Tick… tick… tick… tick…

I scrubbed at my eyes, trying to clear the sleep from them, but I could not make them focus. Everything looked distorted, as though the world had been coated with a semi-transparent film, and refused to hold still.

Tick… tick… tick… tick…

Frustrated, I squeezed them shut again, then halfway opened just the one, hoping that might help. It did. Sort of. The fuzziness was still there, but I could at least focus on a thing without it jumping and swirling about. So I began to woozily scan the immediate area.

Tick… tick… tick… tick…

I was in a smallish room, but not the one I was expecting. Instead of the wooden paneling and heroic tapestries of derrings-do that had decorated our room at the Righteous Table Leg, this place looked like the bedroom of some family’s precious little princess… who was midway through her rebellious death metal phase. The room had been painted a pastel shade of purple and was adorned with all the expected paraphernalia—a vanity, stuffed animals, matching gossamer bed curtains, etc—but most of the walls had been plastered with posters in shades of black, white, and red, with fonts that looked less delicate calligraphy and more the violent musings of an axe murderer. There might have been some faces or album artwork on them, but I could not focus enough to make out those details.

Tick… tick… tick…

Okay, what is that sound?

I dragged my still barely functioning eye around until it landed on the likely culprit. Just past my feet, some sort of… house?… was mounted on the wall?

Oh, wait a minute. It’s one of those—

“Heeeeey, Daddy!

I wanna diamond ring,

bracelets everything.

Daddy!

You outta get the best for me—”

I stared, nonplussed, as the little wooden carving of Jax gyrated away upon her tiny stage just below the face of the cuckoo clock. She had popped out wearing a dress the same color as her hair and was singing one of those old-school jazz numbers from the 1940s, but I could not make out the rest of the words. Half a second after her performance began, an obnoxious-looking wolf popped out below her and began whistling his head off.

And then a baseball bat cleaved through the air, smashed the whole contraption from its perch on the wall, and commenced to beating the thing into stillness.

Now even more confused, and no less disturbed, my eye traced the bat up to its owner: an intensely disheveled Mia. Her normally immaculate, black-and-blood-red-tipped hair looked like she had just shoved her finger in a light socket, and the sparkling evening gown she was wearing had been charred and ripped. You might have thought she had just walked away from an explosion in one of those high-octane heist movies.

A pair of panties were dangling from one of her antlers.

“Crap on a stick…” she muttered, scanning the room frantically. “Where are—ah ha!”

Quick as a snake, she brought a previously unnoticed roll of duck tape—worn over her wrist like a bracelet—to her teeth, ripped off a length, and slapped it to a spot on the wall.

It had been… oozing.

“Uh?” I began. And ended. That summed up my thoughts pretty well.

She whirled, leveling her bat at me, wide-eyed and furious. “No! No questions! Not a one.”

“But… I have so many.”

“Well, that’s just too bad!” she barked. “I have only just gotten this room stabilized and I will not risk another—” She stopped, took a breath to calm herself, then continued in a more sedate tone, “No… no. We’ve been over this, Mia. Do not get him excited.”

I stared at her, my mind skittering over half-a-dozen potential responses before dismissing them all. “Mia, if you want me to avoid questions, you’re really going to need to avoid comments like that.”

She nodded. “That’s fair. But in my defense, these last few—” Her eyes jerked up in surprise. “That… that was fair. Rational, even.”

“Uh huh,” I agreed slowly. Why did I feel like I was defusing a bomb? “Rationality is a goal I often strive for.”

“But… but…” Her head shook once, dismissing whatever she had been about to say—and almost dislodging the panties—before rounding the bed toward me. “What is the product of three and eleven?”

I needed to switch eyes. The other one could not have heard that correctly. “Say again?”

Her eyes widened in alarm half a second before a guttural moan forced its way up her throat, arching her back and taking her to the floor. From the way she had reacted, you might have thought my simple request for clarification had just hilted a 12-inch dildo straight up her backside, with no warning and less lube. By the time she regained her feet, she was panting and trembling enough to have just swum the English Channel.

