Joy was creating a roster in his head as he skipped away from the prince. He needed to make a team that had the skillset to complete the mission. But more importantly, he needed to make a team that he could have some fun with. Otherwise, it would be a lame and boring trip, and that was not something Joy could abide by.

Obviously, Theo and Lillian were on the team, the two of them were real ones, and he needed their clout to be able to convince anyone else to join his ragtag team.

So, Joy started walking towards their room. It was a bit far from the section of the castle he had wandered to, but this was expected of Joy.

Upon arriving at their room Joy knocked on the door. This door was a simple earthen door, that one of the Earth gifted had done some wacky earth magic to, to make it function like a door. The sound produced was especially echoey and made for some quite dramatic entrances.

The door slowly creaked open and inside Joy saw Lillian, who had Peku in her arms. The little guy was shivering as if he was scared of something.

That was when Joy saw a mass of shrews that were packed into the corner of the room.

The shrews were bright orange and scuttled together making some vaguely human forms, before collapsing back into an indistinct blob of shrews.

The door slowly shut as Joy just started walking away. This was not his problem, and he was not going to deal with that nightmare that was just sitting there, skittering there? The terminology must be quite confusing, since the creature as a whole sat still, but the smaller entities that made it up were constantly in motion.

Joy realized that his pondering should wait since he could hear some grumbling and rapid footsteps approaching from behind him.

“Oh Joy.” Lillian called in a sing-songy voice.

Do not look back, Joy thought to himself. If he just ignored her, maybe she would vanish into thin air.

A hand suddenly gripped his left shoulder. The fingers were like iron and refused to let him escape their clutches.

Theo stood to Joy’s left. The iron grip seemed to be his, however he looked faintly pale and there happened to be an orange shrew gripping tightly to his coat.

The piercing blue eyes that had brought many a villain to their knees were pleading with Joy. Behind those eyes lay a scared little boy who had a severe phobia of rodents and needed help. Not that Theo would ever lower himself to begging for help.

Joy slowly reached out and gently grasped the small orange critter, and Theo let out an audible sigh of relief.

Behind the pair, Lillian had finally caught up, and the orange blob of shrews had somehow followed behind her. It was horrifying and brought many questions about Lillian’s mental stability to the forefront of everyone’s minds, but Joy was preoccupied with the shrew in his hand.

He slowly released it on the ground, and let it run up to rejoin the mass of its brethren. It slowly melted into the mass, unable to be distinguished from any of the others, a part of a whole instead of an individual orange nightmare shrew.

“At least they don’t seem angry?” Joy asked in a hopeful tone as the three companions watched the dance of the shrews.

“I guess we could take it outside.” Lillian threw out a suggestion. No one seemed averse to trying, so the group started walking to the massive doors that led to the barren winter landscape.

The mass of shrews seemed to need no coaxing; it was happy to just follow the group wherever they went. However, the shrews were eerily quiet. The ungulated in their freaky way without letting loose a single squeak.

The worst part of the whole experience was the other people in Joy’s opinion. They would shrivel in horror when they saw the mass of shrews, then see that it was Lillian and Joy leading it around and immediately shrug their shoulders as if their presence explained everything. The two of them were not that bad, were they?

Maybe Joy needed to reevaluate his image in the eyes of the rest of the prince’s cohort. But that was a problem for another Joy, because right now he needed to deal with one of Lillian’s crazy dream creatures.

The three of them walked out into the snow, and all of them started shivering. Not even one of them had remembered that the outside of the castle was going to be cold, which was so incredibly embarrassing that everyone silently promised never to mention this event in the future.

The shrews shriveled away from the cold, the shapes it made seemed even more condensed than they did previously. Were the dream shrews trying to conserve their dream body temperature?

The two parties stared at each other. The shrews waving around in their hypnotic fashion while the three humans shivered uncontrollably in the miserable cold.

Lillian was the first to speak up, “well this didn’t work. Plan B?”

Theo, through chattering teeth, asked, “what’s plan B?”

She forced a grin and replied, “we deal with it.”

Joy shivered, but not from the cold. That was seriously brutal, this was a creature she had imagined into existence, and she was so willing to get rid of it? That was terrifying.

With that Lillian started walking into the castle again. Leaving Peku behind to play in the snow.

Strange, Joy though that she had just decided to ruthlessly murder the abomination. But who was Joy to know the inner workings of Lillian. Her brain obviously wasn’t normal, as seen by her conjuration of this monstrosity.

Joy shrugged and walked in with her, maybe she was going somewhere new so that the murder would be more tasteful. Theo stayed outside of the castle, more willing to brave the cold than his phobia of rodents. And someone needed to take care of Peku, right?

