Jenny ran to Kyle's side as he fell, or tried to. Dr. Myrden was suddenly there, holding her back.

“What are you doing!?” She screamed. “You killed him!”

“That's very possible,” Dr. Myrden admitted. “But I don't think so.”

“Please you have to let me heal him!”

“You already did.”

“I...what?”

The confusion made Jenny stop for a moment, and really look at Kyle on the ground. There was still a hole in his stomach she could see floor through, but it wasn't bleeding. In fact there wasn't nearly as much blood as she thought their ought to be for a wound that size. And if she looked carefully...was it starting to close? It was! It took a little staring, like watching paint dry, but there was definite progress being made as his body knitted itself back together.

“What the hell is that?” Jenny asked.

“It's the healing spell you cast on him,” Dr. Myrden said. “Back when he almost got cooked by the O'Brien kid.”

“But...then...how is it still going?” Jenny asked. “And does it hurt?”

“Oh I'm sure it hurts like hell!” Dr. Myrden laughed. “You might have figured this out by now, but this is what I had planned from the beginning. This is going to be extremely important to both of your training.”

“I mean okay,” Jenny said. “I'm relieved he's alright, but shouldn't we do something.”

“Good idea!” the old wizard nodded. “Let's get some lunch. It's going to take him hours to heal from all that.

“Will he be safe here?” Jenny asked.

“I've protected this whole area with various kinds of magic,” Dr. Myrden waved his hand. “There's dangerous stuff here, but I control it. Anyone trying to get in from the outside is in for a rude awakening.”

“This one of my father's giant magical ducks,” Tanya said, gesturing to the enormous, semi-translucent green tinted waterfowl. “His name is Corby.”

“Quak!” the duck said, greeting them with a wing raised in salute.

“It occurs to me that our lives may have become strange,” Ammeline said.

“Do you think so?” Betty cocked her head.

“Well get used to it,” Tanya said. “Stuff like this happens all the time. Anyway! My father and Kyle are training at our cabin property upstate. It's difficult to find without magic, but I'm a member of the family. I'm linked to the place. Corbin can fly us all straight there, and then we'll...”

Tanya hesitated. Then she'd have an argument with her father, probably. But for the moment they just had to focus on getting there.

“...get training from my father directly,” Tanya said. “Like we should have from the beginning.”

There was a pause then, the entire group just staring in silence.

“Did I say something wrong?” Tanya asked.

“No!” Trevor said. “No, it's not you, it's just...”

“I think we were all instinctively waiting for Jenny to say something,” Evan said.

“Yes this is normally when she would interject with a “Yaaaay camping.” The cheer sounded extremely odd in Betty's monotone voice.

“I thought the same,” Goldie said. “I've mostly interacted with her only in normal world social settings, but none of us have her easy, innocent exuberance.”

“Our whole group dynamic is off,” Trevor said.

“I don't know her too well but that can happen,” Goldie nodded. “The flow of conversation organizes itself around a few big personalities, and when one of them isn't around the conversation gets stilted and weird.”

“Are you saying we can't talk right without Jenny around?” Goldie said.

“I think it is more that her frequent enthusiastic interjections helped to break up tense or otherwise uncomfortable moments, and also helped bring points of excitement to conversations which had gotten boring,” Betty said, adjusting her glasses. “We had come to subconsciously we rely on her to prevent dialogue from becoming...”

“Enough character theory!” Tanya snapped. “We'll be meeting up with Jenny when we get there, so everything should sort itself out then right? Okay? Good. Now everybody get on the duck! You've all made arrangements with your parents for the trip, right?”

“Those last two sentences were in the wrong order,” Goldie pointed out. “But yes.”

“Alright good,” Tanya said. “Now on the duck!”

Kyle sat up, shaking his head to clear it.

Did I just get special beam cannoned by a duck?

His chest said no, his shirt said yes. There were two huge holes on the front and back of his shirt, in the same place over his stomach. Hist stomach, on the other had, was fine. Better than fine. Chiseled. No, better than chiseled. Sculpted. Damn, how had he gotten abs like that?

Oh right, magic. It had taken magic. Colossal physical node. But enough being impressed with his own newly magnificent body, what the hell....