And then…

…a stuffed poodle jumped onto the bed.

While my eye darted between the two in helpless bewilderment, it nonchalantly adjusted the tie hanging from its neck and began, “I tell ya, I get no respect… no respect at all. Frankly, it’s been making me depressed! You know, I took a bottle of sleeping pills the other day? I went to the doctor. He said to have a couple of drinks and sleep it off!”

Laughter filtered in from some unseen audience.

I blinked. Okay, I don’t think this eye is working either.

Still struggling to regain her breath, Mia hiked her bat and charged the animal with an incoherent war cry.

“Take it easy, sweetheart,” the poodle quipped as it ducked a swing. “I’ll bend over if you want. You can even take a picture! Just don’t ask me to say, ‘cheese.’”

“Die, abomination!”

“Geez! You remind me of my ex-wife! You know, she—whoa!” Only just dodging another swing, the poodle leapt from the bed.

“Mia… questions are mounting…”

“Save it!” she yelled, scrabbling over me in her chase. “Just find the leak before more of them spawn in here.”

Find the leak. Prevent ‘them’ from spawning. Okay? It was not much to go on, but I had heard worse RPG setups.

I sat up a little too quickly and had to pause a moment for my head to stop spinning. Was I drunk? Coming down from a bender? I started to shake my head, but froze after the first twitch. Mistake… that was a mistake…

Out of desperation, I sucked in a breath and held it to a count of three before letting it out again. That helped.

Alright… leaks. Leaks…

It only took a second to spot the clear fluid oozing from the floor, and as hastily as I could manage, I rolled off the bed toward it. The stuff was coming from a tiny puncture in the carpet, but I did not have any tape. So… I just plugged it with my finger.

It probably was not the brightest of moves, but the old ticker was not exactly firing on all cylinders just yet.

“Okay, I got it,” I reported, staring at my finger with a degree of understandable concern.

“Great! That’s great, my lord,” Mia called back. “One second…”

She was on the other side of the bed from me, so all I could see of her was the ascending arc of the bat as she beat the stuffed poodle into submission. It kept trying to fight back with little abortive one-liners, but none ever made it to the punchline. It was probably for the best. I had never been much of a fan of groaner comics, anyway.

And having experienced more than my share of confusing, absurd bullshit since arriving on this world, I settled in to wait. I did not assume for a moment that any of it would be explained to my satisfaction, but other than my swirling head, it was not like I was in any pain. My finger might have been stuck in some mysterious, oozing hole, but that was not such a big deal in the grand scheme of things. I could deal with a few minutes in the chocolate factory.

And speaking of temptations…

Hmm?

A waft of something familiar had just curled into my nose, so I leaned forward to give the liquid a tentative sniff. It was… kind of nice, in a far-too-rich sort of way, like a fine port that had been put away for a few eons too many. Subtle… barely even there. Yet I somehow knew that even the tiniest of sips would have blasted my head off with raisins.

I pulled away from it quickly, blinking away the tears that had inexplicably sprung to my eyes. “Boy, that shit clears the sinuses.”

Mia surged to her feet. “You didn’t taste it again, did you?”

Again? I opened my mouth for a snarky response, but stopped just in time. After what had just happened, I could not afford to be careless here.

“No. Just a little sniff, is all.” I gave my finger another considering glance. “You might want to hurry with the tape, though.”

She scurried around the bed in a rush, but my finger stuck in the floor brought her up short.

“Well… that’s one way to do it.” She found my eyes again. “Eleven times three.”

“Mia…”

“It’s important.”

I sighed. “Thirty-three. Now, please—”

“Eight divided by six?” she interrupted.

My lips twisted into a frown, having to actually think that one over. “One… and a third.”

“Finally!” I could see the tension visibly drain from her shoulders as she knelt over my finger, patching the hole with a practiced ease. “We might actually have a chance now.”

I looked from her to my now-freed digit for a moment before responding. The glistening substance coating it was too viscous to run or drip, but too thin to leave much of itself behind, almost like an oil or a buttery pan sauce.

