“Sheeeesh,” said Commander Zideo, seated on a rock in the clearing. He grabbed clumps of his pink and aqua hair, and paced rapidly. “I did it. I made it!”

One of Addrion’s eyebrows went rogue, reaching for the sky as she let go of the bridge, letting it clatter back down against the side of the pit below. “Did you now?”

“I mean, we did it,” he said. “You did it. You saved us. Thanks for that.”

He did not realize just how stunned she was at his lack of gratitude. Not knowing what else to say, she replied “Well, anytime!”

He paced over to me. “And thanks for holding onto Cormac, HG.” He gave me a quick but pleasing head-pat. It was not as good as an extensive ear rub or a cheek or chin scrub, but it did feel like a complement. “I owe you both one. BUT.” He walked out between the slopes of two stony mounds where auburn grasses grew in tufts in the niches where the rocks would allow, giving himself plenty of space. “Check it.” He jumped in the air and gritted his teeth, then plopped back down into the dirt.

Addrion looked at Helmgarth. Helmgarth looked at me. I looked at Commander Zideo, naturally. “Um,” he said. He bent over and looked at his feet. “Hang on.” He stretched and flexed. Once more he leaped into the air to the same result.

“Just… stunning,” said Addrion. This must surely have been that convoluted human technique known as “sarcasm.” I have not yet mastered it, nor in truth do I see any particular use for it. During the course of a dog’s day, a situation simply does not present itself where a dog thinks “Perhaps I should fool someone into thinking I agree with them, but only temporarily, so that they will come to the realization that I do not, and feel bad.”

Zideo tried a few different jumps of different height. He tried a running jump. He attempted to explain himself while also attempting to do the thing. “I swear I… just made it… work a… second ago.”

“You’re embarrassing yourself in front of Hot Helmgarth,” said Addrion, dusting off her gauntleted hands, and heading between the stony mounds. “I mean, in front of Helmgarth.”

I recalled Helmgarth’s traumatic change in appearance as we walked through Ludopolis some days before, and assumed that this was something that happened to him on occasion. The new Helmgarth was nicer to look at, even by dog standards. I did not approve of his previous overdressed incarnation, but this seemed like someone you could relate to (at least by human standards). This Helmgarth had an air of capability and rusticity. Apropos of nothing, I felt he could chop wood and rustle cattle, or lead a clan of kilt-wearing highland men into battle with long swords with or without his backpack, or write a love poem. I have no idea why. His whole body simply suggested it. I did not even know what a kilt was.

This Helmgarth’s shirt was constantly blowing in a breeze that I did not notice, as the horrific wind of the pit was now no more than an echo, contained within the fissure we had escaped by the skin of our teeth. It was constantly affording the onlooker a view of his rippling pectoral and abdominal muscles. His pants were much tighter. He seemed somehow more roguish and there was something wild about him, at least in human terms. Addrion was struggling not to stare. He approached Zideo, who continued jumping, undeterred.

For whatever reason, I called to mind Lisa’s paperback books that I usually found on her side tables or stacked on the counter near the door to the garage. They inevitably featured a couple locked in an embrace, pushing together their mouths, or just about to. There was often at least one man on these book covers, and Helmgarth now looked like one of those.

“Easy, love,” he said. “Save your strength. We’ve some ways to—”

Zideo burst into flame and bowled over the seneschal. He tumbled in the dirt, flipping into a roll and dirtying his tie-dye shirt. Zideo’s fire put itself out, but not before leaving a blackened streak of charred rock and dirt. I ran to him and licked his face, smelling sulfur, but he pushed me back.

Commander Zideo pushed himself up on his palms. “That was it! See? Air Dash!”

Helmgarth was stuck on the ground, weighed down by the ruck-sack. “Marvelous!” he called, craning his neck. Addrion rolled her eyes and extended a hand to pull the seneschal to his feet. “Thanks, love,” he said, adjusting clips and buckles. “Is that a new belt?” he asked.

I have occasionally heard humans describe green and red as complimentary colors, theoretical opposites. Indeed, green hair clashed considerably with her cheeks as they turned crimson. Addrion cleared her throat, which itself ran out of control and became a coughing fit.

“I can’t trigger it on the ground,” said Zideo. “Which is weird. You’d think you’d get a regular dash before an Air Dash.” He squatted and struck several strange poses, waiting to see what would happen. Nothing did. “This actually, literally rules. I wonder how high up I have to be for it to work.” He attempted a couple of short hops, barely leaving the ground. He must not have expected it to trigger, as he blasted himself sideways into a rock face. I ran to him again, but he shook it off. “Wow. That’s… forgiving.”

Addrion glared. “If you’re done screwing around, we’ve got the rest of a sun to bring home.”

We made our way up the dry and blessedly temperate hill on this far side of the B.O.P.O.D., with Commander Zideo testing his new capability every few steps. He rocketed directly into the incline and skidded uphill chased by a cloud of dirt. “Okay, so a key takeaway here,” he said, spitting out straw, “is that it doesn’t go uphill. Or maybe it does, and I haven’t figured it out.” His shirt and Jordan-shoes, having been renewed after his experience in the B.O.P.O.D., were already filthy. He did not try again until we were on more level ground.

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

After a time, we crested the tremendous embankment and were greeted with handsome, autumnal environs. Ginkgos and sumac swayed under a sweeping breeze, sugar maples rippled like flame. Dogwoods, which are sacred to canines such that we will not mark our territory upon their trunks, rose above swelling hills and blankets of brown grasses, long-stemmed and dense.