“Hey!” Jenny said. “You're awake!”

She ran up to him smiling. Her words were a little muffled, because her mouth was full of food. There was a smear of some kind of orange sauce on the side of her lips.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Are you...eating a crunch wrap?”

“Mm?” She looked at the wrap in her hand. “Oh yeah! Dr. Myrden made them from scratch, he's a really good cook! Well not from scratch apparently, these are store bought tortillas...”

“Did I just get a hole shot through me by a giant duck?” Kyle asked.

“Well yeah!” Jenny smiled. “I mean not just, it was a couple of hours ago, but yeah that's what happened.”

“So I got a laser put through me and you....decided....to go have crunch wraps.”

“But you're fine!” Jenny said. “We left you healing, Dr. Myrden said you'd be okay.”

“Okay,” Kyle said, thinking over the situation. “Listen, I don't know how different the girlfriend thing is after all those thousands of years, but...”

“Here is your crunch wrap,” Jenny said, pulling it out of her pocket and handing it to him. “There's more in the kitchen.”

“Thank you. Now let me eat this and let's find Dr. Myrden and make him tell us what the hell just happened to me.”

“We are approaching the camp!” Tanya called back.

“Riding a duck is fun,” Betty said. “Weeeee.”

“Hey Betty?” Trevor cut in “I appreciate what you're doing here, but..."

“The imbalance among us caused by the lack of Jenny's energy needs to be corrected,” Betty said.

“Yes but we need your energy,” Trevor said, reaching out to put a hand on her arm.

“And besides!” Evan said, sliding up next to them. “It's like getting really, really creepy.”

“Now I should be able to cross the magical defenses into the grounds,” Tanya said. “But let's get ready for some turbulence.”

“Do we what,” Goldie asked. “Hold onto a feather?”

“Actually this trip has been surprisingly luxurious,” Ammeline said, reclining on the giant duck's back. “I assume some magic of the duck prevents us from falling off or freezing to death.”

“Something like that,” Tanya said. “Now quiet, we're approaching the perimeter. The guardian should be contacting us at any moment.”

To everyone else riding on the duck, it looked like they were flying up to another ordinary stretch of forest. At least until the guardian appeared. First there was a glowing orb of light, that grew into a gleaming oval. From within the oval a cloud of feathers flew out like heavy snow, washing past them all as their mount hovered in the air. Then, within the glowing light of the oval, the silhouette of a woman. As the light behind her faded, they were able to fully behold her winged form.

Her skin was golden, not tanned or bronzed but truly golden, as if she had been covered in gleaming gold paint. Her eyes were a pure, glistening blue. She was beautiful in a way no mortal could achieve, from her slim arrogant face to her slender, curving figure, to the golden threads of her hair to the glistening crystal-white of her wings. She wore a crown, and carried a golden staff.

Both of them topped with ducks. Her headdress was an enormous beak, her staff was topped with...a rubber bath toy duck. It was molded from gold, and the eyes and outlines of the wings were gemstones, but it was still clearly a rubber duck.

“My name is Quakfina,” she intoned.

“No it isn't!” Evan shouted angrily.

“It is good to see you again Tanya,” Quakfina ignored him. “But I'm afraid your father has closed the training grounds for now. He came with a powerful young man, and a woman of ancient race. Their training will be both rigorous and dangerous.”

“Hi Quakfina,” Tanya said.

“We're just going to be cosigning this Quakfina thing!?” Evan sputtered. “We're just gonna...”

He quieted as Trevor put a hand over his mouth and wrestled him down.

“I really, really need to talk to my father,” Tanya said. “Just let us through. The password is “with a feather on his back,” alright?”

Evan screamed furiously into Trevor's hand.

“I am sorry,” Quakfina bowed slightly. “Your father has forbidden it. And you bring with you many strangers.”

“These are my friends,” Tanya said.

“Awwww,” Betty said robotically. “We are. I knew it.”

“Seriously Betty,” Trevor said. “Stop.”

“The words were Jenny's but the sentiment was mine.”

“It is good to see you have so many friends now,” Quakfina said with a small smile. “But the ancient pact remains. Your father has ordered the training grounds be closed to all, yourself included. Perhaps he foresaw this. But I am bound to deny you passage.”

