Ivy looked down at the carpet, mouth covered by her clasped hands. “So I am presently married to a… Primus.”
Waia sat on the bed next to Ivy, making the whole bed lean to one side under her added weight. She did her best to look in every direction except that of Ivy. “Yup.”
“And not as in the band?”
Waia groaned. “We picked the name first. Or, one guy did and made us play along. When your name is just a generic Greek-y, Latin-y word, there’s gonna be some coincidences.”
Ivy leaned forward, bringing her face even closer to the carpet. “Mm-hmm…”
The gesture, minimal as it was, was more than enough to make Waia wince. “…And I was just introducing myself to those four when you came back, plus my Domain and all that. Pretty sure they’re all Primoi too, except the guy with the hoodie.” Waia awaited her judgment. “It’s a lot, I know. I’m sure you’re mad, I’ve hidden so much from y-“
Ivy hugged her, cutting her off. “Of course I’m mad. If you’d told me you were a thousand years old, I wouldn’t have felt so bad about missing your birthday that one time.”
Waia held her arms above Ivy’s head, unsure of what to do with them. Eventually, she settled on just placing them on her head. “That’s, uh… not really a response I was expecting…”
Ivy let go and looked her in the eye. “…Okay, sure, it’ll take a while to look at you in the eye when you’ve got two glowing, orange balls for eyes, but… have you been hiding anything else from me?”
Waia thought for a moment. “…No.”
“I figured as much, honestly. Something this wild can’t possibly be topped.”
Waia chuckled awkwardly. “Yeah. Honesty comes surprisingly easy when you’ve already got the world’s most ridiculous secret covered up.”
“But, um…” Ivy played with the corner of the bedsheet. “All things considered, you’re still the woman I married, just taller. If anything, that’s a bonus. Considering how we first got to know each other, this is actually a surprisingly logical thing for you to turn out to be.”
Waia sighed and put her hands on her lap. “Wow, it’s such a relief to get all this out there. This whole time I’ve known you, I’ve constantly been thinking, ‘What if Ivy finds out? What if she thinks it’s weird? What if my siblings convince her that it’s a bad idea?’ But I’m honestly so happy that you’re okay with this. I felt awful keeping something this big from you, and now it’s out there.” She shifted back into her human form. “But I think I’m just gonna stay like this, thanks. Sorry you don’t get to parade your new tall wife around town, we’ve got a bit of a secrecy policy around these parts, my Domain, I mean. Less hassle.”
Ivy nodded and smiled. “By the way, does this mean that I’ll have to meet all those dozens of siblings you mentioned, since they’re all my in-laws? And do I get to fight more monsters with you if any more of them show up? Seems like a hard job.”
Waia bolted to her feet. “The monsters! Right! Hang on, there was one on the floor, you saw…” She opened the door to the living room, then saw that the floor was distinctly monster-free. “Oh, that’s not good.” She searched the room. “How could it have escaped? It was tied up by…”
Quet stepped through the kitchen entrance, dragging Shades behind her. She pulled the bound monster into the living room, then got up to meet Ivy and Waia. “Hey what’s up? I assume you finished talking to each other about whatever, then?”
Waia stared blankly at Quet. “Uh… Didn’t hear you come back.”
“Didn’t leave, I’ve been interrogating Shades in the kitchen this whole time.” Quet pointed at the creature on the ground.
Shades nodded. “We’ve met.”
Waia nodded slowly. “So, does that mean-”
Omet opened the front door and strode into the living room, followed by Horan and Mark. “Wh-you’re still here?”
Quet turned to look at her sibling. “Oh, hey, you’re back quick.”
Waia held her arms up. “Okay, can you people knock or something? I don’t like strangers coming in and staying in our house whenever they want!”
Ivy walked over to the couch and deliberately tripped over the armrest, faceplanting into the overstuffed cushion. “If Primoi had any sense of decency, they would let me get to grips with their existence one at a time.”
