Dawn was beginning to peak out after the climactic battle. It had gone on longer than I had thought. Either that or my sense of my time was all screwed up after coming here but I preferred to think it was the former. Lord knows I don’t need anything more wrong with my head at the moment. And thinking back on that-

“Derek.”

I blinked.

“Yes?” I called out to Konohora.

“Please stay aware at the moment. I worry about what will happen soon.”

I blinked twice.

“What?”

“You have a tendency to self absorb into your own mind. I would like you to be on guard and prepared for what our Hosts have in mind.”

My mind whirred but I stayed in the present moment because…

“Do, do I really do that a lot? Get uh, ‘self absorbed into my own mind?’”

“All the time. I believe it is a defense mechanism from trauma, combined with natural introverted tendencies you have always possessed.”

She said all that. Konohora said all that without blinking an eye. No, wait, she was looking at me. Waiting for my response. I squinted.

“We’ve… talked a little about this kind of thing here and there but… I just sink inwards. I don’t think, I don’t think it’s a defense mechanism.”

Konohora quickly shook her head, which caused a pang of worry to light up within me. We were still being carried towards the big tent on a bouncy leaf bowl. I didn’t need this with what we were about to have to face.

Still, it wasn’t like I was going to ignore her words either.

“Derek… we both remember what happened between you and Ms. Vilconoff.”

“That was life and death!”

“The recent living tornado you didn’t notice till it was about to attack us.”

“That was my power gauge going off! There was a lot going on that made it go crazy!”

She paused and blinked at that, before humming a little.

“We may need to discuss that later. As of now, however, what about never realizing you weren’t wearing shoes?”

I opened my mouth, only to close it. Okay, well…

“Or our conversations during our travels? You spent the majority of two weeks almost never addressing anyone or doing anything. You often pause, slow down, and just stare outwards.”

“That’s not fair! You people were assholes, stronger than me, who attacked me. Of course I wasn’t going to just have happy conversations with you all!”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Derek. I am your teammate. I am not attacking you with these observations. Tell me.”

I gulped. A question asked by a Truth priestess… wasn’t a question at all.

“Are you okay?”

“...No.”

“Have you always been like this, specifically, lacking awareness while metaphorically getting lost inside your own head?”

Good to know. Truth Priestesses can use metaphors I thought bitterly. Then realized what I was doing and sighed.

“...No.”

She nodded at that and then looked me straight in the eyes.

“Would you like to talk about it?”

I thought about it, for a half second. Telling her anything important would be stupid. She couldn’t keep a secret. Trust and Truth didn’t go hand and hand at all, amusingly enough. But other stuff… Konohora was right. The past wasn’t just ‘The Past’. It would always matter. But so would the present and future. In that vein… Konohora in the past had saved my life at least twice. Always talked to me, always been friendly and honest. Too honest but still honest. She was my only real company for weeks, healing me throughout with a tap on my body. Sometimes I’d feel more energetic for no reason and wouldn’t ask, but I knew.

In the present? She was the only person I could trust here, doubly amusing considering my earlier thoughts. The only person who would probably risk their life for mine and honestly, vice versa. I would tear anyone apart that tried to hurt her. We were teammates and comrades. Companions lost, naked, and at least partially afraid, in a jungle full of giants that could and would kill us.

In the future? I didn’t see me leaving this party. Not after what Tyler had shared with me and I was still unpacking that. Not with how I’d need a team anyway to have my back out in this wide world. In a way, I felt annoyingly stuck together with these people now. We weren’t the closest of friends and we each had more or less our own goals.

Riary just cared about helping Tyler. Tyler wanted to go home, something I could fully sympathize with. Konohora wanted to help guide and mentor Tyler. I was the odd one out there, as I couldn’t care less about his naivety or his own desires, overall. Certainly not enough to dedicate myself long term to helping him. I just wanted my damn potion that would fix my body dysmorphia and then… well… one step at a time. None of our goals would be accomplished today or tomorrow.

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In an annoying way, I’d gained a new family. People I hadn’t chosen, that I felt somewhat close to, and already had an annoying history with. And worse, couldn’t easily leave at this point in time. Well, especially at this exact point in time.

“I… had a mental collapse. My mind broke apart and then came back together. The thing that caused it… I will not talk about. I’ve always been introspective but never like this.”

Konohora frowned.

“How long ago?”

I laughed.

“Days before Riary first set me on fire. Moments before I killed that baron. Right before I arrived in this world, in fact.”

“You…”

The implications nearly visibly ran through Konohora’s head. I had suffered some horrible trauma that broke me right before getting into a fight with a baron, nearly got killed by a party of Heroes, dragged along in an absolutely horrible maelstrom, nearly died to a B-Rank vampire, got dragged even more toward the Elven Territory where I could finally relax… only to then be pulled into this mess.