“Are we ever going to discuss the sudden duck infestation?” Goldie asked.

“MMMMPH!” Evna said, pointing excitedly at Goldie.

“You know what?” Tanya ignored them, stepping up on Corbin's head. “I'm sorry, Quakfina, but that's not good enough. Not good enough at all. Because I'm a part of the pact too. And I'm getting kind of sick of my father and his crap. And I need, I really really need, to go tell him that. And to do that I need to get past you. So as a descendant of the line of Myrden, blood tied to the Pact of the Old Goddess, I hereby demand that you let us through, by the power of your oaths.”

“My oaths are to the head of the family,” Quakfina said. “That is not a position you hold. Not yet. One day you will, and on that day you may make demands of me. Until then, watch your tone. I consider you a friend as well, Tanya. More than that, since I have known you from the day you were born. But that does not give you the right to command me. I am still a being come down from the heavens, handmaiden of the goddess B....”

She stopped, her eyes glowing softly.

“Our argument will have to be put on hold for now, Tanya,” Quakfina said. “Your words have activated a spell left behind by your father. It seems he foresaw this as well. I am to allow you all in...provided each of you pass a test.”

“A test!?” Tanya glared.

“You came here for training, did you not?”

“Wait did we actually say that out loud?” Trevor asked.

“She's a goddess or an angel or something,” Goldie hissed back to him. “Who knows what she knows? God, my life has gotten weird. All I did was agree to a date with this asshole.”

She gestured towards Evan.

“I should let him up,” Trevor said. “He's a lot calmer now.”

“No I like him like this,” Goldie said.

“Alright fine,” Tanya sighed. “Go ahead. Give us your stupid tests.”

“Very well!” Quakfina spread her wings wide, her rubber duck staff high in the air. “I shall present you each with challenges, and you will decide who shall face each one! We begin with...the Storm of Wings!”

“It's gonna be fucking ducks isn't it!?” Evan snarled, ripping himself out of Trevor's grip.

"Wait," Betty said. "Do you mean it will be "fucking" ducks merely for emphasis, or do you mean we will literally be having intercourse with..."

"There see?" Trevor smiled. "That's your energy. We need that."

Evan was right. The first way, with the emphasis. From behind Quakfina flew a swarm of quaking, flapping ducks. Swarm was too tame a word. A horde. A plague. A catastrophe. A solid wave of ducks, that washed over them and the giant duck they rode on. All of them sputtered and coughed as feathers filled their mouths, trying to bat the ducks away. But however many they knocked aside there were more, in a never ending tide.

“Okay,” Trevor sputtered between mouthfuls of duck. “This is less than ideal.”

“Evan was right!” Goldie said, smacking ducks aside with both hands. “This duck thing is getting ridiculous!”

“Right!” Evan shouted. “Right!?”

Evan and Trevor, with their powerful physical enhancement nodes, were doing the best against the swarm of ducks. But there was only so much they could do against the unceasing horde.

“We're being pushed back!” Tanya said, knocking the ducks away with conjured vines.

“How far back must we be pushed before we fail the test?” Betty asked. She was curled up underneath Moonlight, who had grown to his enormous blue tiger mode and was batting ducks away with the claws.

“I don't know she didn't tell me the rules!” Tanya said.

“Then the rules must be ignored!” Ammeline shouted. “Stand aside, and witness the rise of a heroine!”

Suddenly, the tide of ducks thinned...and then stopped.

Ammeline was standing on Corbin's beak, rapier out, thrusting so fast her arm and the blade had become a blur. Every duck she pierced exploded in a flash of light and a burst of feathers. Now that the flow had slowed, they realized the ducks were coming in an extremely tight formation up until they reached Corbin's bill, when they spread out to engulf everyone. By attacking the point right before they split up, Ammeline had been able to slow the tide.

“Are you a goddess?” Ammeline demanded of the giant glowing woman. “Are you an angel? It doesn't matter! I am Ammeline Trent, true American princess! I will outshine the heavens! I will outshine the stars! And if a goddess stands in my path I will outshine the gods! Witness my flashing blade in awe, duck woman, as I reduce your test to nothing! Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha!”