Like I said, maybe I build stuff up in my head.

And, apparently, that’s not limited to just crafting projects.

It also applies to family vacations!

It’s just that I’d never been on a road trip before. And it seemed so fun. Just one big, dysfunctional, blended family hitting the wide-open swamp. Exploring strange new places. Seeing amazing sights. Travel games and songs and endless adventure that would only bring us all closer together. Maybe we’d even make new friends! Pick up a hitchhiker or six. Get inside tips on the local haunts and lesser-known attractions.

Or maybe this was just how I’d learned to cope with a childhood devoid of parents or food or death wagons or any semblance of control – by creating this beautiful story in my head and then holding onto it with a death grip that refused to accept bleak reality.

Like the fact that my babies were growing up… again. That I had an immortal soul and so did Fang, apparently. That my sister had been captured by the Order of Apollo and taken to Asphodel, which was, like, really far away.

Also, the fact my head might still explode.

Sure, Lili was done eating my skill gems now. But it could still happen!

Oh, or the fact Fang was still the exact same person despite five cycles spent inside a lightless hell beside his one, true bromate—

“Left! Leeeeeft!” Fang screamed, his clawed hands clutching at the piles of ratskin bags to hold himself perched atop his booster seat.

See? He was still so controlling. He’d been backseat driving the entire time. Trying to boss me around and refusing to consider my feelings.

Like did he even think to ask what I thought? Maybe I wanted to go right—

What? What was that? Why did he have a booster seat?

Seriously, that’s what you’re focused on right now?

I mean, okay. In short, it was because he couldn’t see over the edge of the wagon. I’d used that medium-sized, ruined sailboat as the base and we needed to leave plenty of space for souvenirs, right? Exactly! Of course, we did. So, Fang had piled up the ratskin sacks into a sort of macabre throne, one replete with armrests – the congealed blood really helped them stick together. At first, he’d loved it. He kept barking orders and insisting that he was helping us “navigate.”

Personally, I’m not sure his high-pitched, blood-curdling screams counted.

“Nyx!” Fang screamed again.

Man, he really sounded frantic now.

“Oh shit!” Lili muttered.

We came barreling out of the mist, just a family on the greatest road trip ever, our death wagon hurtling through the fog at a breakneck and almost impossible pace. All of us screaming with joy and the spirit of adventure.

Or, at least, that’s how I imagine the nearby herd of pycervos saw us. They just stood there on slender legs, their lithe, deer-like bodies tense, and their hooves smoldering underfoot. Frozen in shock, eyes wide and staring.

More importantly, a massive boulder loomed up out of the fog.

Huh, that wasn’t great. And we were moving pretty fast – that momentum thing I’d been talking about before. Luckily, I had a solution for that too!

Like I said, we couldn’t steer – not exactly. Although [Engineering] informed me that it was technically possible to turn the tracks by rotating them in opposite directions or slowing the tracks along one side. But, as with most things, that turned out to be optional.

If you used enough elbow grease, it all worked out.

Or in this case, knee grease?

Huh, that didn’t really have the same ring to it.

“Nyx, focus!” Lili snapped. Meanwhile, Fang was just screaming incoherently.

Alright, I guess she was right.

“Babies! We need to brake!” I shouted.

One gave me a salute, lifted its harness off its head and then dove toward the tracks— CRUNCH. CRUNCH.

Thump, thump, thump.

Like I said, I didn’t install any brakes. But my babies were immortal! And sacrificing one of their beautiful, furry bodies did help to shift us slightly to the left. The rest was just more knee grease. My remaining babies and I all pushed off as hard as we could, causing the entire wagon to lean, the wood and bone creaking as it tilted.

Bone crunched as the wagon listed up onto one track, the other grinding against the boulder with a shower of sparks as the wagon just barely squeezed past. Meanwhile, mist bloomed as Fang created his clones, snatching at the bags to keep them in place. Then the tracks struck the ground again with a geyser of mud and water and sent Fang flying a couple meters into the air. He landed with a grunt, and a groan, and a lot of cussing.

