As their assailants coughed and choked, the morkal stepped forward and picked Akuhara up by the collar of his black coat. Her claws reared back to take his head off.

  “Wait! Don’t!” Jessica cried.

  The morkal glanced at her. “Why? He attacked us. This is the price he pays.”

  “We don’t have to kill them though! Wouldn’t that just make the Adventurer’s Guild more anxious to have you killed?

  Jessica wasn’t even convincing herself with the argument, but she really, really didn’t want to be complicit in murder. She was already terrified she’d hit them with too much nitrogen dioxide.

  “The bounty does not matter. Other adventurers will come, but now they will know to fear us,” the morkal said.

  “W-Wouldn’t it be better to set him free? Akuhara can’t spread fear if he’s dead.”

  “A severed head can do the job.”

  Akuhara must have still been dimly conscious through his asphyxiation, as his legs flailed at the mention of heads being severed.

  “That won’t convince anyone to leave you alone,” Jessica said.

  The morkal uncurled its claws and Akuhara dropped to the ground beside his teammates.

  “What happened to the small one?” the morkal asked.

  “She’s um… a toad, Ms. Monster-lady,” John said. “I had to use your potions to hold her off. It’s reversible though, ain’t it?”

  “The toad potion? No,” the morkal replied.

  Well, she wasn’t dead at least, Jessica thought. But turning the halfling girl into an amphibian wasn’t going to win them friends.

  “You…” Akuhara croaked.

  He started crawling toward his dropped swords. The morkal planted a clawed foot on his back, pinning him in place.

  “Take those swords inside. Then bring out the toad,” the morkal said.

  Jessica and John rushed to comply. By the time they returned with the toad, Akuhara’s teammates were beginning to catch their breath. They were still coughing and heaving but they were no longer on the verge of asphyxiating. Jessica felt her own breath come easier.

  “We will allow you to live if you promise to abandon your quest and advise other adventurers to do likewise. Do you understand?” the morkal said.

  Akuhara wheezed like a broken squeaky toy. “Y-Yes…”

  The morkal released her foot and allowed him to scramble out from under her. The fox girl and the dark elf were hardly on their own feet before Akuhara was halfway down the hill, sprinting for the road as fast as he had breath for.

  “J-Jun-sama, wait!” the fox girl yelled as she scooped up the toad.

  As soon as the hills no longer echoed with coughing fits, the morkal turned to Jessica.

  “We thank you for your assistance, though we find your decision strange given our previous interactions. Nonetheless, we will reward you in whatever manner you find suitable.”

  “Can I have my power system back?” Jessica asked.

  “That is not possible. However, it appears you already possess alchemical knowledge. If you wish, you may use our workshop as you see fit.”

  Jessica could hardly complain. At a minimum, the morkal had some powerful solvents and hard-to-find minerals. Indexing it all would be its own challenge. Of course, all that was contingent on it not being plundered by adventurers, so for the time being she was going to have to work with the monstress.

  “We should move your workshop,” Jessica said, “and you. That dumbass Akuhara is going to tell other adventurers where to find your lair.”

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Moving it will be difficult and time-consuming. Have you a hiding place in mind?”

  Jessica pursed her lips. “I mean… I saw an abandoned barn on the way here.”

  “Too close to humans. We would be found.”

  “I know a spot!” John said.

  The ‘spot’ was a wooden watchtower on the furthest ring of the outlying hills which sheltered Barleyfield. According to the lore passed down to John by successive generations of children telling ghost stories, it was built in the time of the Demon King as a defense against an attack from the west. No one had used it in over a century.

  “Useless things stand the longest,” the morkal said serenely.

  Jessica exhaled. “That’s a long way to carry heavy equipment. And if we have to cross Barleyfield, that’s a lot of eyes watching us.”

  “Could we do it by night?” John asked.

  “Two serfs and a monster wandering around at night? Not sure that’s much better,” Jessica said. “Then again, it doesn’t all have to be at once. John and I can take a little bit here and there over to the watchtower and if anyone asks we can say it’s stuff for making soap.”

  “Where’s she gonna stay in the meantime?” John asked.

  This was a conundrum, but before Jessica could get around to addressing it, there was an even more pressing issue. She turned and looked up at the morkal.

