“Whadda hell erzat?” asked Commander Zideo, wisely seeking greater understanding of the situation, and nobly fighting the paralysis to do so. Just one of his many qualities. “A pengin wih bowtie?”

The penguin—or, I should say, pengo —entered the room hesitantly at first, but when her eyes beheld Zideo, they grew into glossy, round circles, and she hastily approached him. She gasped and slapped her flippers together in front, clapping with unrestrained pleasure.

S. Man writhed, instinctively rattling his vinous arm, jerking to be released from the uncanny stasis. It held. In many slurred curses, he bemoaned the unfairness of the situation, and said what cruel treatment he would give the pengoon once free. She frowned at him, and struck his snowy base with her flipper. “Rude!” she said.

The snow creature’s body quaked with laughter. “Ho ho ho ho hum hum ha!”

It was clear that I would have to revisit my working theory of how the book worked. Even though it was not any sort of technology I could conceive of, I nevertheless had been making some assumptions that were clearly wrong. For one, I figured its paralyzing effect was local, halting the movement of everything but only within the immediate area. This was clearly not true, as its influence spread at least as far as Helmgarth was, somewhere in the cave—perhaps twenty feet away, perhaps half a mile. Second, I assumed its effect applied to everything without exception, remembering the mouse’s crumb of cheese inside the JRPG tent, and the leaves and branches in the muddy basin in the Screenwilds. But here was this strange little penguin chick meandering about freely, utterly excused from its hold.

The full details would have to wait. The penguin was our only hope.

She stood before Zideo, flippers together, eyes huge, the very picture of supplication. I recognized in her visage the Puppy Eyes trick that dogs can put on when we really, really want something, although some cynical humans consider it “begging.” Even in the dim blue light, I felt the effects of her intentional cuteness, the brutal field of adorability emanating from her person.

“Hamburger?” she said, looking deep into Zideo’s eyes.

A silence ensued that would have seen the sentient folk exchanging glances, had they control of their own motor functions. “Hurburgur?” repeated Zideo.

The corners of the pengoon’s beak folded downward. Her glossy eyes rounded and bulged.

“Heyr, lidda pengin,” said Zideo. “Gert dat barx.”

“NUR,” said S. Man, attempting and failing to shake his head back and forth. “Nuh-uh. Nur nur nur.”

The pengoon became cuter than ever. “Hungy,” it said. “Hamburger?”

“Okerr,” said Zideo. “Werl… no hurburgur. Ha bout kerrut? Ha bout perterto?” Zideo used every ounce of strength to articulate these words to the pengoon. It sounded to me like he was trying a diplomatic approach where S. Man’s threats had failed. Carrots and potato were hardly a substitute for a hamburger, but if this pengoon were truly the same type of creature from Krystal’s decorated doodad, I guessed that it had a limited power of speech. Heck, it spoke better English than I did, and nobody could argue otherwise.

The pengoon searched in the dim light for food, and we heard an exclamation of discovery, “Hamburger!” which preceded the crunching of carrots. The pengoon threw herself at Zideo’s leg, wrapped her flippers around his shin. The room was illuminated with crimson light as bright red hearts trailed from the top of her head, sailing a few inches like the balloons that human children get so worked up about before vanishing.

“Okerr,” said Zideo. “Nah, gert dat barx.”

“Nur!” shrieked S. Man. “Dis buh shirt! Ho hum!”

“Yeh, dur it!” said Zideo, excited, I think, to have his theory confirmed. “Berng it over hurr!”

What followed was a naked attempt by both S. Man and my human to control the pengoon chick by out-shouting one another. But the creature was driven by its own motives, and walked around for some time looking for more potatoes and carrots. Having exhausted the resources, it ignored both their exhortations and indulged its own curiosity, untying Zideo’s shoelaces to see how they worked, poking at the static blue candle flame and admiring its cold beauty. Then it made for the exit.

“Wairt!” shouted Zideo, and admonished the little bird for taking advantage of him sharing “hurburgur” and leaving without returning the favor. S. Man could only laugh, catching his breath with a “ho hum” now and again. The pengoon ejected three more hearts from her head and said “Thank human!” before walking out.

But not completely out. I noticed in the dim light her flipper rested against the edge of the rock where the cellar spat out into the previous tunnel. It halted, and she took a step backward, reappearing into full view. Slowly, her great, glossy eyes narrowed. She took slow, intentional steps back into the room—noticing for the first time the mesh cages. She reached a flipper out toward it, then jerked it away as though it could capture her merely by touch. She turned slowly back to S. Man, her shoulders heaving. Her eyes burned blue.

“Bad!” she said. “Take pengoons!”

“Ho hum, whart?” said S. Man, obviously trying to play off the accusation, but words failed him.

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It was hard to take another animal’s threats seriously while wearing a bowtie, but reminded myself that I myself wore the same apparel. Zideo urged her once more to “gert dat barx.” When her fury cooled enough to hear him, she pointed to a box with her slick little flipper. “Nurr, udder barx.” She pointed to another. “Nuh-uh,” he said, “udder one.”

After a few boxes and baskets, she indicated the question mark box. “Mm-hmm!” said Zideo, and she picked it up, clasping it between flippers. I was surprised that the book, still floating between the two opponents, permitted it to move.

Thunder rolled at the moment she unlatched the box. I am sure this was coincidence. S. Man seized with rage, failing even to flail in his helpless, furious convulsions. He shrieked and coughed, slush dribbling down his chin from between the pointed stones in his mouth. Between his fury and the effects of the Compendium, I could not interpret the slightest syllable he said, yet it took little effort to approximate his intent.

