I stirred from a dream both familiar and stunning. As the cerulean lake and erald sky faded away, I was greeted by reality—and it was far better than anything my subconscious could invent.
I sat up, stretched my neck, and froze mid-turn when I felt the material beneath . Its rough surface couldn’t be any more different from the lap I’d awoken in. I glanced down to find weathered planks. There was nothing similar anywhere in Tropica. Had I drifted from one dream only to land in another?
But then my forr pillow swooped in, her hands resting on my collarbones as her lips t mine. Softer than velvet. Firm with need. Like a hurricane, Maria banished the clouds of disorientation from my mind, leaving only clear skies and the beautiful colors of dawn.
“Hi,” she said, sweeping a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she pulled back to look into my eyes.
“Hi,” I replied, lost in her radiance.
Neither of us broke the stare. Her cheeks grew flushed, yet she didn’t glance away. “Are you not going to ask about the changes to Tropica? I can feel your curiosity.”
“They’ll still be here later.”
“Well, so will I.”
I grinned, knowing it to be the truth. Content as I was to sit in this mont, so of my questions were ti sensitive. “The cuttlefish?”
“Still unconscious. The kraken is watching him just in case.”
“What about the first sister?”
With a wry smile, her eyes flicked over my left shoulder. I whirled and found the slug in question by Tropica’s rock wall. She sat atop Rocky, who was latched onto a semi-subrged boulder. Both beings peered down into the shallows to study the small aquatic creatures that called them ho.
Now that Maria’s spell on was montarily broken, I finally saw my surroundings. We were sitting at the end of a brand-new jetty. It extended from Tropica’s stone walkway, having been built in the place a decrepit one had stood previously.
I glanced toward the village and let out a soft whistle. From what I could see, nothing had moved—but they’d certainly changed. So buildings were the sa style but had gained floors. Others were rocking a different appearance, flourishes of wood replaced with iron and vice versa. A structure in the center of town—the church headquarters, I was pretty sure—had beco a godsdamned cathedral.
I’d been containing my senses since waking up, erring on the side of caution. As I took in the Tier 3 version of Tropica, however, I couldn’t help myself.
I opened my core, great strands of light wove their way out, and—
Whack!
“No,” Maria chastised, her will prepared to smack again. “Bad Fischer.”
“C’monnnn. I feel fine!”
“I don’t care. The last twenty-four hours have been ridiculous. You need rest.”
If the words had co from anyone else, I might have railed against them. Despite the fact she’d sohow flicked inside the head, her intensions were good—they flowed over our connection. I let out a slow breath. “Are those the doctor’s orders?”
“They are. Besides, there’s soone that needs—”
Crack!
The sound caused a shiver to run down my spine; it was reminiscent of the noise made when the System gave out its “rewards” earlier. But there was nothing invisible about this bolt of chi. Corporal Claws had appeared behind us, and as I turned to look at her, I caught sight of the first patch of yellow sun peeking over the horizon.
Ta-daaaa! she trilled, mimicking my words—along with the requisite jazz paws.
Maria shook her head with a smile. “That wasn’t what I ant—”
A na! Claws scread, cutting her off. She reached into her pocket, withdrew a ball of fur and thievery, and presented it to us. A na has been earned!
The raccoon, looking remarkably shy for how much of a pest he usually was, remained spherical, peering at us with extre side-eye.
“Claws . . .” I said. “Does that an I can choose it?”
She paused for one second, cackled for another, then abruptly stopped, shaking her head. No, silly master. But you did inspire earlier! Twice!
“Don’t tell . . . you’re going to call him Rocky Two?”
She gave a look like I’d just suggested we throw out a perfectly good clam.
What? No. I’ve got sothing way better! When you were talking to those two gods or whatever, you ntioned soone that shoved boat people down your throat. She made a searching gesture with one paw. What did you call him?
I barked a laugh. “Look, it would be objectively funny to call this little git ‘John Howard,’ but I think the reference to thievery would be lost on pretty much every but m—”
She slapped on the cheek. Focus, Master! She raised her left paw. Rocky Two. Then she raised the right. Pri Minister Dohn Howzard.