The mass of shrews slowly turned around and started following Joy and Lillian, it was like a demented puppy. Just following its owner around, completely clueless as to what Fate had in store for it.

Once Joy was shoulder to shoulder to Lillian she asked, “so why did you knock on our door?”

Joy had nearly forgotten his original task with all the excitement that their little orange friend had brought them.

“Oh. The prince assigned me a special mission and told me I could pick out whatever teammates I wanted.”

“What’s the catch?”

“Why would there be a catch, the prince obviously just trusts me.”

Lillian turned to glare at him, “I don’t trust you with anything I wouldn’t wholeheartedly entrust to a five-year old.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Joy gasped, “well that was just hurtful. But I think he gave me this mission because I was nearby. No ulterior motive there, just convenience.”

“Well then what’s the mission?”

“I am to assemble a proper team that can brave the great wintry wilderness in search of any local people. Apparently, the abandoned continent isn’t as abandoned as everyone thought.”

“It does sound interesting, so you wanted your two best buds in the whole wide world to join you on your mission?”

“No, I just needed to borrow your, sorry, Theo’s credibility to convince some other members to join me.”

Somehow Lillian’s glare became even more intense after that little jab at her expense. But she knew she would have her revenge; it was only a matter of time with Joy.

Joy continued, “but since Theo is busy having a mental breakdown about rodents, I guess I will have to make do with you Mrs. Dreamkiller.”

“When did I become Dreamkiller?”

“When you threatened to ‘deal with’ those little guys.” Joy gestured towards the mass of shrews which was lagging slightly behind Joy and Lillian, it somehow could understand the basic human decency to barge into someone else’s conversation.

“Yeah, we are going to deal with them by ignoring them. I am hurt by your interpretation of my words. I would never kill one of my dreams unless they were trying to kill me.”

Joy heaved a slight sigh of relief, he was glad that he simply misinterpreted Lillian’s words, he only had slightly believed she was going to murder her dream spawn in cold blood.

“Well, want to help me try and get The Heater to join our group?” Joy deftly changed the topic trying to move away from his blunder.

“If we’ll be stuck out there for as long as I think we will, you wouldn’t be able to get me to join without her.”

The Heater had quickly earned a name for herself with the many teams under the prince’s command. Her name was Emmy, but the nickname had a way of sticking with people far more than her name did. She had a relatively useless gift; all it did was make a certain area around herself warm. Standing next to Emmy was like being near a warm hearth at home, listening to an elder tell a story.

She radiated warmth and comfort in a cold and unforgiving environment. Thus, she had been dubbed The Heater.

Her gift didn’t truly affect the outside world, she was not boiling the snow around her, but it made everyone feel better and not have to deal with the environmental pressure.

Joy knew that getting her to join would be like trying to pry candy from a persistent toddler. Everyone wanted Emmy with them, but Joy’s pitch would be different. Joy had the explicit permission of the prince to create the best team possible, and he was going to abuse that to get The Heater on his team.

Maybe he was going to fib a few things, but at the end of the day who cared about that? He was just going to lie a little bit; it would be fun.

Joy scouted the area, hoping to find The Heater quickly. She usually spent her time near the entrance of the castle, letting her gift warm up anyone who had some unenviable job that made them leave the castle.

Unfortunately, she must’ve been on a break, so Joy went to the next place he could think of, dragging Lillian and the mass of shrews with him.

The crew entered the kitchen, the chef was sitting in her normal position, surrounded by snow, and apparently experimenting with a few new recipes. Having unlimited ingredients really boosted a person’s creativity.

In the center of the room Joy spotted his prey… his target. Target sounded better.

She was surrounded by men and women who were just basking in the glow that she exuded. They all looked exhausted, but her presence was able to make smiles spread across all their faces. It was a surprisingly beautiful sight to Joy.

But he had a job to do, so he barged into their little group and made himself known.

“Hello there! Emmy, nice little circle here. I am giving you a little notice, but the prince specially asked for you to join a team that will be leaving tomorrow into the wilds. See you bright and early by the gates.”

Joy winked, which made everyone cringe, then sauntered off without giving Emmy a chance to think or respond.

But it was no longer Joy’s fault. He had blamed it all on the prince since to avoid responsibility. Joy was just doing what he asked.

Lillian looked at Joy curiously, “if you were just going to do that why did you need me and Theo?”

“It wouldn’t have been very fun to do that without an audience. Get up to speed Lillian.” Joy rolled his eyes.

Joy looked behind as the two of them were walking away and noticed that the mass of shrews was not following them. Instead, it was staying close to The Heater, as if it too was magically drawn to her warmth.