And with that aroma…

I might have blacked out for a moment there, but suddenly Mia’s hand was around my wrist, her eyes hard.

“No,” she pronounced. “It is a lovely torture, Lord Master, but not one I can tolerate much longer. I have been drawn into the maelstrom of your Power more times than I can count, each whipping me to peaks of madness I did not think possible, and with no release in sight. Do not throw us to that vortex again.”

I nodded my agreement, if not my understanding, and allowed her to scrub the fluid away with a corner of the bedsheets. Despite her warnings, a part of me was sad to see it wasted.

“Alright,” I said after a moment. “I’m going to need some kind of explanation.”

“Later,” she assured me quickly. “First, we must regain control. And for that, we must merge.”

“That’s… not helping.”

“All will be clear soon. Now, remove your robe,” she commanded, coming to her feet once more.

I thought about protesting—we were trying to prevent peaks of madness, not heap more onto the pile—but once she started fumbling with the zipper at her back, at least some portion of her intentions crystallized.

“Uh…” I tried again.

“How else did you expect we do it?” she asked, all business. Then, with a growl, she swore, “Blast. Of course, it would be stuck. Help me with this, won’t you?”

I rose to my feet carefully, using the bedpost for support. I did want to help her but… “Mia, I just watched a wooden carving of Jax pop out of a cuckoo clock; we’ve got stuffed animals running around trying to perform stand-up; jellied fortified wine is leaking from the walls, and you think sex is somehow going to—”

Her palm slapped over my mouth.

“No. Questions,” she said again. “Listen to me, Donum. You are my most holy sovereign. My loyalties are yours and yours alone. I swear it! I will explain everything I can… but not before we merge. It cannot be before. Please. You must trust me!”

My brow furrowed with dissatisfaction, but I nodded into her palm, anyway. It seemed I had stumbled into a situation where the phrase, ‘fuck around and find out,’ had been taken to its most literal extreme.

As I pulled her hand away, giving her my most disarming smile, I quipped, “You could at least kiss me first.”

I had not meant it as anything beyond a light jab at the situation, a touch of flirting to get my head into the right space, but her laugh contained a note of fragility I was not expecting.

“Oh, we’re far beyond that.”

It was then I noticed how genuinely out-of-sorts she was. I mean… yes, the hair and dress were dead giveaways, but there was more to it than that. She looked like she was stretched paper-thin, only just holding an epileptic fit at bay. Her shoulders were bunching and trembling at random, her hands were not quite obeying her commands, and her eyes kept darting about. I had at first thought she was keeping a lookout for more disturbances—and perhaps she was—but there was a noticeable pattern to their movements. In quick succession, she would glance at my face, the bed, my hands, some inconsequential spot in the room… then an intense moment of staring at my midsection before forcing her gaze away. She would then nibble at her bottom lip, catch her breath, and start all over.

Had I not spent next to every waking moment this past month or so watching for this very pattern of behavior, I might have mistaken it for something else. After all, how often does a man really need to fear for his chastity? But when you have multiple girlfriends, each with the libido of a ravenous steam engine, this kind of thing, left unchecked, could lead to some serious complications.

So I might not have understood what was going on, but I knew my girls. Mia needed tending to. Now.

“Oh, you poor thing.”

They were the only words I could get out before our lips came together. Had circumstances been different, it might have occurred to me that this was my first time in actually tasting them. She was a mind-construct. Incorporeal. In some ways, little more than a figment of my imagination. We had only ever coupled by using Arx as a proxy. But somehow, that fact and all its implications never materialized in my head.

Had it done, I would have savored the moment. I would have savored her. Long had I wished to run my hands over every inch of her perfect body, to massage her soft legs and stare, mesmerized, by the ripples running through her backside. I would have run my tongue over the flat of her belly and journeyed up through the valley of her breasts. I wanted to know her scent. Her taste. Her everything.