With a tickle of my left hand and Maribel’s help, my baby rematerialized from a pool of shadows, scurrying along beside us and grabbing at his harness. I tossed him a treat which he snapped up happily. They’d been reluctant at first… but brake duty came with snacks!

My babies really were perfect angels.

Sometimes, they just leaped into the tracks on their own now.

Maribel seemed conflicted at that one, my left hand twitching.

“You almost killed us all! Again! Slow down!” Fang screamed, his eyes wide and bloodshot. The result of weaning him off his drugs. The grumpies kicked in if I didn’t give him a crystal every so often. It had been… huh, actually I’d lost track.

Luckily, I’ve always been good at running away from my problems. But I don’t need to tell you – you remember right? And sure, this particular problem was attached to me by a twin pair of shadows chains. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t try, right?

So, I’d come up with a solution. If I just ran really, really fast, Fang didn’t have time to complain! Not about the lack of drugs or gems. Or to criticize my very first attempt at building a Death Wagon. The screaming was an improvement honestly.

Plus, this was a little cathartic. Especially after all those cycles of him complaining about how I was so slow? You remember right? How I was “a waste of two good legs.” “A sapian-shaped rat steak.” “So slow that it took two trips for me to haul ass.”

Alright, I’ll admit… the last one was pretty good.

And then there were the hidden perks.

For example, my Death Wagon 1.0 apparently had one hell of a sound system – one I hadn’t even known I’d installed! The boards were kinda creaky, and the tracks rattled a lot. And when you got the whole thing up to speed and hurtling across the marshes at a breakneck pace that left a wake of mud and water behind us… well, it made a sort of roaring, rumbling grind. It was pretty loud. Okay, it was super loud – more than enough to drown out Fang.

“And then there’s the singing,” Lili muttered sourly. “You skipped over that.”

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Uh, what was that? What’s she talking about? Um, nothing.

Okay, fine, sure… I’m singing right now.

“All the tracks on the death wagon go—”

“Squeak!”

“Squeak!”

“Squeak!”

To be clear, those were my babies squeaking in sequence. Yeah, they were amazing. “The trash daddy in trunk in the trunk goes—”

“HOWOO. HOWOO. HOWOO!

“Fuck you!”

That last one was Fang. Honestly, I feel like my babies captured him perfectly.

Besides this was a road trip! And we needed games and songs! I mean, my babies didn’t really know the words, so they just sort of shrieked as loud as they could. What they lacked in harmony they made up for with raw, unbridled, and slightly-murderous enthusiasm.

It was absolutely adorable.

I mean, sure, I’d started with a game at first. But “I Spy” had gotten old fast.

The swamp was just so boring. There were only creepy willows and boulders and mud and water. Plus, it was always my turn since the babies couldn’t talk and it was hard to understand Fang through all the screaming. After the first few dozen rounds, the game might have also started getting kind of dark…

“Really?” Lili demanded. “Dark? Is that what you want to call it?”

“Uh, yes?” I replied tentatively.

“I spy my own body image issues?” She offered. “I spy a very wet metaphor for my life – racing blindly through the mists. Oh, or my favorite, I spy my own existential dread closing in on me like the walls of a coffin – the acknowledgement that this quest to save my sister might be a feeble attempt to grasp control of a hellish and cruel world that seems relentlessly stacked against me.”

She, uh, she’s making that last one up.

“Sure I am. The “singing” is definitely an improvement,” Lili grunted.

Okay, fine. Maybe I have some travel anxiety.

It was just a lot! Managing my babies and pulling this whole Death Wagon together, and Fang had just been in a terrible mood the whole time and was constantly nagging me. Plus, I hadn’t gotten to do any [Therapy] in forever. Fang got to kill everything.

