The perfect world here continued to shine and sparkle. The sky coruscated with colors, and the clouds continued to swirl and twirl. The trees did their weird boogie woogie instead of pointing toward the sun. A fresh series of smells was carried in a refreshing breeze. It had rained a handful of times in the castle, short showers that drifted in, pelted everything for a good few hours, and moved on. For now though, though the temperature was dropping, it felt just amazing. As someone who was from the swampiest part of the United States, suffering through the humidity that seemed to squeeze the whole world, this was a delight.

  Larelle and Chrysta informed me that this world was called Dorfilialos by the natives. It was an odd word that seemed to stick in your mouth when you tried to say it. Dorfilialos. My mind could conjure the word up, but every time I tried to actually speak it, something went wrong.

  “Dorfiltialtos. Wait, what? Doritos Fritos. Is there a reason my mouth simply cannot say Dorfinnishrialtos? That is… very strange.”

  Larelle ughed, and after several more false starts, Chrysta joined in. The ghostly woman just shuddered and made odd sounds as she shook and bounced in the air.

  “Oh, you ugh, but can you say supercalifragilisticexpiadocious?”

  After several seconds of visible confusion, the huge Larelle ughed even harder. Chrysta joined her after several more moments of silent staring.

  “You ugh, but it’s powerful magic.” An eyebrow waggle undercut my point a bit, and again Larelle ughed. She then cpped a hand on my shoulder, which dealt actual damage. I nearly went flying.

  I like you, earth person, she said into my mind. Your nonsense is most agreeable.

  We saw coneflowers, cosmos, tiny lily turf and dandelions, along with flowers that didn’t exist on earth: striped coinpurses, sundrinkers (like sunflowers but with absolutely huge leaves), and meadow foffles. I ended up stopping the team several times to grab up some of these and begin drying them out. I initially told everybody all the names of the flowers, but most of them soon tired of it. Only Isabelle seemed interested, though Ivy was being a bit of a jerk. So the expedition traveled in silence for a time, just enjoying the sun on our faces, the magical energies suffusing our bodies, and the breeze tousling our hair.

  We had lunch on a lonely boulder sitting in the middle of the tall grassnd. I wondered what the natives might eat, but they had seaweed-wrapped rice with some vegetables inside like the rest of us. Larelle might not have a nose, but she had a mouth, and a huge one at that. She scarfed down three times as much as anyone else. Even Chrysta, weird white ice ghost she was, consumed food, though she was much daintier about it.

  All was going well until Trent decided he was going to impress us all by lifting the boulder out of the ground and floating it not far off the ground.

  “Don’t do it,” Ivy warned, immediately jumping to her feet. Both Regina and Tara were on their feet as well. I noted Larelle in a superhero crouch, and Chrysta floating up off the boulder. Everybody else was on their ass, on their backs, or hands and knees.

  Now that my Affinity score was higher, I could make out the aura of magic being expended by the Sorcerer. It came off in gritty waves, sliding directly down into the rock, where it acted a bit like a magnetic field.

  None of that mattered next to the shivering of the stone, the way our pots, pans and dishes went rattling around on the stone, and the way the cups immediately tipped over and spilled.

  “Not cool, Trent!” Ivy yelled. “Cut that schnitzel out right now!”

  Trent just ughed. “You’re not afraid of flying are you?” He made his face into one of comical fear. “Oh nooo you guys, flight I can’t controooool!”

  “Enough,” Drat said. “Come on, this is stupid. You’re gonna—”

  It was then he yelped in pain and lost control over his spell. One second he was holding his hands parallel to the ground, concentrating hard, the next he was shaking his right hand, and droplets of blood were flying.

  And the rock was tumbling.

  It hung in the air for just a second before slowly turning over and dumping An, Isabelle and me off the one side. Drat stood and executed a perfect backflip off the rock, nding like a gymnast. Others were far less graceful about it, including Trent himself. He started sliding off, just as Larelle was scooping me out of the air and vaulting off the rock to nd like a super badass.

  I would love to report that nobody was seriously hurt. Instead we had Isabelle with her ankle broken after nding badly. An also nded badly, knocking the wind out of him.

  The rest of the girls were good. Regina, Tara, Ivy, and Cinzy got to safety or nded awkwardly, but without injury.

  The boulder plowed into the ground just inches behind where Isabelle and An had slid off, shaking the ground and producing a thundercp of rumbling. It kicked up a rge cloud of dust, and followed this up by smming down the rest of the way.

  Stunned silence reigned for a time. I detached myself from Larelle’s beefy arm and went off to look in on An, Isabelle and Trent. The tter had nded on An’s legs and was scrambling up off him with a shocked expression. He backed off, bloody hand up.

  “S-sorry,” he said. “I didn’t… something bit me.”

  “You get to go put the boulder back where it came from and clean up your mess” I told him. “I’ll make it an order if you force me too.”