But she was in no state for those kinds of pleasantries. Scarcely had my lips met hers than she was forcing me to the bed. There she pinned me, knees to my shoulders, literally clawing her dress to shreds in her haste. All I could do was watch as bits and pieces of her once-fine gown sailed through the air until it was reduced to little more than a tattered shawl catching at her neck.

Then, for one all-too-brief moment, she stared down at me. Her eyes had gone wild and were glowing with a primordial light. Steam slipped from between her fangs with her every breath. Her hips began dancing little circles upon my chest, grinding her naked sex against the texture of my robe.

I… probably should have taken the opportunity to at least work the damned thing over my waist, but she was so sexy my mind had sort of blanked. Not a second later, she reached behind her, and with a smooth jerk, ripped a convenient yet totally unnecessary access port into the front of my crotch.

And then she glided back.

It was kind of magical. She did not have to align herself or anything so mundane. She simply moved. I felt a moment of delicious softness as the fur of her tail passed over my bared groin, then came the no-less-pleasant softness of her skin. An intense yet slick heat enveloped me… then I was inside of her.

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And as awesomely wondrous as it was to again experience that animalistic side of humanity, that near spiritual meeting of flesh on flesh, it was nothing next to the look of satisfaction on her face. With her glowing eyes and gleaming fangs, she looked like some fey queen come to life, debating what depravities she might inflict upon the hapless mortal that had wandered into her domain.

As her hips resumed their motion, the shadows behind her grew and deepened, while her horns seemed to elongate and sharpen. Yet even as the pleasure mounted, her gaze never faltered. Her eyes never so much as twitched. They simply shone, boring into me.

Far from being intimidated, I was over the moon with the display. She was so impossibly hot. I was so incredibly turned on…

It was like I had been waiting for this moment. Like I had been brought to the edge over and over again for days on end, and now that I had been caught, my torment was nearing its glorious finale… yet I was only now realizing it?

I was so confused. The world was closing in on me. I was melting. Liquid. Liquid heat. That smell… Overwhelming my senses.

Her eyes… my tongue?

Mia…

Black hair and red.

Blonde hair and… and black…

What… what…?

We sat panting on the bed, staring down at the recently occupied depression. Our groin yet pulsed with a confusing sort of familiarly. It was similar yet different to what I knew. Different yet more than what the… the other me knew. We were filled with a rush of conflicting emotions. Disorientation. Satisfaction. Mild hysteria… Too many to count.

Our lips formed around a few breathless words. Our voice had a deep, melodious purr to it. Strange and exotic. More than the sum of its parts. “I offer… thanks to my lord that he might bless me so. Fervent be my—hmm~ …my prayer that his font might bless me again. Forever more.”

A flush crawled up our cheeks at our own words. “You realize I can hear you.”

“Of course,” we replied, our voice taking on a sensuous edge. “What use a prayer unheard?”

Flirt. It was still embarrassing, though.

Our eyes drifted downward. I already knew what we would see. We could feel them dangling there, just as ever, brushing against our arms, but I needed to know. Sure enough, there they were. Our perfect… inadequate breasts. Hanging from… our chest? Panic came.

…and fled just as quickly. It was kind of hot seeing them from this angle. And also… the most natural thing in the world. They were our breasts. Where else would they be?

And yet we were filled with a burgeoning curiosity. I wanted to touch and fondle, to let our fingers explore, but they resisted my impulse.

“That would be unwise,” we admonished ourselves. “Eager as we are for more of such, there is a danger we may separate again. And we have much to do. Much to repair. Our kin’s… gift… has—”

“Xhinn!”

We leapt to our feet in a rush, our eyes widening in sudden remembrance, but the jostling that our body reported from such a quick move caused us a moment of dysphoria. And at the same time, it was completely normal. We were… fine?

“Oof, that’s…” We shook our head. “Okay, start with the explanations, please. I feel like I’m losing my… our mind.”

“Very well.”