You know, all the many, many monsters and creatures that were drawn to our lively family roadtrip. It might have been the grinding crunch of our Death Wagon 1.0 and the beautiful music my babies and I were making.

“It is. The entire Five Rivers is united in its desire to shut you up,” Lili said dryly.

“Uh, no. They’re jealous. They can just see that we’re bonding. As a family.”

“A family that’s leaving behind a wake of murder,” she shot back.

Alright, fine. Sure. There was some blood mixed in with the water and mud.

Okay, it was a lot. Rivers of it, honestly. We left a sort of bloody smear behind us.

Fang kept using [Evasion] while he tried to stay seated on his bloody sack throne, forming misty daggers that cut down the creatures that charged out of the fog – including that herd of pycervos. Fang’s clones would then grab the corpses and toss them into the wagon before vanishing into more puffs of vapor.

Although, this did have a slight, negative impact on visibility. Every time he used the skill, mist bloomed out around him in a massive wave. It was like he was making a misty directly overhead – which, I guess he was?

So, honestly, this next part was entirely his fault.

A dark, shadowy wall suddenly loomed up amid the vapor and my brow scrunched in confusion. That was weird. It stretched really far in both directions. Also, it was super tall. Like maybe fifteen feet or so. Weird. I wonder what it was? Also, [Engineering] was telling me we didn’t have enough room to stop. That wasn’t ideal. Fang seemed to agree – at least, based on the pitch of his screams.

He really hit a high note that time.

It was okay, though. I’d come up with a solution for just this situation.

Specifically, I canceled my portals, another appeared below me and I vanished—

Only to drop out of a portal behind the wagon, landing with a splash and a stumble.

Thankfully, that gave me a perfect view of the crash landing.

My wagon hurtled kraell-head-first into that shadowy wall, the mist peeling back as it punched through the vapor. Only to slam into what looked like a dense forest of large tubes. Reeds or bamboo maybe? Unclear. But the wagon carved its way into the forest with a crunch and a shower of debris, its momentum carrying it a few dozen meters before it lurched to a halt, sending Fang and a few more bags flying through the air—

Only for the lizard to disappear and reappear beside me.

Fang opened his mouth, stabbing a finger at me.

I was expecting more nagging, more ranting and raving.

So, what came out was a surprise – sort of…

It was the most ungodly shriek. It sounded like a hundred of my perfect babies were screaming at the top of their lungs. Which was weird since they had just respawned beside me and they were clutching at their ears in pain. Okay, so not my babies. And I was pretty sure this wasn’t just Fang’s whining. I mean, he was loud, but not this loud.

The wail soon quieted. Weird.

Curious, I stepped closer to the bamboo. What had made that noise? Had that been the forest screaming? Only one way to find out. I kicked a reed.

Another ungodly shriek peeled through the air. And did the stalk contract? A big puff of vapor even escaped from the top. So cool.

“What is this?” I shouted over the noise, looking at Fang.

His tribe used to roam this whole area, or, at least, so I’d assumed.

Not that he’d told me this, of course. Even after five cycles trapped inside that gate, he rarely spoke about himself. No. Those were just rumors from the other villagers.

I’ll admit, our communication skills could still use some work.

“Screaming Bamboo Forest! I have told you this so many times,” he shouted back, hands pressed to his earholes.

Hmm, fascinating. Although, the name was a little on the nose.

Even more interesting, an echoing scream came from deeper within the bamboo forest, another rising again, this time closer. Almost like something was heading this way.

Fang drew his daggers and I unraveled my arm chain, the babies grabbing their shields and short swords. However, as the seconds ticked past, no monsters emerged. No giant horde of flying wasps or maybe a huge, armored bull with like a horn that shoots laser beams?

What? Don’t look at me like that.

I’ve never been this far from Anchon before. Maybe they have new monsters! That was part of the fun of a road trip – finding unique and super dangerous creatures… and then murdering them as fast as you can so you can beat Fang.

