The day brought a dreary, dank rain with it. I wished for Trent even more than before. Jacoby’s Wizards rainproofed the tents, but the surrounding ground beca a slippery mass of mud. It wasn’t a great portent for the end of this problem with the fighting aspects caged up here.
If there was one bright ray of sunshine in all this, it was that Jacoby looked even sexier in the driving rain. Silken black hair plastered to her head, skintight black suit clinging to her curves, the rain making her white skin look even paler. Put these together, and you had a damsel in distress look that wouldn’t quit.
“What?” she demanded.
“You look miserable,” I told her.
“Great! Wonderful!” She threw up her hands. “Look, we have today. After you try today, I’m pulling up the stakes and we’re heading out to one of the towns. There’ll be shelter for us that isn’t loud as hell in the rain, a laboratory we can rent or borrow, more materials there for you, and most importantly, plenty of hiding spaces.”
“So no pressure,” I said.
She pointed a finger at , a very angry finger, but failed to follow it up. It probably had a little bit to do with Vellenia coming up and hugging from behind.
“Today?” she gushed. “We’re doing it today.”
We did it almost every day, but I declined to ntion this. Instead I looked her up and down. She was soaked to the bone like Jacoby. Unlike the expedition leader, Vellenia loved to be both naked and wet. The thin sun dress she wore left nothing to the imagination. I especially liked the way it contoured around her pubic mound. She caught looking and grinned.
“Shall we remove all anxiety and stress before we get going?” She said, and cocked one hip in my direction.
“Happily… imdiately after,” I said, and received a pout in return. “And you’re going to have to stop Poppy when she gets in, and turn her right around.”
She wouldn’t like that; the only reason the little pixie had agreed to be the liaison was the chance to get into bed with at every available opportunity.
However, she needed to inform Regina, Shakindria and my mom about the change in venue. They would have to choose between shadowing us from a safe distance, and keeping within range of my improved Psyspeech, or striking out on their own to stay away from the people looking for us.
The ‘laboratory’ was little more than two large blue tarpaulins strung up at around eight feet to keep the rain off. I soon had the Wizards marking off an abjuration circle to ward off rain in this area too… they told it would interfere with the mana I was about to use, and if I needed precision results, to go without.
Where was good old Trent when you needed him? I had lucked out with the stone Sorcerer.
In any event, I had several folding tables at my disposal, all the beakers, vials and pipettes I might need, and racks to store all of them. They hadn’t requisitioned the Healer’s handbook that Alan carried around everywhere—or rather, that Muppin carried around everywhere—but they had been in contact with HQ secretly and were trying to get copies of the handbook sent, clay tablet by clay tablet. I wish they had the ability to pull these clay tablets out of the future, because right now they just didn’t exist.
Wayne wasn’t the Transmutation specialist; that title was taken by a woman nad Mira. Unlike most of the newbies here, Mira was sowhere between fifty and a million years old. It wasn’t possible to tell, given the way mana ssed with the aging process. Mira had the physique of a woman fully in her pri, and the skin of a woman in her eighties. Still, her hair was a luxurious auburn that fell down her back.
“Glycerine, as ordered,” she said, and produced a Mason jar full of the stuff.
Affinity, together with the Mana Affinity skill, told it was well made and didn’t have an oversaturation of mana that ca with most magically created materials. It would hopefully do the job.
Along with the henge sage, I decided to go with a couple of mood lifters. The common numphty I’d used on the Marshin eggs were abundant, and those went into a bath of water to tease out the mood settling properties over low heat. The henge sage went into its own heated water bath. I had to stir both of these in different patterns and feed both varying amounts of mana, so I asked Vellenia for her assistance. The Marshin happily got to work, dancing around with pirouettes and humming a tune I didn’t know. Savannah was soon by her side, beat boxing like no one on earth could, and making various stringed instrunt sounds by tapping her fingers against her thumbs. She was literally making musical accompanint for Vellenia. My bond mate turned to with a smile and winked.
Congratulations! the UI suddenly blurted. Your relationship with bond mate Vellenia (Marshin) has advanced. Your reciprocal abilities from Vellenia have advanced.
While under water, you now have webbed hands and feet.
Dazzle now has an initial stun effect.
Your water and fairy resistances have increased.
Your bond mate’s abilities also advance.