  “Yea, no, of course, I’ll just…” He wandered away clutching his hand, and pretty soon the boulder lifted a bare inch off the ground, then slid back away from us.

  Ivy was at Isabelle’s side a second ter, muttering her concern and worry over her friend. The tattooed, pierced girl with her shaved head turned a dark look Trent’s way.

  “Nope,” I told her. “I’ll get Isabelle bandaged up, and we absolutely won’t be retaliating. Understood?”

  Ivy turned that wild look my way. “You’re just going to let him get away with this?”

  “I am not,” I said. “He’ll have KP duty and be restricted from using his abilities off mission. You, however—”

  “I’m a Guard,” she snarled, “and I failed to guard my girlf— my best friend!”

  “Ivy,” Isabelle hissed. “Let it go, okay? I’ll be okay.”

  I had a look at Isabelle’s ankle, thankful I had the Healer skills for the job.

  Diagnosis (Ingenuity) check: You have the skill associated with this check. This check is Easy difficulty. Would you like to spend 1 Token for an automatic success?

  Total Tokens: 6 Ingenuity and 6 Free Tokens.

  I signaled that I would not be spending Tokens on it, and received the notification that of the 3 Diagnosis (physical) and 6 Ingenuity, I scored 3 successes, giving me 1 Token for a Treatment roll. Also, the UI expined that it wasn’t necessary to develop a cure, since this was not a mady that would eventually kill her. However, a success on Develop Cure would make the Administer Cure a simpler matter. I could treat the wound temporarily, or Administer Cure.

  Develop Cure would use Large as a category, since Isabelle counted as a rge creature instead of Swarm or Small. I didn’t have that one, nor had I invested in Beast, which was how she was categorized. None of this was good news.

  Instead, I could spend my skill points. I didn’t want to do that. We were going to come up against wind creatures and fire gods and electric creatures and psychic gods and stuff. Whatever we came into contact with, I wanted to have the points for.

  Instead, this.

  I looked at the Treatment options. The UI informed me that a Salve would be the way to go: applied topically and immobilized, the salve would slowly seep into the wound.

  “Why don’t we use Healing Potions?” She asked.

  I shook my head. “They’re resource intensive to make, the resources are back at the city, and they don’t st long in liquid form. Second, it’s way more than you need. And third, I’m told that it infuses you with magic, which can attract Nakamamon, or gods, or both.”

  “Ah.”

  “If someone gets impaled or has a limb torn off, I’ll make up a quick Healing Potion for them and make sure they don’t die, but we only have ingredients for about three… if we use those ingredients for salves, unguents, elixirs and such, specific to needs, we’ll have ingredients for about three dozen.”

  “That makes sense. Listen, Fletcher, thank you.”

  I paused at my work and fshed her a smile. “It’s my job. Happy to help, happy to get the experience, happy you’ll be well soon.”

  She was beautiful. Isabelle and Ivy were Guards, so they had formidable combat abilities and physiques, but they weren’t overbearing mountains of muscle like Bke. Instead Ivy was thick around the legs and butt, and well built in the shoulders as well. She didn’t have an ounce of fat on her, like an Olympic wrestler. The tattoos, metal, and shaved head served to make her appear more dangerous.

  Isabelle, by contrast, was formed like a runner. She had a dexterous build, and I bet she could throw those javelins or shoot those arrows of her far and fast. She was also an exquisite specimen, simir in shape to Tara, but her skin had started to go swirly and pink purple, like cotton candy ice cream. Pin stripes of white threaded along her skin, and her hair was raven bck, tinting toward purple. Mostly though, it was the open gratitude despite the pain on her face that made me think of her as beautiful.

  She was also Ivy’s girlfriend, if I understood correctly. Whether she was Ivy’s girlfriend like friend who just happened to be a girl, or whether they were dating, I didn’t know. Ivy’s behavior made it seem like the tter.

  “You’ve ridden on Muppin before, right?” I asked her.

  “Oh… yeah.”

  “Wait… Muppin sounds a lot like muffin.”

  “That’s his name,” she said. “It’s the Korean word for muffin.”

  I squinted, and saw that she did appear to have Asian blood. “Are you half Korean then?” She gave me a smile. “Well I love that. Muppin doesn’t look super comfy to ride, but not everything is what it seems. We’ll work something out. Right now I’m going to work you up a salve, splint your leg, and we’ll get you id down comfortably on your big old rock monster. How’s that sound?”

  The huge rock beast didn’t look comfortable, but we had bnkets and could fashion something to help her ride.

  “Thank you, doctor,” she said, and fshed me a big smile.

  I spent my Token as part of the 3 needed to automatically succeed at the salve creation check. Right now I felt like I had plenty, and I hoped that feeling didn’t dissipate.