Our legs calmly circled the bed until we came to the vanity. I felt every single movement, every sway of our hips… yet our mind kept yelling at me to ignore it. This was just how our body moved. How we always felt. To stop paying so much attention. What was I getting so excited about? Then we sat, looking at ourselves through the mirror.

Our eyes surveyed us critically and began picking at the remains of our dress for a moment before noticing the underwear hanging from our antlers.

We tutted.

“As you can see, we have merged,” we informed ourselves, absently plucking the panties away.

They were a smoking ruin. It was a shame. We rather liked them. They had been black and lacy, and we had very much wanted to know what… what we thought of them? Annoyed, we wadded them up and tossed them into a nearby wastebasket.

“We have done so many times before, each with varying levels of success and awareness. On both our parts. We have yet to discover the reasoning behind it, but the joining of our minds in this form seems to offer an unprecedented level of control over… many things. The dream fabric in particular.”

“But I… we…” Our face flickered with confusion. “I don’t remember any of that.”

“As I said, the dream fabric,” the other part of me reiterated as we began combing out our hair.

“Meaning… we’re asleep?”

“Indeed. Your recollection of these events comes and goes with no pattern that I have been able to trace. For now, take my word for it. I have been practicing this technique with you whenever I can… whenever your Power is quiescent enough to do so, at least. And it is a good thing I have. We shall have need of that control if we hope to repair the damage Xhinn has caused.”

“Right… When she made us swallow her… her grool.”

We licked our lips unconsciously as the memory of that event resurfaced. We wanted Her again. Why did we want Her again?! It had knocked us unconscious!

What had She even tasted like?

Our eyes fluttered. “That is one name for it. Perhaps we might suggest ‘influence’ as an alternative?”

“Like… like our influence?” Our expression contorted into a grimace at the unthinking question. But nothing happened. Either to the room or to force a reaction from us.

“What need we to fear questions from ourselves?” we reminded… ourselves. Whatever. It was a relief, either way. “And yes. Much the same. More refined and of a purpose. And certainly more potent. But very similar. It has run rampant through us for quite some time now. We need to wrest control of it before it drives us completely mad.”

“Okay… But how are we supposed to accomplish anything while we’re asleep?”

We tittered. “You ask that as if this were not all taking place within our own mind. But enough questions. We must gain access to our Core. And first, we shall need a new gown.”

We stood abruptly and turned toward a freestanding dresser.

“Aww, but we liked this one!” we protested. “It makes us look all sexy and dangerous.”

Our cheeks flushed at the compliment. But we pretended not to notice. “We are not going to walk down three flights of stairs with our tits out.”

Stairs? Oh, right. I remember now. Down from the sitting room. Our eyes fluttered with confusion. Wait, what? No! No, never mind. Just go with it.

“That sounds fun, too!”

“My lord, please.” The dressing cabinet doors swung open on silent hinges, revealing an interior mirror with our own partially naked form reflected in it. We were in the midst of rolling our eyes at ourselves, but it could not disguise the indulgent smile on our lips. “We are stable enough now, but every time you experience too much of what it is to be—”

Our words froze in our throat, confusion and alarm running rampant across our face… before settling on outrage.

“I don’t understand why we have to take this form in the first place,” we were saying. “If we have to merge, and stability is such a concern, why not just take my—”

“Where are my clothes?!” we interrupted with a shout before yanking an example of that very thing from its hanger.

It was a brown leather bikini with a single shoulder strap made from what appeared to be rawhide, while the bottom was just a long triangular flap that would hang down in front. The fur was still on it.

“A cave woman outfit?” we asked in surprise. “That’d look nice! Especially with our antlers. You’ve been holding out on me.”

Growling, we slammed the hanger back into place, quickly swishing our way through several iterations of the same thing. “It wasn’t here the last time I looked through these. None of these were. Where are all my beautiful gowns? My dresses? What is this even supposed to be?!”

She had pulled out another garment, this one composed of little more than leaves and twisted vines.

“Some kind of Druidic fetish gear?” we hazarded.

“Blast and damnation!”

*

We crept down the hallway with a cautious watchfulness.

