Jacoby seed stunned by what she saw. In retrospect, although it seed like the easiest way to give her a glimpse into who I was as a person, I realized I didn’t know exactly what Blissense showed Cinzy, Regina, Tara, Ivy or Isabelle. All of them had consented to the Blissense before it had been taken and changed into Eromancy. All I knew was that Cinzy wanted so much to have whatever she saw of that she was willing to overlook sleeping with other won, and also Nakamamon. I was glad I had better control here with Eromancy. I could skip the parts where I’d been a petulant and vindictive ass, and tried to get revenge only to have bigger and stronger kids kick back down again. They’d used their words as much as their fists and feet, and kept right down where I was. I didn’t like that side of the person I’d been, and it was my constant wish never to fall back into being that jerk.
Even if I hadn’t been successful in hurting the people I tried to hurt, that wasn’t Fletcher any longer. This Fletcher tried his very best not to hurt people. This Fletcher was a helper and nothing else, if the alternative could be avoided.
“I hope this clears up everything,” I told her.
Jacoby nodded vacantly. I was amazed she’d played the Chinese Triads against the Korean mobs sowhere in California and hadn’t been killed. “Let’s… let’s get moving. The faster you can see our patients, the faster we can get you back to your people.”
I said my farewells to Regina, who cried when I called her ‘babe’ and told not to fall in love with anybody else. Vellenia didn’t want to let go either, but eventually allowed to say my goodbyes to Garnet, Muppin, Airaconda, McCauley Skulkins, Larelle, Chrysta, Alan, and Larelle’s Magmamander. I was going to miss him and his ability to radiate needed heat all the forking ti.
From there, I hugged Shakindria. The yellow psychic aspect Nakamamon with the purple gem in her forehead sent a series of images of us frolicking all over the worlds, both hers and mine. We held hands, jumped, rolled around on beaches or in adows, climbed trees together, exploded out of ball pits and jumped on trampolines together. In her ntal montage, we also frolicked in all of those places sexually.
I will keep your mother safe, she told . But you will need to return soon. I chose to bond you, and not your mother.
Vellenia said much the sa, only with hugs and tears and incomprehensible words while sobbing.
Regina was more composed, since I’d just rocked her world earlier today. Still, the smile she gave was filled with lancholy. She hugged , whispered, “I’ll miss you, babe,” and walked off so I could have a few words with my mother.
“Listen,” I said. “Alan has an encyclopedia’s worth of knowledge on those tiny clay tablets, but I wouldn’t go after any of the large gods until you know what you’re doing. Get a few small and dium ones in so you can level up.”
She cocked her head at . “You’re not going to tell to just sit here and wait for you to get back?”
“Would you listen to if I did?” She grinned in response. “Of course not. Just listen to the people around you. I had ten party mbers, and you only have four… plus my lovely bond mates and a handful of bond mates who’ve lost their partners. They aren’t going to make good replacents for Trent and Drat and Ivy and Isabelle and Cinzy, but they’re wonderful and helpful. Just… don’t push yourself too hard. Oh, right… here.” I slipped off Prismatic Apparel and handed it to her. “Wear this at all tis unless you’re washing it.”
She studied it, using Identify like I’d taught her.
Prismatic Apparel
Item, Wondrous, Legendary
This set of clothing is able to be shaped in any way the wearer wishes. rely turn the articles inside out to alter their form. The color of the new form will be randomized.
This item has the following properties: godsbane, unbreakable, soulbound, returning.
Godsbane: While wearing this clothing you are assud to have 5 Divine Resistance.
Unbreakable: This item never takes damage and can never be destroyed except by divine power.
Soulbound: this item belongs solely to Christopher Fletcher. He may gift this item to another, but the item may never be taken from him.
Returning: this item returns to its owner’s possession at a thought.
She smiled, a heartier one than Regina had given , then ca in for a hug.
“I’m not thrilled with this. I ca back with you to help you.”
“I know,” she said. “It turns out you need to save the world first.”
With that, I gave Fairy Poppins the signal and we headed off to et up with Jacoby.
We were going to have to make the trek on foot. Jacoby’s magic-users didn’t have the sort of abilities that would allow for instant teleport over long distances. Also, Oz had a bonded Nakamamon who could fly him, a smaller sky manta thing than I’d ridden back at HQ, but it wasn’t strong enough to take us all. Instead, Jacoby activated a Ranger ability.
You’re being buffed by the Longstrider aura, the UI explained. Your Hiking, Survival, Durability, Agility, and Muscularity levels are enhanced while inside the aura.