“Yeah, I’ll let you have that one, Ma’am. Okay, let’s just…” Omet looked down at Shades, then back at Quet. “What are you doing with that guy?”
“Interrogating him. I know everything now.”
“Wh- How? We were gone for five minutes!”
Shades piped up. “I’m a cooperative prisoner, no need to be surprised about it.”
Mark folded his arms. “Good job, I guess. Did you get anything useful out of him?”
Quet rolled Shades back into the kitchen. “I said I know everything, thus I know everything useful. You really need to think things through before you say them.” She turned back to everyone once Shades was tucked away. “Alright, everyone take a seat, and I’ll give you the lowdown. But maybe wait for that second human to take her face off the cushion. Don’t sit on her.”
-
Once Mark, Horan, Omet and Waia had taken a seat on the couch (Ivy decided to stay in the bedroom, she was too tired for everything that was going on), Quet pulled a chair up in front of them and began.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“First on the list: That guy we’ve got cooped up in the kitchen? Joey. His friends too, plus that armadillo monster. All from the Down Below.”
Horan raised his hand. “But I thought Joeys couldn’t be fully intelligent like that.”
Quet shrugged. “Evidence suggests otherwise, buddy. Turns out, there’s a whole civilization of intelligent Joeys in the Down Below, doing their own thing. Or, they were doing their own thing, until roughly a week ago. Apparently, some messianic figure that Shades back there called the Lady in the Green Veil got released from her seven-century imprisonment. So, yeah, we’ve got a name for our party crasher. Plus, those reclaiming tides the prophecy mentioned? Joeys. All those souls view the commencing of the prophecy’s events as a go-ahead to start heading back to Earth and carving out a new life for themselves up here, Manifest Destiny style. Less Darwin-defying abominations on our end, and all.”
Waia folded her arms. “So, that attack wasn’t a one-off thing, then?”
“Not even close. That was one of hundreds to come. According to them, if every other clause of the prophecy gets fulfilled, they’re guaranteed to succeed in their colonization of Earth. Sounds improbable to me, but that’s not gonna stop them from trying. So what apparently happened back in the party is that the Lady used some advanced portal magic to pull the entire hall into the Down Below, where- Hang on, I’m getting antsy.”
Quet stood up, pushed the chair to the side and began to pace around the room. “Point is, there’s an entire army down there, ready to pounce on the survivors- that being my family- as soon as they arrive. There were preparations for this and everything. And the attack earlier was just a bunch of premature attackers who wanted the best share of the planet. Once it gets confirmed that the Norse are dead and the prophecy’s on track, Joeys are gonna start swarming the entire planet. Even if they fail to wipe out humanity, tens of thousands of people are gonna die. That might be enough to finish most remaining Domains off anyway.”
Mark nodded slowly. “But how are they getting here? I thought coming to and from the Down Below was meant to be hard.”
“Yeah it is. But enchanters all over the Down Below have been stockpiling low-grade portal glyphs for years, ever since the first signs of the prophecy being fulfilled started showing up. The group that attacked us? Their supplier apparently had to use some kind of shortcut to be able to mass-produce the spells. The group found a distinctive landmark in the Down Below, that being a volcano, and made a connection that brought them to a similar-looking volcano on our side. Waia, are there any volcanoes near here?”
Waia nodded. “Mauna Kea’s a few hours from here.”
“Then that’s where they came out.” Quet knelt down and started rummaging through her bags. “I can’t make my own transdimensional portals, I’m not that advanced. But I can re-use old ones.” She pulled out a dozen stones from three different bags. “Using these, I can use the trace thaumic residue at Mauna to re-open the portal the attackers used to come here, as long as it closed less than… bu-bu-buh… About three days ago. Maybe a bit less than that.”
“Great.” Mark stood up. “We head over, do the thing, then find a way to get back to somewhere more familiar. But, wait, how did the Veil lady get out of her prison? And how did she find magic strong enough to pull in a giant building in a week? It sounds like that kind of thing would be hard to come by.”