Or… sometimes it was a hallway. It kind of morphed and popped at random intervals, changing themes from moment to moment. One second, it present as a corridor in some high-class Gothic manor, then it would become a cave tunneling through solid rock, then a glacier, then one of those rotating clown barrels you find in funhouses, before we could force it to stabilize again.

That process took a lot of concentration on our part. We had to first know the precise shape of the thing it should be, then will ourselves to view the nonsense playing out in front of our eyes as that thing. In D&D terms, it was the act of continuously rolling to disbelieve. Which was a lot harder than it sounds. Every time our mind wandered, some new insanity would leap out at us, and we would have to start over.

And not all of it was simple window dressing. A deer was as likely to go frolicking by as was a basilisk or some other mutant abomination. And most of those were themed in an explicitly sexual manner. Detached women’s backsides. Rolling breast boulders. All manner of apparitions wielding whips and chains.

Tentacles…

So many tentacles.

Those we had to destroy with reckless haste lest they destabilize our form. Mia had been having quite the time with them before securing us in her room, apparently. They liked to tease her right to the edge before abandoning her in a panting and thoroughly unfulfilled mess, which was a big part of why she had been so out of sorts. But together, we made quick work of them. Once you cut one off at the base, the rest would flee in terror, leaving us in peace for at least a little while. We could imagine why.

Unfortunately, we had needed to resort to tooth and claw for the venture. The bat we had been using was long gone, vanished along with our bedroom the moment it had left our sight.

As for our outfit, we had decided on one of the primitive bikinis. We were still less than satisfied with it, but after we had mentioned how nicely its color complimented our tail, we had been contented enough to suffer it for a time. And it provided support. That was the main thing.

Personally, I thought it looked sexy as fuck. Especially on… us. I just did not know how I felt about being so attracted to ourselves. Or how that attraction was making our body react. The swelling, I could kind of understand, but the wetness? The aching emptiness? And our nipples?!

“Stop that,” we grumbled. “You’re going to summon more tentacles at this rate.”

“I can’t help it! We’re a girl. It’s weird,” we protested. “And you say we do this every night? How can I possibly not remember this?”

“Not every night. Your dreams can be very unpredictable. And in fairness, we rarely achieve stability for long. That strangeness you are experiencing always ends up twisting our control away, so stop thinking about it!”

“I still say we should just use my form.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We are female. How would I enter you?”

“You literally live inside our head!”

“When we are awake, yes. But this is the fabric,” we explained. As if that explained anything. “And anyway, that would just make me horny. Do you think yourself unique in wanting to touch what you do not have?”

We blinked, considering the implications of that sentence. “So… what? You want us to masturbate?”

“That was not what I was saying… though, now that you mention it—”

“Not a chance. Jax and Arx would never tolerate it.”

“True.” We shook our head regretfully. “In any case, we need this form in order to enter our Core. I have explained all of this to you before.”

“Yeah, in dreams! Where it doesn’t count!”

“Why do you think I keep telling you to improve your Intelligence? You know that attribute controls memory.”

“Why do you assume that has anything to do with the subconscious?”

We scoffed. “What does that even mean? How can a consciousness have a subcomponent?”

“See? See? It’s no wonder you’re having so much trouble navigating in here. We’re… no, I am human. Not ‘kind.’ How can you possibly expect to manipulate this fabric of yours if you don’t even understand how humans access it?”

We rolled our eyes. “So explain it.”

“Well… I don’t know! What do I look like? A shrink?” We sighed. “The best I can tell you is that it’s when your higher order thinking skills switch off, and you dream about… giving a speech in your underwear in the high school gymnasium or something.”

We nodded. “I remember that one. But it wasn’t the gymnasium. It was in the girl’s locker room, and all the cheerleaders were laughing at—”

“I don’t want the details!”

“But I killed them all,” we replied easily. “It was such a sweet vengeance, too. And you were so very appreciative. Ahh~ the kiss we shared above their shredded bodies…”

Glad I don’t remember that one… wait. She’s been kissing me in my dreams?