Lucky for , I also had a gift from the God of Footfalls. I chuckled, thinking back on how alard I’d been at all the strange sounds coming from my feet back at the HQ. Every ti I stepped, it had been sothing different: a knife chopping at a vegetable, an animal barking or yipping, a nuclear explosion at one point, a woodpecker knocking a hole in a tree to get at bugs, and the list went on… how the danger level had ramped up since then. Still, I was glad to have Golightly, a pair of magic shoes given in thanks by the god once I’d healed it.
Golightly
Item, Wondrous, Legendary
The wearer of these shoes feels no weariness when walking, leaves no tracks, and gains 5 ranks in any skills that require the use of feet.
This item has the following properties: unbreakable, soulbound, returning.
Unbreakable: This item never takes damage and can never be destroyed except by divine power.
Soulbound: this item belongs solely to you. You may gift this item to another, but the item may never be taken from you.
Returning: this item returns to your possession at a thought.
It wasn’t until I’d gotten going that I realized Vellenia stuck with us. In retrospect this was the right choice. I didn’t know it at the ti, but she was right. Sure, Fairy Poppins might have wanted to keep all to herself, but Vellenia’s presence would be helpful in more than one way. But, it wasn’t until so minutes later that I noticed.
Jacoby’s aura made us fast. Oz had zood off on his Nakamamon, while Jacoby, Poppins and I ran through the badlands and veered southward in the direction of the gigantic swamp. The landscape didn’t shift much at first, remaining rocky shoreline, with those strange Galacti and other Nakamamon I’d never seen. Poppins flew up higher, around twenty feet up, and signaled by zigzagging whenever she spotted one of the huge ambush spiders. We didn’t have to worry much; the first Gargantula we found was already happily munching on a section of sothing that looked like a two hundred foot long, ten foot wide bobbit worm.
When I noticed Vellenia cruising along with a few minutes later, under the influence of the aura as well, I couldn’t be mad. After all, having her with always felt right, and not having her with increased my sense of anxiety and wrongness. Just as being apart from Shakindria was starting to do. I knew it would’ve been worse with both of them remaining with my mother.
After veering to avoid the second Gargantula, the terrain began to change: more moss on the rocks, more plants coming in tufts here and there, and a few stunted trees. Also more mucky, muddy patches that needed to be avoided. We were able to follow Poppins, so it wasn’t an issue as much as it was interesting to see. More Nakamamon lived here, different types, but aside from ‘purple crab’ or ‘sea serpent mudskipper hybrid’ I couldn’t tell much. Without ti to Identify them, we sailed past at a good clip and kept within Jacoby’s aura range.
Finally, we had a break. Jacoby and Vellenia were both heaving for breaths, but Golightly made that no issue whatsoever. Even Poppins flopped into my lap where I was sitting on a rock and enjoying so water from a canteen.
“How…” Jacoby tried asking, but was heaving too much. “How are you… not…”
I estimated we’d been running nonstop for close to three hours. I didn’t know how much terrain that ant we crossed, but I’d guess it was at least fifteen miles, and possibly closer to twenty.
Showing the item to Jacoby ant leaving my feet open and free to feel the velvety moss. I liked this different landscape: the huge boulders were now covered in mosses and grasses, and the space between was lush with weird plants. Deadfalls sprouted an endless variety of mushrooms: orange, black, purple, and so white ones with dangerous red heads. At least one of those mushrooms was bigger than the others, and staring at .
Crushroom
Basic Nakamamon
Crushrooms use the camouflage of other clusters of mushrooms to stay hidden. These are filter feeding crabs, with powerful legs for jumping if they feel threatened. Their earth aspect allows them to hyper accelerate gravity to turn jumps into dangerous attacks.
Typical height: 1-2 feet (small)
Typical weight: 1-5 pounds
Gender: unknown
Aspect: earth/creature (bug)
Transformations: Crushroom -> unknown
Crushroom has been added to your Nakamadex.
The creature eyed us for so ti before scuttling off the log and back to where it was scooping sand up into its mouthparts and spitting it back out in other places. I didn’t know what it managed to eat, but it was pretty enormous. It had a big mushroom for a body, while the stalk turned out to be all the crab parts you might normally expect.
The mont Jacoby hopped up to get moving, though, the Crushroom froze before launching itself in the air toward her. All ten of its legs gave it so serious ups, and it looked like it would sail well over all our heads. Instead, it seed to halt in midair before slamming down toward Jacoby.