Golden light traced the thinnest crack as it opened, bright and flooding the cellar, washing out the blue of the candle. A cylinder of light rotated there, with a small nub on top, and a triple slash icon in the center—not too dissimilar from the human glyph “Z,” which I recalled both from my human’s Stream graphics and from the thing that Helmgarth had called the “late title card” omen in the Screenwilds. But this was different, pointier, more angular, and somehow recalled to me the roiling storm outside Lisa’s house on the day that we fell into Zideo’s glowing rectangle.

Don’t get the wrong idea, dogs know what lightning is. It’s just that the human icon for it is such a dim understatement compared to the real thing.

Still, this cylinder crackled with it. Electric tendrils arced to either side. Its shape reminded me of the small cartridges that my human was always replacing into the things that controlled his medium and larger glowing rectangles—those things that tasted electric when I tried to lick one. It made my tongue feel powerful, and I did not like it. Lisa screamed at me and shooed me away when she discovered me with it, which I recall with shame because she then yelled at my human for leaving them out.

Despite S. Man’s livid, choking commands that she cease, the pengoon tossed Zideo the bright icon by jerking its box upward but not letting go. It crackled in the air, full of untold potential, elemental and electric. Past the fluttering pages of the book it flew as S. Man screeched. When its edge touched Commander Zideo, it vanished.

I have once seen Lisa replacing a lightbulb on one of her lamps, another object I am forbidden from chewing on. She had removed the lampshade fully, and screwed the new one on. I recall my certainty that this was futile, that this inert filament could never create light and that perhaps she had had one too many of the White Claw. But she twisted a protruding nodule on the device, and it didn’t so much light up as it became light, painful to look at directly and transforming the living room into a harsh, golden-white hellscape of brightness, chasing off shadows with prejudice until she turned it back off to replace the lampshade.

This is what happened to Zideo. Like the filament, his body beamed, conducting an aureate glow that carved purple and green afterimages into my vision. I turned away, and the motion left fairy streaks wherever I looked, even with closed eyes.

Zideo’s shirt and shorts and Jordan-shoes rang with light and storm. My fur stood on end. The air crackled. Sparks ran down the iron cages and embers leaped from the overturned wicker baskets. Potato-skin leftovers baked instantly into potato chips—that is not an exaggeration but the truth. The book fluttered away and I finally completed my long-held stumble.

What happened next happened fast, and requires some hindsight to tell accurately.

The axe came down. S. Man shouted something, and its crude but sharp ax-head clattered against solid rock as the room flashed. Though my eyes were clouded by the fading afterimage, I saw Zideo having appeared a few feet to his right, away from me, setting down the pengoon chick, from whose head more red hearts were appearing. I deduced that the power-up, which was what he had been trying to call it previously, had bestowed upon him some capability of fast movement—instant movement, like the flashes during a storm. His hair was a glowing anemone of lightning. His eyes crackled. He smiled.

“Well it’s no fire flower,” he said, his speech finally returned to normal. The ax slashed sideways, and he flashed over to my side of the room, a hand on my back. There was a snapping exchange of voltage where he touched me, like when I licked the battery in Lisa’s house. I jumped. “But it’ll do!”

S. Man hollered something unintelligible, which I think we should hold him accountable for since he was no longer frozen in place by the book. Each strike swished ineffectually through thin air, although Zideo repeatedly appeared nearby.

“Ho hum, I’ll kill you! This is my house! Mine, ho hum!”

“I wonder if…” said Zideo, trailing off. He held his palm out toward S. Man, as though proffering some gift. A spark alighted there, gathering and growing until it was a wild, flickering ball of golden light, sending its crackling offshoots of electricity now and again like blinding spiderweb cracks in the air. “Perfect.” He reared back and hurled the ball of lightning.

It seared not one but steaming two holes cleanly through S. Man’s body, ricocheting erratically against the cave wall. S. Man dropped the ax, and felt against his middle snowball, probing gingerly against the quivering snow. He stretched out the shirt and saw the round hold singed there.

Zideo raised his finger to deliver a one-liner. None occurred to him, and he decided instead to continue his volley. Balls of lightning bounced around the room, vaporizing snow chunks. S. Man’s head sank, his flannel shirt collapsing, as less and less of his body existed to hold him up. He gurgled, his bundled-branch arms grasping for Zideo, for the pengoon, for me, as he sank into a puddle of boiling slush.

Commander Zideo picked up the pengoon, trailing hearts, and stepped out over the snowball head, one-eyed now and pleading, threatening, whining, shouting invectives. I followed my human’s light through the cave.

The power-up faded after a few minutes of searching. Darkness returned, and Zideo seemed unharmed by the lightning battery’s effects, aside from curling wisps of smoke trailing from his hair, now pink and blue again. Fortunately, we found Helmgarth with a torch as (I think) he had claimed, and the pengoon was set up in an open-topped pocket in his overwrought backpack. I lead the way, following my nose toward the scent of fresh air and the pee puddle I had left on the way in. I hoped, idly, that no creatures would misinterpret this as me marking territory.

We did not rest until we were some ways away from the cave mouth. The acrid smell of smoke returned as we caught our breath.

Helmgarth showed Zideo his tophat, which was frayed and charred. “Once I could move again, I came running to you, old bean,” he said. “But wouldn’t you know it, a shower of lightning balls came down the hall.”

Zideo put a hand over his mouth. “Bro,” he said, solemnly, “my B.”