms enough for a precise, precious opening, the two frontline fighters were vicious, stabbing the hull for all they were worth. But Ygele clapped back, pushing them away and dealing grave wounds. It seemed getting in hits was never worth the price.

There was nothing they could do. Every strategy, every potential weak point from head to tank-tread foot, had been tried and dismissed.

…Taipha wobbled on her feet. She panted, lungs and heart working so hard she couldn’t hear anything else. Reed’s blade hung in her loose, sweat-coated, blood-trailing grip. Her vision was clouding over. Just ahead of her, a reddish silhouette began to make its way forward, dagger slashing against metal like they were impenetrable vines. Reed was giving it her all. She should give it her all too. But she was so…tired…

No. Not only that.

Because Taipha had a moment of clarity then. Not everything had been tried. They’d been focusing so much on the enemy when they should’ve been looking inward at their own potential.

She dashed forward, gasping with the effort, and wished she could cry out Reed’s name, tell her what she was thinking.

But as it turned out, just snaring her wrist and hooking it around the blade was a good first step.

Taipha didn’t let go of it. She grabbed tighter, sent an influx of energy rippling through the metal. Reed stopped mid-run—about to be stormed by hands—and understood immediately. She sent her own magic through.

One girl’s magic was radiant; the other’s was hot like fire. Together they had a strength and beauty to match the sun.

Suddenly the blade was shaking, burning, all but exploding with power and potential. Reed and Taipha howled as they brought the sword swinging in a perfect half-moon arc. The blaze that shot out not only cleaved through the arms; it sliced through the heart of Ygele, who couldn’t self-repair any longer. Eruptions burst out all over the tank’s body, setting the whole dungeon room aglow. The last scattered bits of the sword’s arc hit the walls and ceiling, casting lights like fireworks that also, when you squinted, kind of looked like ineffective fire alarm sprinklers.

And that was how the boss was slain…shortly before dissolving into innumerable gold coins.

Nobody could speak for a while. Nobody could even react. They could only stand and pant and feel their arms fall to their sides as the mechanical arms fell too. Lots and lots of levitating gold coins slowly spun in the air.

“…So,” Bayce said, “does anyone here use money?”

Nobody could reply to that, but this time it was because Taipha also suddenly exploded.

A sound like a crushed piñata rang out. Streamers filled the air, and Taipha was changed back to her original form.

(Or so they assumed. Taipha was actually very confused right now!)

Reed gasped under her breath. “You weren’t a cat,” she said.

“You were a girl!” Bayce said. “A girl with ears.”

“Bayce…most girls have ears.”

But these were very large, and catlike. A striped orange tail swished at her legs, and her face showed she was utterly baffled.

“Mrah?!”

Some curses, when lifted, revert you back to your original form. Others can change you. A whisper in the heart of the Quencian Taipha was telling her to stay with Reed, not as a species very different from her, but as another of those creatures humans called “the folk of the wood.”

And so it happened that Taipha was brought to a more agreeable form than the way the world had found her. (As for the Taiphas of other universes, well…that story was a little more complicated.)

Once the dust settled, the three of them fell upon each other hugging, tearing up with pain and recent fears, laughing at their close calls. None of them had any doubt that theirs would be a happily ever after.