No. No, I was not okay. I hadn’t been okay. I wasn’t going to be okay.

But why worry about it? Sure, I was mentally fucked upside the head and every time something new was revealed that I had to accept, it was pretty terrible. Pulled away from my home, being used by Giantesses, nearly dying for the third time. And oh yeah, I still had to deal with the fucking Gems. My memories still spun back to what I saw and I forcefully shoved them into a box I wasn’t going to open any time soon. One thing at a time.

Right now, apparently, was the time for a heart to heart.

“Derek… I am sorry you have gone through all of that.” Konohora said, sympathy in her voice.

“It’s whatever. Yes, I guess, I’m mentally screwed up and lose track of… reality. It’s just… so easy you know? To sink into my own thoughts, to just think about the world and myself and the things in it. It’s like… a mental commentary? No. I don’t know. It’s like I’m in third person sometimes looking out. Like-” I nearly said it felt like I was a character in a video game. “Like I’m controlling and seeing my body from a distance.”

Not fully, not always, but I wasn’t blind. Vanessa had literally torn me apart and I hadn’t noticed it at all till after she pointed it out. It wasn’t just pain immunity. I got lost in my head all the time. I didn’t know or think it was growing worse but… it wasn’t growing better that was for sure. Maybe before long I’d start mumbling to myself and talking to myself, maybe even thinking that there were other me’s. I mentally broke apart and came back together. Schizophrenia may be the least of my issues-

Arms. Wrapping around me. Boobs, pressing against me.

I stopped thinking and looked forward, noticing Konohora. She wasn’t any shorter than me, after all. Her, frankly massive, breasts were pressing against me but that wasn’t what I was focused on. Her arms around me… she was giving me a hug.

Something in me broke a little. I felt choked up with emotion.

“You seemed like you needed a hug.”

I tried not to choke out a sob.

“...Thank you.”

It was so… simple but… it was all stress or drama or nonsense or magic or bull shit and… and it felt really nice to just have a simple hug. To know someone cared about me and my well being.

Konohora pulled away and the moment ended just as we finally entered into the tent. Standing here, from this angle, I got a far better view of it.

I immediately wished I hadn’t.

This tent was massive, the desk was massive, and the town/village was moderate but it wasn’t really much of a town at all. It was more of a series of boxes with tiny, dextrous made beds. Open roofed at that, all of them. The walls seemed tall enough to make it impossible to escape but not like they were designed for that. They had no reason to be after all.

For the town was full of soulless monstrosites.

My entire being quaked at the sight. They were just… sitting there. Empty. Like dolls. They barely moved. Actually, scratch that, they didn’t move. Not without some form of instruction. The old lady made a few motions with her hands and they seemed to respond. For a second I was taken aback, thinking they might actually have something inside them. But all my senses were telling me they most certainly didn’t. The few who moved, moved strangely, seeming kinda familiar-

“The strings.”

They were moving similar to those strings when they had wrapped me up. The same kind of smooth but wrong motion. Suddenly, a realization came over me.

‘Living’ strings, ‘living’... not people, able to provide nourishment via contact with their bodies…

These giantesses were natural animancers. They control life. At least to some small degree. The reason none of these things need to eat, that warmth inside me and Konohora, it was probably their literal lifeforce. Probably only a small, tiny amount they got from simply eating, but still.

Which made it all the more concerning that it seemed to die when heading towards my crotch and disappear.

The ‘old’ lady reached out towards us and I had to mentally resist fleeing, panicking, or attacking the giant hands coming for me. She picked us both, the feeling of being pulled into the sky by a giant still novel. It didn’t last long though, as she simply put us into one of the boxes with a bed.

I stared at it.

“Yeah, no.”

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what they wanted. And just… no.

Konohora seemed less than amused.

“This… may be a problem.”

I looked at her strangely.

“Why?”

Suddenly, the ‘old’ lady began saying something to Saisaie.

“Gsef dha llruwasr.”

Saisaie moved to grab something.

“The…. things, do not naturally procreate from what I could tell. They require something extra in order to start that process themselves. I believe I saw that process while I was here for a brief time.”

Suddenly I felt a pang of danger. It had nothing to do with anything magical or supernatural. Just the raw feeling of danger any human would feel when something bad was going to happen.

I looked up, because a shadow had descended over me. Saisaie was as large and as horrifyingly massive as ever, but she had in her hands two brightly colored bell flowers in her hands. She was aiming them straight down at us.

“What… does that mean for us?” I asked.

Konohora mirthlessly chuckled.

Saisaie squeezed the flowers and suddenly a massive blast of pollen rained down onto us.