Odd, but that was just taking care of two problems at once. Now Lillian and Joy wouldn’t have to deal with the annoying mass of shrews as they did the rest of the chores needed to go on an adventure in the freezing lands.

Joy walked up to the chef and requested a batch be made of travel rations that could last four people for two months. He hoped that the mission would last only a month at most, but it was better to be overprepared than under when starvation was on the line.

Immediately after Joy made his request to the chef, who had immediately gotten to work creating nuts and jerky out the junk that surrounded her grumbling about how ‘some notice would’ve been appreciated’, a man stepped out of the shadows behind Joy. He was short, wiry, and had oaky skin. He looked like a twig had come alive off the side of a tree. He also had an unfortunate bowler hat on, the hat didn’t make him seem gentlemanly, instead it made him look incompetent. But he did just walk out of the shadows, so what did Joy know about him?

The man bowed and introduced himself, “I am Benny, and the prince said my puni… ahem the prince said that I would be working with you on your next mission.”

“Nice to meet you, Benny.” Lillian said with a warm smile, hoping to get along with the slightly strange man.

Joy realized that someone was going to have to do the scary job of informing the chef that she needed to prepare even more food with the limited time she had been given. So, he used his newfound powers as a team leader to delegate this task.

“Please inform the chef that she needs to make rations for another person and meet us at the gate tomorrow morning Benny.”

“Of course.”

Then Benny turned to the chef who had watched this entire exchange and started to repeat Joy’s instructions. The chef started to glow red in rage, and she started throwing extremely hot mashed potatoes at the unfortunate man.

Benny was thankfully able to meld into the shadows of the surrounding area and escape the onslaught of potato.

Joy and Lillian had already known this was going to happen and had started running as soon as Benny had turned from them.

They both knew that the chef was incredible unhappy with them and on the verge of letting out her rage. Even a casual observer would realize that adding to the poor lady’s stress would send her into some sort of rage. It was rather unfortunate for Benny that his social skills were a bit too lacking to catch onto this and so he took the brunt of her fiery rage.

Joy and Lillian left to try and find Theo and Peku. They needed to make sure he was properly informed of their upcoming trip, and not because the two of them had already become bored with sorting out the logistics of the mission. Not that at all. Delegation was simply the easiest choice.

Slowly but surely all the preparations were made by a nagging Theo, who refused to let the two scoundrels scamper off after giving him their work. The work needed to be done quickly, and misery loved company. Or at least Theo’s did.

Soon the entire group went to sleep and tried to get what would probably be their last night of sweet dreams for a while.

Thankfully, once Lillian fell asleep the mass of shrews that had been idly undulating nearby Emmy all day finally dissipated into the dream matter it was shaped from, allowing Emmy to fall asleep, even if her dreams ended up being rather odd because of having to deal with the shrews all day.

Eventually, everyone woke up and gathered near the outer perimeter of the castle.

Joy was decked out in a very warm and oddly colorful suit that was lined with furs, he seemed to have learned from the last trip that the cold was no joke and was planning on taking no chances with it. Theo was similarly dressed, however his clothes seemed to have been specially designed to blend into the environment around them, in direct contrast to Joy’s garish color scheme.

Lillian had a single arrow that floated nearby her, obviously some sort of weapon created from her dream. Joy appreciated her dreaming of a weapon, no matter how unlikely it was that they were going to meet any actual enemies, especially on their first day of travel. By her side as always was the enthusiastic Peku, who looked confused but quite excited to go back into snowy lands.

Benny was somehow still wearing his awful bowler hat, which magically refused to come off his head in the strong winds. He phased in and out of the shadows near Joy’s feet, obviously going into the shadow realm to stave off the cold from truly chilling his bones. Everyone looked at him with envy.

Finally, the Heater, Emmy, was dressed very casually. She trusted her gift implicitly and knew that the cold would be no problem for her. But she had somehow garnered a crowd of other people who were all cheering and wishing her luck on her quest. Some people cried as they saw their helpful little Heater about to leave the castle, taking the cozy feelings with her.

Joy looked intently into each of his group’s eyes, “let’s do this.”

With that pronouncement he started walking off into the snowy drifts that covered the nearby land.

No one followed.

"That’s the wrong way.” Theo helpfully told Joy.

“I knew that I was just testing you.”

And so, the group started walking in the correct direction, thankfully letting Theo take the lead. Joy laughed, Theo grumbled, Lillian smirked, Benny awkwardly chuckled along with Joy, and Emmy had a look of awkwardness and disbelief on her face.

“This is going to be so fun.” Joy kept on laughing, until Theo smacked him in the back of the head telling him to shut up.