  “We don’t even know your name yet. What are we supposed to call you?”

  “We are Morkal,” the morkal replied.

  “I know. Do you have a name?”

  “Yes, Morkal,” Morkal replied. “Like a mycelium with many fruiting bodies, all morkal are Morkal. Our thoughts and intentions are connected by a thin membrane of causes and conditions, imperceptible to most. If one meets a Morkal anywhere, it is all of us.”

  Jessica had some idea how that worked. The metaphysics behind it were opaque, but she was familiar with the idea of hive minds despite having nothing to do with any kind of genre fiction. She thus found herself well-equipped to understand Morkal’s existence. Now the question was how she was going to explain it to John.

  “Oh, you’re like the Adventurer’s Guild ladies!” John said.

  “Precisely,” Morkal said. “Emily made a pact to subordinate herselves to the adventurers in exchange for a portion of their revenue. She is an accomplice of evil. We hate her.”

  Jessica felt her grasp on things slipping.

  “She’s the Guild-Maiden for the Adventurer’s Guild,” John explained to Jessica. “She hands out quests, distributes rewards, posts advertisements, coordinates adventuring parties. All that stuff. And she’s the exact same in every branch office. Curly blonde hair and big boobs. Every single one.”

  Jessica blinked. “O… kay. So ‘Morkal’ and ‘Emily’ are the personal names of two members of a race of hive mind beings?”

  “No,” Morkal said, “we and they are two completely separate consciousness-sharing beings, each of whom uniquely obtained entrance into the Tapestry of Causes and Conditions.”

  “Ugh. That’s more complicated than it needs to be! Anyway, are we likely to run into another Morkal any time soon? Do any live nearby?”

  “No,” Morkal said. “My nearest body is 30 leagues to the south.”

  Jessica could have spent hours asking Morkal about how she/they worked, but there were more pressing issues to deal with. Namely where they were going to store her.

  “This is gonna sound really out there… but could we store just your body? Like, since you share senses with the other Morkals, you wouldn’t go crazy if you tucked away this body in a hole for a while, right?”

  “We would slowly go insane,” Morkal said.

  Jessica snapped her fingers. “Rats! How about this: Why don’t we sleep on it and come back tomorrow with fresh brains? Right now I can hear a timer going off cuz mine is cooked.”

  Articulating her fatigue caused the full weight of it to catch up with her. Every muscle in her body felt like Play-Doh. She had a much greater appreciation for epinephrine as a molecule now, considering it was the only thing keeping her standing.

  Saying good-bye, Jessica and John hobbled downstream, out of the hills and forest. They were greeted upon exiting with a rainbow sherbet sunset. Relief burst out of Jessica as laughter.

  “Y’alright?” John asked.

  “I’m doing fine. Tired, but fine. How about you? Guess you finally got your adventure.”

  John blushed. “It… wasn’t what I thought. I-I mean— that is, I didn’t come to— to have an adventure, I… I came to help. Like I said.”

  “Sure, I know,” Jessica said, knowing full well he’d followed her hoping to see what the adventurers were up to. “How old are you, John?”

  He artificially lowered his voice. “Sixteen in a couple months.”

  “That’s about what I guessed. Listen, John, if something happens again, don’t follow me. We came really close to being killed today. You know that, right?”

  He looked away. “Yeah, I know that. But I—”

  “Don’t force me to tell your parents their son’s dead because he followed me to meet a monster in the woods. If I get into danger, just leave me to it. I can handle things myself.”

  Even as the words left her mouth, Jessica didn’t really believe them. The truth was she was impressed by John’s spunk. Wandering off somewhere dangerous was one thing, but John stepped up when shit hit the fan. That alone put him ahead of her labmates. She didn’t want to encourage him, but she supposed he was due at least some praise.

  “Thanks, though,” she said. “I don’t think I would’ve made the gas bombs in time if you didn’t cover for me.”

  John’s face lit up. “Of course!”

  Neither had the energy for conversation after that. By the time they were on the hill up to the hovel, Jessica was ready to fall asleep in the grass. She was convinced her entire reservoir of energy was spent until she reached the top of the hill and found Sir Hayek’s glossy, red-brown stallion waiting outside. Her body managed one last dose of adrenaline.