I watched Vellenia and Savannah in amusent and no small amount of love, while I drew out the mana enhancent and divine properties of my brand new plant. I kept probing with Mana Affinity, and it soon told when to draw the henge sage infusion off the fire and strain the petals and leaves out. Then, I boiled this over low heat with even more stirring, so the water escaped and I was left with nothing but what I needed.
Vellenia soon had the common numphty infusion made up as well. From here, it was ti to shave off the bark of the hardwood tree the Wizards had procured. The hardwood also needed steeping in near-boiling water, and the remainder of the water boiled off after the essence was captured. All the while, I poured mana into it in a formation like I’d done with the God of Productivity, which layered the essence of the hardwood like bricks. The intent was to make the hardwood act as a way to settle the cure into the body and refuse to leave. If you drank water, that water would leave your body. If you drank cure, the cure could leave your body in a similar fashion, and the body could revert back to its forr sickened state. The hardwood’s presence helped inure the body to its new state and keep it that way.
All these needed to go into the glycerine. In total, this took sothing like twelve hours. I slipped into a trance while concocting, enough to ignore the presence of any people coming or going. I was pretty sure Fairy Poppins had appeared at so point, and only zipped around my head a short ti before disappearing again. She got her orders by way of Vellenia and left. The Wizards, the Guardians, Oz, Savannah, and Jacoby all ca at so points to watch work, but I’d given Jacoby the heads up that disrupting this process ruined the materials and necessitated starting again. They left to my business.
Develop Cure (dium/Plant/Beast) Check: Currently, you have the Develop Cure (dium) skill at level 6, Develop Cure (Beast) at level 1, Develop Cure (Plant) at level 1, and Affinity at level 9. Other applicable skills are unranked. Your aspect-specific knowledge lowers the difficulty of this check by 2. As this is not an illness to be cured, this check is Extre difficulty. Would you like to spend your 11 Tokens to succeed automatically?
Total Tokens: 9 Affinity and 7 Free Tokens.
I paused at the ntion of lowering the difficulty of the check based on my skill level in the aspect of the creature, and took a deep, cleansing breath. Of course there was a bonus to spending skill levels where they were otherwise pointless to spend.
Still, there was almost no chance of succeeding with 16 skill levels and requiring 10 successes. I averaged just under 50% success rate now, and, well…
Almost didn’t an purely impossible. I’d burn an additional Token if it ca to the retry. I pressed no, and watched in suspense as each of my attribute and skill levels tabulated the successes. Based on the first two failures, I readied myself to spend 11 Tokens.
But then the next nine attempts all succeeded in a row. I watch in amazent, as two more failures hit. Sheesh, if I failed this by one, and had the opportunity to lower the difficulty by one or two—
One of the last three ca out a success.
Congratulations! You have succeeded in crafting a redy for a condition.
I stared in confusion at the list of successes and failures, but then took the concoction off the heat and asked the Wizards to cool it after a good thirty minutes with so kind of cold spell.
“Deep breaths,” Jacoby said, and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Good job.”
I inford her that the job was only half done. I now had a half a Mason jar filled with a viscous liquid with both divine and magical properties. It glowed, but the glint of divinity within was weak, and only emitted a soft radiance. The mana was stronger, giving it a blue-purple color and causing tiny arcs of lightning to appear and disappear within.
“The other half the job is extre violence,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Knowing is half the battle… the other half of the battle is extre violence. You don’t know that one?”
She gaped at .
“I’m kidding… but this will be the hard part, obviously. The physical part.” Administering this was not going to be a simple matter.
We gathered at the center of the camp and stood around the sound canceling ritual spell circle. Inside that circle, I realized the error of my thinking. Noise wasn’t being canceled, it was just being stopped at the border of this circle. As soon as I stepped inside the circle, I was blasted with the sounds of all these screeching, shrieking, roaring, snarling beasts.
I stepped back out.
“That… is terrible.”
Jacoby stared from to the caged creatures, and back to . After stepping in, then back out of the circle, her deanor had visibly changed. A confident and upbeat Jacoby went in, but a shaken and somber Jacoby ca out. “Let’s take the first one out of the circle and over toward the swamp.”
“Agreed.”
Since nobody wanted to get their hands on the cage, it fell to the Wizards to use their telekinesis spells in order to float the cage off its hook, out of the magic soundproofing circle, and over my garden of spliced plants and other herbs.