Quet raised a finger, then slowly dropped it. “...Excuse me for a second.” She got up and headed back into the kitchen.
Once she was out of earshot, Mark leaned forward and sighed. “I like this even less now, honestly. I mean, are we really gonna have to deal with an army to get to them? They’re probably already dead, if that’s what’s trying to kill them.”
Omet nudged him. “Don’t say that. If we stay here and let them die, then we’re done for anyway. We might as well try.”
Waia furrowed her brow. “Wait, who are we talking about here? She referenced a whole bunch of stuff that I don’t know anything about, bring me up to speed real quick.”
“Oh, right, you weren’t there for the crazy stuff.” Horan sat on the back of the couch and scooted behind Mark so that he was directly next to Waia. “So basically, we went to a cool party with the Norse about… four hours ago, then a bunch of Joeys showed up, led by some Primus. The Lady she mentioned, I assume. We got teleported here when we tried to escape, and now we’re here, but a bunch of people were still trapped there when the place got sucked into the Down Below. You got all that?”
“Yeah, the basics…” She punched Mark in the arm. “Are you insane?! Of course you should go, we’ll all die if we don’t!”
“Yeah, dude. You went on a suicide mission to get me to the Greeks, why is this any different?”
Mark rubbed his arm. Waia hit hard. “Well, uh… I’d already gone on a suicide mission twenty minutes earlier to save you, I was in too deep at that point.”
“We are stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean! How could we possibly get any deeper than that?!”
“Also, I’ll make you do everyone’s laundry for a month if you let us all die,” added Omet.
“Okay, fine, I’ll do it. If it means all of you will stop being such babies about it.”
Quet returned from the kitchen. “Yeah, Shades has no clue. Everything about the Lady and where our family is is really hush-hush, only the big political figures know anything about it. I guess the whole thing is a pretty big deal, they don’t want anything going wrong.”
Mark repeatedly patted Horan’s shoulder, as if to say Like I said, this is stupid. Horan brushed his hand off. With the matter wordlessly decided, Mark got up. “Fine, then. We head down once the preparations are made, somehow figure out where we’re supposed to go, then head there and somehow save the survivors on the off chance they’re still able to be saved. That the plan?”
Quet nodded. “Sounds right. I’m pretty sure you know the process. Just hand over some hair or whatever, and I’ll start the attunement process. If I leave it on overnight, it’ll be ready by tomorrow morning.”
Waia stood up. “I should probably come too. I’m a tad invested in making sure my home isn’t overrun with Joeys, and I got a feeling from that fight earlier that you four could use some proper muscle on the team. And it’d be fun to get into a real fight, that stuff earlier was for pansies.”
Shades’ voice came from the kitchen. “Hey, we were trying our best.”
“Shut up! Anyway, Ivy and I don’t have any spare rooms, and none of you are staying on the couch. We’ve got a refurbished motel downtown, you can probably stay there for free for tonight if you mention I’m with you. And if you do a little Primus razzle-dazzle.”
Quet pulled a stone out of her pocket. “I can turn all of your powers into confetti, if razzle-dazzle is what we’re looking for.”
“Well, thanks for helping out.” Horan patted Waia on the back. “Glad to have you on the team, dude.”
Shades spoke again. “And what about me? Being tied up is boring.”
Waia shrugged. “Chuck that guy into the sea, let him be shark bait for all I care.”
“Hey now, that’s kinda extreme.” Quet did some quick math on her fingers. “Buh… My binding spell will auto-cancel in about three hours, we can just dump him in the forest.”
“Let him turn into a cryptid or something,” added Omet.
“I choose cryptid, thanks,” assented Shades. “And I think eating people is bad, if that helps the decision.”
“Well, you go do all that.” Waia turned and headed back to her room. “I need a nap.”
Ivy hurriedly followed her. “Yes. Please. Me too. I need the afternoon off.”
Mark sat back down, folded his arms and huffed. “I didn’t get to take a nap when I first found out about all this.”
“I wouldn’t have stopped you,” said Horan.