Your best coping strategy eventually becomes your biggest problem.

* Chisel

Some Time Later (Gianthome Time) - Copycat - Presto’s Tavern

I wake. Push my way out of a pile of passed out satyrs. Wash my face with booze and brace myself for another day at Presto’s Dishwater and Poisoned Mushroom Emporium.

I serve the early risers their breakfast drugs, and stare blearily at the river. Man, I’m burnt out. How long is Cy gonna take?

Presto digs his way out of a pile of dryads. Saunters over to get a breakfast brew. He’s wide-eyed and chipper. Smoking a completely redundant reefer. Stoked about another day in paradise.

“We’re running out of food.” I report. “We’ve eaten everything in a two mile radius. Unless you’re ready to try chicken.”

Presto is conflicted. “That would be convenient. But I don’t want to eat our best customers. How about we saddle up a pair of drunken chickens and go on a little expedition?”

“Alright.” Maybe the fresh air will do me some good. “Let’s go on a chicken ride.”

Presto and I take the chickens out to forage for food. Or rather, the chickens take us. We don’t really steer them, they just wobble around kinda randomly. But, we don’t have a specific destination and aren’t in a hurry, so it sort of works out. Eventually we find a decent sized patch of mushrooms, and call it good enough.

We gather the huge hallucinagenic mushrooms, strapping them to our stupid chickens. I feel a contact high brewing, burning off my morning cobwebs. Giving me a few moments of relative lucidity before my evening trip kicks in.

“Do you think Cy will find us today?”

“Probably.” Presto nods. “Today or tomorrow.”

We amble off in the approximate direction of the tavern. It’s a little faster going back - the chickens are naturally attracted to party ruckus - but we’re still out and about when it gets dark.

It’s easy to get turned around in this forest. All these giant fucking trees look the same. Judgemental. And creepy. Also, I think I’m seeing a different forest out of each eye. That’s not good.

Really, it’s best to let the chickens go where they want. They’ll get us there eventually. A couple of times we seem close, but the tavern is always farther than I thought. It must be louder tonight or something. It’s throwing me off.

Eventually, we can’t hear the bar at all anymore, and must admit we’re fucking lost. Stupid chickens. It’s annoying, but not a big deal. We smoke and drink and trip out. Chatting and laughing as our fluffy mounts wander through the woods. Not a bad evening, actually.

Come morning, we’re able to find the river and follow it back to the tavern. It’s abandoned. Destroyed. A scorched, smoking, blood soaked ruin. Nothing left but broken bottles and a skeleton cradling a busted mandolin.

“What the fuck…” I breathe.

Presto shakes his head sadly. Starts to slowly tidy a few busted benches. “Yeah, this happens here sometimes. I kinda forgot about that.”

I’m in shock. “What happens?”

Presto shrugs. “I dunno. Bad stuff.”

“Presto...” I plead. “Who did this?”

“I dunno. Wrecker likes to send his slavers here. Or, giants can go on a rampage and destroy everything in their path.” He shrugs again. “Maybe they did to themselves. Sometimes people hurt each other for no reason.”

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

Presto’s still righting tables and benches. They fall down behind him, because they don’t have enough legs. But he keeps moving around in a circle, trying to fix what’s irreparably broken. Duke won’t look at him.

“I used to live here, you know. I’d been everywhere, but this was the first place I’d ever lived. I like it here - most of the time. But then Cy came along, and well, this is no place to raise a child. So we took off travelling again. Hither and yon, doing the fuck knows what. It was a blast. Then Flower joined us. My beautiful daughter. After that, it was the three of us against the realms. And by god we were winning. Most of the time. Best years of my life. Most of the time.”

Presto is slowly picking up speed. Circling the broken benches faster and faster. Slamming them down with more and more force. Duke is hunched over, curling in on himself.

“After we lost Flower we had some bad years. Not good at all. Damn Silence. Eventually, we settled in Lowgarden. She’d always loved it there, and we figured maybe she’d come back, and we’d be there waiting for her. But she! Never! Came! Back! And now Cy’s gone! And he’s not coming back!”