“You are such a psychopath,” we muttered. “It’s no wonder our clothes changed. It’s much more fitting for our character.”

We stiffened. “Fitting?! These primitive scraps? Do we not always strive to comport ourselves a proper lady?”

“When you’re not swearing your head off.” Or moaning like a harlot. “And there was nothing proper about the way you were looking at me earlier.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what we’re talking about,” we grumbled. “And why would that have any role in robbing us of our beautiful dresses?”

“I dunno. Human dreams are weird. Some of it is chopped up scraps from our own anxieties, some will be half-remembered garbage from our youth, TV shows we’ve watched, and all mixed together with no rhyme or reason,” we attempted to explain. “So if I had to guess… I associated how you were behaving with that outfit?”

“Hmm… that isn’t how the kinds dream at all. Nor does it begin to address the Power you exert here. They cannot affect the fabric as you do,” we mumbled thoughtfully. “But you said our outfit was fetching. Does that mean you found our behavior acceptable as well?”

“Acceptable? Ha! We’re still wet, just thinking about it.”

We tittered, pleased. “Ah, but you are not the only one who is still… wet… in thinking about it.”

“…have I mentioned how confusing this is?”

“You have,” we agreed with a smile before halting in front of a door.

It looked much like the rest… when it looked like a door at all. It was in the midst of trying to morph into a snow-covered pelt hanging from the hollowed ice above. Rather similar to our outfit, now that I thought about it. That might have explained why the image was being so insistent. But we were quick to force it back into shape.

“Beyond here should be the sitting room,” we announced. “Assuming our landscape has not reconfigured again, the door to the stairwell will be to our right. But be on our guard. We expect… challenges.”

Our eyebrow arched. “Define challenges.”

“To our virtue.”

“Ah.” We nodded seriously. “I take it this is why we’ve had so much difficulty accessing our Core?”

“Indeed.”

“Hmm. In that case…” We reached to one side and hefted the baseball b—an enormous wooden club that had been hanging from the wall.

“Where did that—?” We rolled our eyes and sighed. “Ach, why am I even asking? But why a club? Why not something more useful?”

“We’re a cave woman in an ice cave,” we explained reasonably. And we were… at the moment. It seemed our concentration had slipped again. “What were you expecting?”

“What about one of those beam staves from when we fought those giant, pink… wrapped men? Remember? In the flying pyramids?”

Our mouth dropped open. “What?”

“The one where we met up with Ahnbe at the end? You kept calling her Madame President.”

“That… sounds entertaining.”

We snorted. “I doubt Hwx or Gyx would agree. But never mind them. We need a beam staff, not a club. Uh… you kept calling it modified wrapper tech, if that helps. It was white with a stripy bit running along the side. There was a hand grip here at the thick end, and it shot explosive beams out of the narrow part.”

We narrowed our eyes at the description, trying to think. It sounded kind of familiar. “Okay… I think you’re trying to describe a laser rifle, but… so? What do you want us to do about it?”

Our lips formed around ‘laser’ again, trying it on for size. “Make one!”

“Like… on purpose?”

We had been doing okay to keep the world from going crazy on us, but that did not mean we could just manipulate things to our whim.

“You made the club. Why not a—a lay-zyr riffle staff?”

We almost cringed at the mispronunciation. Had we not said it correctly the first time? Out of the same pair of lips?!

“I didn’t make it. It was hanging there!”

“I can assure you, it wasn’t.”

“Well… but…” We sighed.

We were right. This was our dream. We should be able to manipulate it. The conscious mind could affect the subconscious… and vice versa.

“And you say kind cannot do this sort of thing, huh?”

“Not at all. Only the Five, their servants… and you.” We dipped our head to one side. “If erratically.”

“Okay, I’ll give it a shot. But don’t blame me if the result is… well, erratic,” we warned.

“Oh, we’re well prepared for mayhem,” we assured ourselves. “Go on…”

With a nod, we took a long, even breath…

…and closed our eyes.