“That’s not—” I began, but cut off when she clapped, taphorically smushing the two nas together.
The sky grew overcast in an instant. Claws stood to her maximum height, locked eyes with , and shot a beam of lightning at the heavens, blowing a hole in the dark clouds no sooner than they’d ford.
Rocky, she trilled, drawing it out.
. . . the Pri Minister!
I chortled, then choked when the full weight of its aning struck my awareness. “Claws!” I coughed. “It’s—it’s brilliant!”
Maria frowned at both of us. “Yeahhh, that’s about what I expected. Unsure why you’re so excited about it, though . . .”
“The acronym!” I yelled, sending her the connotations via our bond. “RPM—revolutions per minute! It’s perfect!”
Claws laughed maniacally, but Maria was yet to be convinced. “I an, it’s thematically pleasing, and it will do away with the confusion of having a second animal pal called Rocky, but surely we can do better than three letters?”
I had a devious thought. “Well, if you don’t like RPM . . . we could call him Rocky the Pri Gentleman if you prefer. RPG, which stands for, uhhh, role-playing ga. That’s even more thematically pleasing. His soul is basically the thief archetype made manifes—”
“Fischer,” Maria interrupted, giving a flat stare.
“What?”
“You know that I’m inside your mind, right? You didn’t kick out after showing RPM.”
“Yeah? So?”
“So I know exactly what a rocket-propelled grenade is, you shit. You’re literally picturing a raccoon being shot from a launcher right now.”
“I an, yeah, but it’s hardly my fault I have good taste and an active imagination. So would argue that’s why I’m such an effective leader. As my great granpappy always declared, you can’t make an olet without shelling a few oysters.”
Claws chirped her agreent to the nonsensical statent, either agreeing for the sake of backing up or because oysters.
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“You know what?” Mara said. “RPM isn’t so bad after all. Who am I to deny a na bequeathed by his master?”
Right? Claws gave a full-bodied shimmy.
“And all jokes aside,” Maria continued, “you absolutely earned it, RPM. You were instruntal today.”
He looked up at us with more reverence than I’d ever seen on his face, his desire for mischief temporarily smothered by the weight of Maria’s sincerity. When his eyes t mine, I gave a slight nod. Sothing shifted.
The na settled into his soul, fitting like a pilfered glove. He shook with so much excitent that I thought he might explode or rocket away or both. Instead, he tumbled to the side then, his joy manifesting in a fit of roly-polies. The little bastard—RPM, I reminded myself—was deft at pretending to go in one direction before rolling in another. It actually looked quite fun.
Abruptly, Claws grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, drew her arm back, and launched him clean over Tropica. She gave and Maria a kiss on the cheek before trailing him as a thunderbolt brighter than the sun.
When she was gone from sight, I noticed countless other eyes watching us. “What are you all doing over there? Co here!”
No one moved. Almost all of my animal pals were peeking from behind the walkway’s low wall, but instead of coming for a cuddle, they ducked, only the tips of Cinnamon’s ears and Pistachio’s antennae remaining visible.
“What’s that about?” I asked Maria. My confusion grew when I saw the knowing grin on her face.
“Rember when Claws cut off earlier? I was trying to say that there’s soone that needs your attention, and I didn’t an her.”
“Huh? Who—”
A veil of water dispersed right beneath us, its caster revealing themselves and the power they wielded. Sergeant Snips rose up on streams of chi and landed atop one of the many poles securing the jetty to the seafloor.
She was small. Really small. Her emotions matched her size—tumultuous waves of unease crashed against each other in her core.
“Snips . . .” I said, smiling despite her nerves. “Co here, you goose.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but only embarrassed bubbles ca out.
I stood up. “I get it. Really, I do. It can’t be comfortable changing your entire identity and having to worry about how those around you will respond.” I approached with slow steps. “Which is all the more reason to rip the Band-Aid off. That thing within you—the gate neither opened nor closed . . .”