Although, this one looked liked it was a dud. Which was weird. I could have sworn something dangerous and interesting was approaching.

“False alarm, I guess,” I muttered with a sigh, relaxing.

I know, I know, I should be grateful. It wasn’t that long ago that the sound of unknown shrieks from the depths of a strange, screaming bamboo forest would have sent me sprinting off into the mists at the speed of pure terror. But I’d changed. Grown.

And not just sideways. Mentally too.

I was a brilliant genius that had basically soloed a silver gate, remember?

“Except for me and Fang and the murder babies that carried you super hard,” Lili observed, as though ticking off a list. She’d been a real downer lately.

“Nyx,” Fang hissed.

“What—?”

Ahh, he wasn’t nagging this time. He was pointing.

Shadows hovered overtop the bamboo forest. Monkey-like creatures with huge red eyes, fur slicked with vapor, and four sets of weird paw-hands. Oh, and they twisted in the middle, rotating really hard and launching themselves into the air – only to snatch the top of a reed and neatly pinch off the top. Seriously, their top half could basically spin around. It was horrifying and creepy and I wanted to pet one so bad…

Ahh, I got it now! They used the screaming bamboo to find prey, then approached more quietly across the top of the forest by squeezing those little windpipes closed. Maybe a few had missed on the way here? That would explain the screams we’d heard. Clever. Also, wow there were a lot of them.

Which meant… this was it! Finally.

The first detour on our very first road trip as a family. I mean, sure we’d gotten into a death wagon accident. But, on a road trip, the terrible and infuriating damage to your amazing one-of-a-kind creation caused by a co-parent’s backseat driving wasn’t a horrible curse! No, it was a blessing in disguise. An opportunity for adventure. Without that completely avoidable problem that was entirely Fang’s fault, we would have never found demon monkeys perched atop a screaming bamboo forest!

Even Maribel was excited, my left hand tingling as the rat-shaped tattoo transformed into an ebony shield, my chain already dangling at the ready. I got it. Their big blood-red eyes reminded me of the babies. They were even sort of cute. I mean, weren’t monkeys basically just tree rats with hands—

My shield promptly smacked me in the face.

Wow. Ow! Why was I so strong?

Alright, fine. I guess I misunderstood. Those were, uh, imitation reed rats? Hideous, furry monsters whose beauty paled in comparison to our precious babies? Filthy mutations that needed to be purged to maintain the purity of the rat bloodline?

I waited. Maribel seemed happy – my fingers tingling.

Hmm. Not sure how to interpret that. A little speciest. Also, I felt like this might have long-term ramifications. Were we going to have to murder anything that challenged the beauty of our perfect babies? Actually… you know what?

Maybe I was okay with that. What kind of parent would I be if I didn’t murder anything that threatened my children? And that includes their self-esteem right?

Besides, I liked the energy Maribel brought to the table. Even the babies were feeling it. They’d formed a defensive circle around their [Battle Daddy] like the perfect little murder machines I’d trained them to be.

Hell, Fang looked excited too! Or, uh, nervous? Hard to tell.

Ahh, I could see why. It looked like the monkeys were multiplying.

“Probably because you keep shaking the reeds!” Lili snapped.

My hand froze. Huh, that would also explain why Fang was glaring at me.

“Sorry. It was Lili. She’s hungry.”

The skin on my forehead itched as the word “no” formed there. Or, at least, I assumed that’s what it said based on Fang’s expression. But that look was back – that fire in his eyes that just screamed that he wanted to eat me. I’d missed that.

Anyway, I take back what I said before.

I don’t build things up. I mean, look at this! Our family completely surrounded by hundreds of demon monkeys along the edge of a screaming bamboo forest and standing beside my lightly damaged and hopefully repairable Death Wagon.

This was awesome. Perfect even.

Frankly, the best family road trip I’d ever been on.