  Soon enough we had the double boiler going, heating the oil and melting the beeswax in there. I’d mashed up some Sundrinker leaf and mixed it with other herbs that had been mashed up: icebalm and root of mender’s fern from the herbs I’d brought. They went in and were only stirred for a good thirty minutes before I asked An for a cooling or ice spell. I wouldn’t burn her with the salve.

  An was… not ready for such a thing, but fumbled through a series of note cards carved into bark, and eventually came out with a spell that he said should work. After muttering an incantation about three hundred times under his breath and practicing the hand motions another good fifty times or so, he cracked his neck and announced he was ready.

  “Make it happen, buddy,” I told him.

  “I just need…” he got out some water and flicked it at the jar of salve. After saying the words, and doing the hand motions, a tiny ray of blue white energy shot out and spshed into the mason jar. Frost grew around it, and he leapt to his feet, pumping his fists in the air and howling in triumph like he’d just nded a rover on the surface of Mars.

  “Good job!” Cinzy gushed, and put one hand on his forearm.

  An about had a frackin’ heart attack. His eyes bugged out of his head and his mouth opened and closed again and again, fishlike.

  Once Isabelle’s dainty, lovely little ankle had a good dabbing of salve on it, and then it had been splinted to keep it immobile, we got her situated on top of Muppin and set off again. Ivy rode up there with her for a while, and Trent sulked in the back. His Nakamamon, Garnet, was nothing more than a literal gemstone that made its way through the topsoil like a mole. It would pop up periodically, gleaming facets around its… head? Then as soon as it appeared, it would vanish beneath the dirt again.

  We had miles to go before we slept, and that meant a companionable silence fell over us. Largely. There was still a fraught silence hanging between Ivy and Trent, over Isabelle’s injury and his foolish showing off.

  I kept circuting between different members of the team, who had broken up into small cliques. The two guard girls attracted Cinzy the Bard, and at times Regina and Tara. Larelle and Chrysta rgely kept together, and kept to themselves. Regina sometimes ventured over, had a short conversation with one or the other, and broke off again. An was by himself most of the time, though Drat joined him walking in silence.

  First I stopped by to thank An for his spellcasting, and he went all shy on me. Drat informed me, ughing, that Cinzy and Tara had already been over to do the same thing. An was colpsing into his own self-esteem issues. He was worse than me when it came to girls.

  Next, I had a word with Larelle and Chrysta. They told me that the gorgeous ndscape held little in the way of danger, unless we spooked a rge or huge Nakamamon. We might not be able to sense it because a huge creature would naturally spread its magic aura out over a huge area, and you wouldn’t notice it right away unless you knew what to look for. As for how we would spook it, Larelle just made an amused sound into my mind, and Chrysta said there were many ways we could trigger a reaction out of a slumbering creature.

  In that case, I asked them to stay vigint and make sure we didn’t run afoul of anything that could kill us with a wave of its flipper.

  Afterwards, Ivy found me.

  “Fletcher,” she said curtly.

  “Ivy.”

  “Thank you for handling Isabelle’s injury. She has already recovered most of the damage caused. She has suffered a temporary… her max HP has been lowered for the time being. It should come back within a few hours.”

  I nodded. “Great. That’s excellent.”

  “I can’t imagine recovering from a broken ankle within a few hours.” She reached out and took my shoulder, forcing me to stop and look her in the face. “I’m gd you chose us, Fletcher. You won’t have to worry about Izzy and I, okay? We’re with you a hundred and ten percent.”

  I could only smile at that.

  Afterwards, I sought out Tara and Regina, under the guise of conferring with the team’s Rangers about Ranger-reted business. In fact, I was not! Instead I got sly, knowing looks from the two women I was coming to believe were the horniest two women on the pnet.

  “Ohhh you sex monster you,” Tara said, giggling.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I sort of lied. “Are you saying that Isabelle and I are about to do the deed, because I healed her ankle?”

  “This guy gets it,” Regina said, ughing.

  “Dude!” I said, amazed.

  “My advice would be to just tell her you’re amazing at sex and she’ll believe you,” Regina said, but couldn’t keep a straight face. Tara couldn’t either, and snorted her juice out of her nose, before choking and sputtering juice all over the pce.

  “Can you do that when I’m not drinking?” she asked. “Honestly though, Fletcher, you should probably get all these girls to do you at least once. I don’t see any downside to seducing all of them, and getting a power from having them join the fold.”

  “You’re just fluffing with me…” I told her. Astonishment came on its heels. Maybe she was being serious.

  “Of course I’m not being serious!” Tara said, practically reading my mind. “You definitely don’t want a bunch of jealous women being catty with one another. You’ve already seen Ivy lose her cool over Trent.”

  “Overreaction much?” Regina confirmed.

  “Have you two become best friends overnight?” I asked.

  Much ughing followed this. They were definitely party to an inside joke I had yet to get in on.

  This is Christopher repeatedly rolling his eyes… while grinning like a fool.