She’d went stiff as a stunned mullet.
“It’s our bond, isn’t it?” I bent my knees, crouching so we were eye to eyestalk. “You’ll always be my main squeeze, no matter how much you might change.” I raised my hand palm side up, placing it right beside her. “Do you trust ?”
Sergeant Snips, my aura-blade-shooting guard crab and the first friend I made in this strange world, nodded and scuttled forward.
The gate within her didn’t get thrown open—it was flattened beneath the weight of our connection, oceans of water and pure chi flowing past each other. When hers flowed into my core, I gasped.
Her ideal. It was so obvious. How hadn’t I seen it earlier?
She had been denying herself, so worried about acting like a human that she’d ignored her animalistic side. I’d played a part in it, too—a big one. Every ti I reminded my animal pals not to act like base creatures, Snips had internalized the ssage.
None of the warnings had been for her—the vast majority were for Rocky, the remainder for Claws—but that didn’t change the effect. She was my first disciple. My closest confidant. And she had borne all that weight.
I’m sorry, I sent. I should have—
She collected the flattened gate of her ideal, crafted it into a claw, then used it to snip my thought off at the bud. Her own thoughts charged in to take its place.
She didn’t use words; she was a crab. Crustaceans don’t care for bla. Only survival matters. I was her master. I was human. It was my job to worry—my role to remind Rocky and Claws not to hurt others. Yes, doing so had caused Snips stress. So what? She had needed to go through it in order to learn the lesson.
A hint of amusent shook her pragmatism, and she sent a mory—Joel and the rest of the Church of Carcinization having the opposite problem, not acknowledging their humanity in their attempts to achieve crabhood.
I cackled at the irony, sending a wave of love toward Snips—she always knew how to cheer up.
That was nothing, she said, her words returning as she set her ideal down. To quote a sowhat-trustworthy otter, ‘Check this shit out.’
The gate dissolved into wisps of essence that flooded back into her . . . no, our cores. As the first of them reached the center of my being, Snips’s awareness entered mine.
It was neither a pairing of wills nor a montary glimpse. Her mind was truly within , and I was within hers. Her physical body couldn’t disappear like RPM or Slis could into their masters, but that didn’t change what she had beco.
Snips . . . Snips was my familiar.
It all happened in a frozen mont. When I opened my eyes, I was still taking the gasping breath. Light and euphoria exploded outward. I fell down on my tooshie, and when the beams finally dispersed, I stared at the crab resting in my hand.
“Holy frack,” Maria and I both said at the sa ti.
When I learned of her ideal to be more crablike, a small part of had worried that Snips wouldn’t be as affectionate from then on. The mont our bond deepened, I knew I’d been stressing for no reason.
Snips grew to the size of my palm and spewed an absolute torrent of bubbles. The emotions were countless, but relief drowned out all the others. I hugged my guard crab to my chest as she shook, entirely overwheld by my easy acceptance.
I turned to gaze at the shore, suspecting the mont for a cuddle puddle had arrived. All eyes were watching us once more, but before I could open my mouth, Cinnamon leaped up onto the wall.
She let out a godsdamned war cry. I’m gonna kick his ass! she squeaked, shadow-boxing the air.
Borks’s head popped into view, nipped her by the back of the neck, and pulled her from sight.
Maria giggled at my bewildernt. “This mont isn’t about us—it’s about you two. Speaking of, I’ll give you both so space.” She stood, made to brush off her pants, and halted.
Snips moved faster than I even knew possible. If she wasn’t my familiar, I might have missed it. One of her small yet mighty clackers was attached to the hem of Maria’s trousers, and she shook her carapace, blowing bubbles of clear intention. Stay.
Behind us, Cinnamon took that as an invitation, her threat of only seconds ago to kick my ass completely forgotten. She crouched, gathered strength, and leaped forward—right into a tiny portal that appeared before her. Judging by the sounds, she’d exited the other side and struck either Teddy or Pistachio, both of whom currently restrained her.
