What followed was a rapid scuffle to get at the last of the cinnamon twists before Tanya ate them all.
Nathan was fairly confident that it was only by virtue of their sympathy for his taste buds and their pity for his weak and feeble body that he got two of the remaining twists. Indeed, he was moderately sure that if Tanya had wanted to, she could have consumed all ten before anyone else had the opportunity to object in word or deed; and even if she hadn’t, Honeydew could have done the same, could she not have?
Well, no. Reader: Tanya could not actually have eaten ten cinnamon twists at a time. There simply wasn’t enough space in her mouth, and for all that she had a vastly enhanced body it so happened that she had not engaged in eating contests or honed her supernatural physique in the direction of chewing rapidly enough to down them all. And as for Honeydew? Of course she could have shifted her shape to have a gaping, voracious maw, into which she could have stuffed all of the cinnamon twists that had ever been on that table. But absent someone whose fetish that was, which no doubt is a set of humans greater than zero—just as every such possibility is, always, greater than zero—she would never have done so.
To eat a delectable cinnamon twist is a sensual pleasure, and Honeydew would never deny someone such a thing. Doing so would be… anathema, blasphemous, and even sacrilegious to her.
Regardless: Nathan looted two twists, Honeydew two, and Tanya one more to put the finishing touches on the five she’d already ecstatically shoved into her food-orifice.
These new delicacies were no less wondrous than the last. Differing just enough to make it a new experience as well as a repeated one, they went down smooth and easy, sweet and fatty and crumbling in a manner that could practically have been described as melting in their mouths.
And then, once they’d swallowed their last ones and once Nathan had gotten a brief moment to regret his lack of anything to wash them down with, for he had neither waterskin nor water bottle, time froze.
“CHOOSE YOUR POSITIONS! MILLIONBORN, YOU HAVE NO PRE-BATTLE ACTIONS TO TAKE. DESPAIR AND WEEP AT YOUR USELESSNESS! GET CARRIED, WOW.”
The arcane and eldritch bellow came from nowhere and everywhere, spoken by a voice that had every attribute and none at all simultaneously. The voice spoke those words in no language and also each and every common tongue of the multiverse, which caused Nathan no end of momentary conniptions as his brain tried and succeeded in parsing the fact of it being in a quadrillion languages all at the same time.
The conniptions would have been more than momentary if he weren’t suddenly floating, and if the voice weren’t what he would have described, if pressed fiercely by such iniquities as someone asking politely, as a passive-aggressive asshole.
“Emplaced defense scenario. Honeydew! What’ve you got?”
Tanya’s voice cut across the echoing silence. The sorceress she was addressing extended her hands and waggled her fingers, humming a seven-note chord. “A twenty-foot wide half-circle,” she replied after a moment. “But nothing’s getting through.”
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“Do it,” Tanya snapped.
“Where do you want me?”
Nathan made the question sound casual and undemanding, managing to communicate through it that he wasn’t demanding that they give him a place, and also that he had no idea what was going on. Still, there was a moment when he was concerned that he’d misstepped or said the wrong thing. Then the clouded strain on Tanya’s face cleared and he realized that in fact, they’d assumed for some reason he’d be reluctant to follow orders.
He put this down to a social matter, something to do with their backstory and/or the society they came from, wherever outside of the combat segments of the Dungeon that society lived. And in this regard, he was entirely correct.
“Halfway between me and the edge of Honey’s wall,” Tanya said finally, the world seeming to wait on her decision. “Hang on, I’ll put you there.”
And just like that, her will was done. Nathan felt himself shoved and pushed into his position, and saw the others floating into place as well as a wall of shining gray not-quite-stone rose around them, soundless and without preamble. It formed an impermeable, impregnable semi-fortress, and Nathan could easily tell that all of their foes were going to be funneled through the narrow opening and would die to… to what exactly, he thought to himself, are they going to die on my side? What can I contribute that Tanya can’t?
“Thirty seconds. Fight starts shortly,” the woman in question said shortly. “Honeydew neutralizes all of their spellcasters and archers, as long as we keep everything else off of her. We can only engage one enemy each at a time, so I need you to interdict.”
“And if I weren’t here?”
“I’d put myself in the middle and get stabbed a lot in the sides,” Tanya huffed, “and it would hurt and be tedious.”
“How,” Nathan asked in puzzlement, trying to limber up his arm and finding that he couldn’t so much as shift it an inch, “am I gonna match up to literally anything you can’t cleave through?”
“Because the rules say I can’t cleave through anything. Just… do the fucking thing, it’ll be obvious. Three!”
“Two!” Honeydew replied in a cheery, bright voice full of joy and anticipation.
“One?”
“BEHOLD, THE CONTEST APPROACHES! IT WOULD PLEASE THE BLOOD GOD TO HARVEST YOUR BLOOD! BUT WILL SHE MANAGE TO DO SO BEFORE THE SKULL GOD REAPS YOUR SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE? TUNE IN AFTER THE AD BREAK!”
“What the fuck,” Nathan said, and he brought Saucer up as his ability to move returned.
“Keep that spear at the ready,” Tanya reminded him, hearkening back to her instructions during their training montage. “You hold it high above your shoulder, point forwards and down, and stab with it.”
“Shield foot forward, weapon foot refused, body angled almost fully perpendicular,” Nathan parroted, positioning himself in preparation for combat. “About three feet between me and you. My shield doesn’t need to be in your space to protect you; it’s there to interdict your diagonal, and my spear lets me threaten anyone who ignores me to attack you. I remember.”
“Then do it,” Tanya would have said to him, but at that very moment she was interrupted before she could do so.
“AND LET THE CONTEST,” the voice boomed with utmost pomposity, “BEGIN!”