“Savannah?” I asked. “Could you kindly?”
The smiling Bard hunkered down in front of the creature that appeared to be Tweedle Dee’s twin sister, and spoke softly to it.
“Guardians?” I asked quietly.
My job would be to slather this goopy salve onto the mana pressure points of the creature, hopefully without getting my face bitten off.
The Vulpetunia cowered back in its cell, hissing, ears laid back and tail between its legs. Wild red-tinged eyes turned our way, then toward the Guardians.
“It’s all right,” I said, holding out a hand. “Nobody’s going to hurt you. Everything is going to be all right now.”
My initial attempts to slowly ease in the wooden spoon slathered with the salve were easily batted away. If the poor creature didn’t swipe it away with a paw, then it was swiped away by a whipping vine.
I tried for the new Dazzle effect, which definitely worked. The flower fox’s eyes sparkled with disorienting golden lights. I had just enough ti to ease the salve in through the bars again before the sparkles cleared and its eyes sharpened again. It snarled and lashed out with a vine whip, this ti wrapping around my wrist. Guardians imdiately bolted forward, but I held a hand out.
“It’s all right,” I told it. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Here I failed a Persuasion check.
The condition had disoriented it. The mana flowing through its body made it all but immune to social rolls. Even when Savannah tried her Bard abilities, nothing happened. I was slowly, inexorably pulled toward the cage.
“Get him free,” Jacoby ordered, and against my further protests, the Guardians intervened. The guy soon had the vine in a stranglehold, while the other worked the cage open.
“That’s a bad idea,” I called. “Leave her be, okay?”
With vines through the bars of the cage, there was only so much my patient could do, and only so far she could go.
“I’ve got this, Healer,” the female Guardian said, “You do the healing and I’ll do the guarding.” I was pretty sure they’d nicknad this one Ribbit, based on the specialized hoodie with the frog eyes on top.
The Vulpetunia launched herself against the cage’s door and blasted Ribbit back several feet, where she rolled over. Muscles under the adorable creature’s fur bulged, the vines simply snapped off, and it catapulted through the air at Ribbit. The Guardian was just sitting up when it was on her.
I watched for only half a second before getting my feet under and moving my butt. In the anti, vines lashed out and got Ribbit around both wrists. The Vulpetunia head butted her, putting her flat on her back, before leaping up and coming down with a flying kick directly to the stomach. Ribbit only just managed to manifest her blue magic shield and deflect the kick. The two rolled, ending up with Ribbit on top and the fox trying desperately to kick, punch, and head butt.
It occurred to that this Nakamamon didn’t have any of the symptoms of rabies. It wasn’t frothing mad, but it had been caged up. Mostly though, it wasn’t trying to eat the Guardian. No, it was going one on one with Jacoby’s team mber. And really, the ten pound creature, the size of a small dog, didn’t look so formidable… after all, it had flowers growing out of its ears and tails. The vines were the worst part, and weren’t all that strong. They hadn’t overpowered .
That was a mont before a burst of pollen shot out and got all in Ribbit’s eyes, nose and mouth.
I landed the first dollop of the redy on the fox’s head, saring from crown to the space between its eyes. It turned and yipped nacingly at , but wasn’t able to attack. Instead it kicked ineffectually at Ribbit and struggled while I got so goop on its heart area, got another bit on its stomach, and then for the coup de grace, had to ask Ribbit and the male Guardian to seize it by the legs and tails.
Both regarded with incredulity, and I can honestly say they would have been right to do so, had I not briefed everybody on the taint chakra. But I had been through this with them, and if they didn’t rember going ‘ewww’ the first ti, then this look of grossed out amazent was on them.
With a sigh, I said, “Yeah, I need to administer this cure… up the butt.”
It wasn’t true, but wasn’t far off either. By now Ribbit had the blue shield in the Vulpetunia’s mouth and it was chewing on it furiously. It still looked adorable, in a way. The Guardian’s mouth worked open and closed.
“Just do it,” I told him. “Rember, I do the healing, and you do the Guardian-ing?”
“But—”
“Correct, butt.” The steady look I gave him apparently worked, because he sighed, listened to Ribbit’s command to hurry this along, and got to it.
This is Christopher watching in grim amusent as a man pries up the five tails before he can plaster so viscous sludge adjacent to a fox’s anus.
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