I took a deep breath of the salty air. Truth be told, I was glad we could have this mont between us. Even now, I felt like I was learning more about Snips. A part of her essence seed to pool around my connection with Maria, too. I started to wonder if that ant their relationship would one day grow, but I let the thought drift away.
“Good,” Maria said, holding her hand out for . “I didn’t wanna have to beat you into relaxing.”
I raised a brow as I grabbed it. “Can you beat soone into relaxing?”
“Would I have tried? Yes. Would I have succeeded, though?” She pulled to my feet and gave a wink. “Better believe it.”
We walked a few steps and sat down at the end of the jetty, dangling our legs over the side as we faced the rising sun. Most of it had crested the horizon by now, its luster making the surrounding sky pink, orange, and blue.
Snips scuttled into my lap and looked up at . With a thought, her water billowed out to create a single garnt of clothing. A new eye patch, covering the stalk that had once been a vicious scar. She blew happy bubbles, but a hint of loss remained.
“Don’t worry,” I said, rubbing the top of her carapace. “I’ll fix your old one or make another. It wouldn’t do to have the leader of Tropica’s animals without her signature look.”
She blew teasing bubbles, shrank to the size of a pea, then grew to the size of a hound.
“That’s no matter,” I replied as she took the mass of an adolescent rock crab. “What’s the point of traveling between realms if I can’t create a magical, shape-shifting piece of clothing?”
Gleeful orbs floated from her mouth and drifted around, only stopping when a thought struck her.
Master, she hissed, hesitant. May I . . . ?
She showed sothing in my mind that she’d always wanted to do, but had never asked.
“Of course! For the record, I would have said yes even if you were the size of Pistachio.”
Contented bubbles trailed her as she hopped up onto my head. There, she wiggled, her legs not at all bothering as she got comfortable.
“This is lovely,” I said. “All I’m missing is a fishing ro—”
A portal split the air before , and a second later, a rod ca out, its hook already baited. Borks held it by the handle. Despite his averted eyes, I could tell he was excited—his tail was wagging so hard that the movent reached his neck.
“Thanks, buddy.” I accepted it. “You really are the best of boys.”
With his mouth free, he couldn’t help but rain rapid-fire licks down on my hand, at least a dozen direct hits landing in the fraction of a second it took for him to withdraw.
I offered the rod to Maria, but she shook her head. “I could’ve asked for one, too, but I’ve had enough fun for today. It’s all yours.”
With a small smile, I flicked the reel forward, pulled the pole back, then cast the line out. It made a satisfying plop, its splash reflecting the array of colors currently painting the horizon.
“You know,” I said, winding in until it went taut. “You seem to have overco that block in your cultivation nicely. Even if we weren’t connected, I’d be able to tell you’re a fully fledged healer now . . .”
Her pulse spiked and her cheeks flushed red, and she nodded. She knew what I was getting at. I neither teased her nor drew it out any longer.
“That being the case, my love . . . shall we plan our wedding?”
Her eyes t mine. “Should . . . should we wait until things calm down a little? Don’t get wrong, I want it to happen yesterday, but there’s the kraken, the cuttlefish, all the books in Ellis’s soul, and that’s not even—”
I cut her off with a swift kiss that turned into a long one, neither of us wanting to break away. “Nope,” I said when we finally separated. “The best I can do is delay until after the feast—I won’t wait a minute longer.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but both our heads darted toward the bay, an unmissable dip of the rod arresting our attention.
Bump.
Bump. Bump, bump.
I looked back at Maria, but she shook her head, still watching the water. “I love you more than you know, but it can wait.” She licked her lips and leaned closer. “Damn. I should have asked for a rod after all . . .”
For a few seconds, there were no more nibbles. I didn’t really care that much, though. Even if I never caught another creature again, I would be happy—I’d already found everything I needed in life.
But then the fish bit down on my hook, and an extra layer of excitent piled on top of the contentnt within my soul, adrenaline increasing with each shake of the creature’s head.
“Fish on!” we both yelled, our wedding plans temporarily forgotten.
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