He slams down a twisted bench and it falls over immediately. His runesword flicks out and blasts it to splinters. A thunderbolt that cracks the heavens. Duke’s curled up on the ground. I’m crying.

“This stupid universe! It takes everything FROM ME!!” His fingernails are clawing at his practice sword. Bleeding, and breaking, and carving another layer of wild runes. The air pressure around us plummets, my ears ache, and dark malevolent clouds twist into being above our heads.

Lightning lays waste all around us as Presto spins his blade about recklessly. Trees shatter and are whipped about by savage winds. He’s still yelling, but I can’t hear him anymore. Finally he calls a torrent of lightning down on himself, feeding off it maniacally, until he blasts off with his characteristic speed, but sheathed in a thunderbolt and cloaked by a hurricane, annihilating everything in his path.

When the winds die down enough for me to see, I marvel at his wake. He totally pulped a hundred meter wide swath that extends far out of sight through the forest. Massive trees are toppled, crushed, or thrown in every direction. I can still see the evil clouds following him in the distance. Still hear the screams of giant trees being torn to shreds.

“Holy shit.”

I find Duke, and encourage him to rise. “What do we do, Duke?”

Duke wanders around the wrecked site, until he finds Presto’s bag of holding. He crawls in, and I figure that’s the last I’ll see of Duke, but a few minutes later he crawls out and hands me a book.

Path of the Longstrider.

“We gotta get out of here, don’t we?”

Duke nods.

I leaf through the book. I’m not seeing a lot of spells I can pull off. God damn I’m still high. But even if I wasn’t, this is tricky shit. I vaguely remember how badly we fucked up Rickard’s Dark Release. And that was when Presto wanted to come with us.

Duke crawls back into the bag and comes out with lemonade and muffins. Sweet non-alcoholic ambrosia! My liver weeps with relief, and I get back to studying with a slightly clearer head.

I read through the book twice before regretfully settling on the only spell that will work and I can possibly cast.

I don’t like this spell. This is gonna suck.

I pack up what I can - which ends up being Duke, the book, and some fried chicken - and set out after Presto. It’s not hard to track him, but I can barely hear his thunder in the distance. Mother fucker is moving fast.

I pant and wheeze as I struggle to catch up, but still I fall further and further behind. I doubt Presto will stop to sleep, what if I lose him entirely?

Presto never wheezes when he zips around. He just goes and goes and goes. What was it he said? The past and the future don’t exist. We only live in one moment.

I stop trying to catch Presto. Stop trying to do anything. I just be. Be who I am. A woman who walks through Gianthome.

I like being a woman who walks through Gianthome. The going is rough, but there’s no trees in the way. Certainly no monsters. Just me and a clear trail. I go up mountains and down valleys. Zig far to the east and zag back to the west. Just going wherever the trail takes me. I decide I’d like to be a woman who runs through Gianthome, and so I am. This is nice. The wind rushes through my hair. I rush and leap and laugh. This is great. But now I’m the woman who runs really fucking fast. Flashing from point to point, tearing down the lightning scar wherever it may go.

I fucking love running. This is the best.

The world around me changes, and now I’m a woman running at the wall of a hurricane. The winds are terrible, and will destroy me if I fight them. So I don’t. I let them blow me around and around, my feet hitting the ground here and there, until I’ve passed around and through the hurricane wall. Ejected to stand before my friend Presto.

He’s still in a rage. The thought of what I must do weighs me down, pulling me from the endless present. The future calls, with its responsibility, and anxiety, and doubt. Fuck. That was nice while it lasted.

Presto’s noticed me and stopped - seething and crackling. Enough of this. Let’s get it done.

“Flower didn’t get lost. She left.”

Presto looks like I stabbed him. His thunderbolts flicker and shrink.

“Now Cy’s left too. Who can blame him? You’re a disgrace.”

Presto moans and curls in on himself. The winds die to nothing.

“I’m leaving too. I’ve had enough of you.”

Frost starts to coat his body. He’s shaking in pain. I’m disgusted with myself. Fucking hateful bitch. I feel the frost coat me as well.

We’re going. I grab him. We’re gone.