The patchwork quality of the world was never more obvious than here—the season of fall, if that was what we observed, is already a variegated mix of hues, even in Airy Zone, but here a beige tract of grassland might end abruptly thirty paces hence to an apple orchard swelling with ripened fruit, itself lasting another few breaths before being cut off by a serpentine stream leaving no trace of it on the opposite bank. Adding to the diverse conglomeration of color were thick billows of cream-colored clouds dragging lazy shadows across the plains and hills, beneath which I distinguished the flat-topped floating triangles of solid ground floating in air. The snowy land on the other side of the chasmic scar seemed unified in comparison.

“Something’s not right,” my human said. He turned back on the hill and observed the glacial lands behind us, a stripe of white and cold blues against the ocher and russet lands we stood upon. “We left something unfinished.”

“Why do you say that, love?” asked Helmgarth, tucking a lock of dark hair behind his ear. His leg was still bothering him, but in his current state it came across as noble and selfless rather than pitiable and unfortunate. “It’s onward and upward, as I see it.”

“Remember all the frozen streams and fountains we saw? Usually when there’s a place like that, we’re—I’m—supposed to make an environmental change. We were probably supposed to melt the snows. It’s a real heavy-handed way of showing that the player had like… an effect on the world.”

“Sounds like a great way to flood the place.”

“Maybe… or maybe it thaws out something we need. We still don’t even know what we’re looking for. Is it a piece of Sun? And if so, how are we able to transport it? I bet it’s some other nonsense, like a piece of a map that’s broken into pieces, and the map takes us to a key, and the key opens a vault where they’re keeping the sun. Just macguffins on macguffins. It’s how this always works.”

“Actually-” began Addrion, but my human was on a roll, so to speak.

“Hey book,” he said. “What are we looking for?”

“Ughghgh,” Addrion was able to say before everything froze us into place. The trees stopped moving as far as we could see, although I was not looking at them very closely.

Entry: Radians

Description: Through the clever application of a little Mad Science, the Boss Council has stolen the Sun from the Screenwilds! Hope the citizens of Ludopolis invested in night lights! This leads to a tough question: when you steal the Sun, where do you keep it? It’s tough to hide and harder to contain. The answer is pragmatic and prismatic, so if you want to know, ask your friend Roy G. Biv. Victoria’s lens machine divided it into different colors across the spectrum. These fragments, known as Radians, will need to be reunited if anyone in the Screenwilds ever wants to read a book again or safely play a game of darts.

Locations

Blue Frost: Location Unknown

Golden Plains: Location Unknown

Purple Deeps: Location Unknown

Rolling Green: Location Unknown

Red Hot Caliente Zone: Location Unknown

“Whirl, grert!” said Zideo. “Thert’s nur herlp.”

“Zerdier!” Addrion’s voice and patience both strained. “Pudda berk away!”

“Wonderful,” said Zideo, dismissing the book and pointing back across the fissure. “So I guess this is Golden Plains, and that’s the Blue Frost. We went all the way through it and I didn’t see a single stupid sun piece.”

“Zideo, listen. We-”

A buzzing roared over head. “Cover!” snapped Addrion. Three dark stingray-shaped descended through the cloud layer, headed directly toward us.

With no roof to conceal ourselves, we followed the exterminator’s lead and got off the road. Addrion put her back against a tall stone jutting out of the grasses, conforming to its shape as well as her clunky, emerald armor would allow. Zideo hid in the grasses and I knelt by his side. Helmgarth’s backpack protruded obviously from the ditch he nestled inside of.

The empire’s transports neither slowed nor changed their course. If they were looking for us, they made no sign that they had seen us. Instead they croaked straight over the fissure toward the snow-capped summits of the Blue Frost (a silly name, I thought, as it was mostly white with snow—and let’s be honest, there were patches of yellow in the trail I had left across its otherwise pristine snowy surface), marring the idyllic sky-scape with greasy gray smoke that dissipated reluctantly.

We emerged from our hiding places and watched the specks descend toward the mountaintops. “I’ll wager they’re heading for Pengoon Peaks,” said Helmgarth, wringing his hands.

Zideo looked to Addrion. “We have to help them.”

She gave him a look—no, more than that, she gave him A Look.

My brave human did not look away. “They helped us!”

“Ehh,” said Helmgarth, wavering his hand in the air. “That’s debatable, love.”

“But the pengoons,” said Zideo. “Gobo…”

“Gobo’s a dracken,” said Addrion. I had not known until that moment that that she was acquainted with him. “He can take care of a few Sorrow Troopers.”

“You don’t understand,” said Zideo. “We left the entire thing undone! We aren’t just beelining for the credits, here. This is not an any percent run! We need to actually get our hands on the—”

Frigid, blue light washed over us. Addrion lifted something in her gauntlet, and it shone like a cerulean floodlight. Zideo, whose dual color hair was now a blue monochrome, covered his eyes with his hands and groaned. I looked away, watching our deep, black shadows flee from the light source, hiding behind us for cover from its intensity.

Then she returned it from wherever it had come from, and the chestnut tones of the Golden Plains returned.

“What the hell?” asked Zideo, thoughtfully.

“It’s the Blue Radian,” said Addrion. “I’ve got it. I’ve been trying to tell you, but you won’t shut up about how you have to get it.”