Fairy Poppins was there, to boop it right on the snout. Infusing it with her own fairy dust caused its gravity magic to falter, so it floated down into Jacoby’s hands like a feather.
She snorted laughter. “That. Is. Adorable! I could’ve jumped out of the way, but this was so much better. Thank you, Fairy Poppins.”
“She likes to be called Poppy,” I told her.
Jacoby held up a hand. “High five, Poppy.”
The tiny fairy, all three inches of her, zood over and full body checked Jacoby in the hand, puffing fairy dust all over the place. This sent all three of us into laughing and sneezing fits.
During the break I identified several more Nakamamon that I had previously never seen before. One of these was called Terratle, and was little more than a gigantic, slow moving tortoise covered in moss. I wouldn’t have noticed anything at all except my Identify skill told it was there. After the readout on the creature popped up, I had to squint for a good thirty seconds before I found what I thought might be a foot, but which looked exactly like a moss-covered stone. Since so many of the plant aspect Nakamamon could photosynthesize the majority of their food, these things weren’t predators, didn’t need to hunt, and barely had to move at all. Instead the earth and plant aspect just sat there pointing its butt at us, unmoving.
It wasn’t until Vellenia sprang to her feet that the thing lumbered into motion. It was like an earthquake; dirt poured off it, and a number of flowers stuck to it. The tiny crabs that lived in the tall strands of moss started darting around in a panic, which was cute as heck. These also looked like mushrooms and were identified as Mosshrooms. The UI inford that these preyed on tiny parasites that tried to burrow into the Terratle’s shell, but the mushrooms on their backs provided the camouflage they needed, and also distributed their kind around the area without requiring them to spend energy moving. These would transform into Crushrooms in ti.
Which led to wonder: when would Vellenia transform into a rmaid creature? Would Shakindria transform into sothing almost unrecognizable? What about Tweedle Dee, or Muppin, or Airaconda?
We ended up taking another two breaks, three hours after getting going again, and we found our way to Jacoby’s camp in the very middle of the most fetid, awful swamp imaginable. It was amazing.
Now, I’d chosen not to be a Wizard, but one look at this swamp told why Wizards were out there trying to catalogue everything they ca across. There were so many new kinds of creature I could hardly focus on the camp Jacoby’s people had set up.
This place had a huge variety of poison aspect Nakamamon. We ran across snake-like creatures, lizard-like versions, crocodilian-like versions, tons of tiny bugs, Nakamamon that were flowers and also poison, Nakamamon that imitated dead logs and were ghost aspected. Heck, even the cloud of poison gas floating above the water was ghost and poison aspected.
They weren’t all concentrated in the area with the camp, but we passed tons, and took a break near so really interesting ones. Again, Fairy Poppins helped keep us on the path with the humps of earth sticking out of the stagnant water, where murder logs waited to snap at us, and sickly greenish or purplish lights danced in the distance.
Regina hadn’t been kidding about the vast swamp. We had gotten into the swamp just after our first break, and we had traveled so forty miles into it before arriving at the large hillock in the clear spot, where Jacoby set up camp.
It was kind of like an island, a lump of earth rising only two or three feet out of the water at points, and covered with a profusion of grasses and flowers I hadn’t seen elsewhere in this world. I was lucky to have run across the Goddess of the adows early in my trek, because she had bestowed upon a full knowledge of every flower ever. The leathery black ones over there that appeared to be bats hanging from a tree branch were bat flowers. They were hardly the only interesting species. I saw orchids of several different types, and other plants that were plainly carnivorous. Aside from that, there was a clump of purple tentacles over there that Jacoby’s people were feeding by tossing things into the water.
“I chose this place because if the fighting aspects escape, the swamp monsters will kill and eat them all.”
She hoped. I didn’t have much faith in that to work, and neither did she.
I got the nickel tour.
Tents over here, divided into a periter of Guardian tents, a cluster of Wizard tents, and then the support class tents on the other side of the command tent. This a large place for Jacoby with a eting room that doubled as a cafeteria in bad weather. In the center, in cages suspended by chains, were the fighting aspects.
One of these was a Vulpetunia, a spitting image of Tweedle Dee, only it had definite eyelashes. Identified said that it was indeed a female.
The creature that could’ve been Tweedle Dee’s twin sister surged against the bars of her cage and clamped her jaws down on it. The others were likewise smashing their hands and paws and heads into the bars or floors of their cages. They gnawed on the bars, howled in frustration, and jumped up and down.
This is Christopher about to have his work cut out for him.
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