Glumpdumpkin, the town, was our first civilized destination, but the disappearing reappearing ke was presently in the way. Now, as anyone can imagine, hearing these words caused a lot of questions. Since I was expedition lead, it fell to me to ask the one on everyone’s mind.

  “Why is the town called Glumpdumpkin?” I asked, ignoring the probably more pressing disappearing reappearing ke question.

  “Out settlements were very different than what you think of as settlements in your earth world,” Chrysta said. “Many of the folk had never previously lived in a building. The vast majority find your earth ways interesting, and are excited to participate in becoming more earthesque.”

  “Earthesque. Good word,” Cinzy said. “Perfect word.”

  “There are other nearby settlements that have emuted earth sounds, but inexpertly. Flunt-on-the-Rustle is one such settlement. Saxwhacket is another.”

  “Saxwhacket is my favorite of the three,” Drat said with a perfectly straight face, and all the girls lost their shit. They started ughing uncontrolbly. Tara and Cinzy were actually close together when they doubled over, bonked their heads together, and fell back onto the grass guffawing until they weren’t even producing sounds any longer.

  “You will be the first earthlings to arrive in Glumpdumpkin to stay for any period of time,” Chrysta said, to even more raucous ughter. “It would behoove you to muster up some decorum.”

  “Don’t worry,” Drat said in that same dry tone, “the residents of Glumpdumpkin, Flunt-on-the-Rustle and Saxwhacket can expect to see us act with the utmost professionalism.”

  Several of the girls were wiping tears from their faces. Regina and Cinzy were kicking their feet onto the dirt and holding their sides.

  What is so funny to everyone? Larelle asked me mentally. I too was having trouble stopping myself from ughing.

  “It’s… those names are rather humorous,” I told her.

  But these are earth words, arranged in a way that conveys the title of a township. And they came highly recommended from Rus.

  “Ah,” I said. “Rus is a little different than the rest of us. He must have recommended them.”

  So Swollen Woods is also a silly name? she asked.

  I burst out ughing. “Oh, Rus.”

  The problem with the on-again-off-again ke was that it sometimes migrated. I was informed that sometimes it decided to become a ribbon of water a good quarter mile wide and zip off into the sky, or make its way around the area masquerading as a river, but then take a rest ter and become a ke again.

  “Does this make the ke… a god?”

  Chrysta stopped and considered. “I believe that assumption is correct.”

  The ke, a huge source of water variety Nakamamon, would take ages to go around. Going over in a boat or raft could reduce the travel time from over a week down to less than a day. The trouble was the risk of being unched into the air on the back of the dragon version, or being dragged well off course if it changed into a river.

  “If it changes into a river we can probably jump ship and not suffer too badly,” Tara said, “but if it changes into a fracking dragon I don’t really… we don’t have any fliers who can carry the whole team. We don’t have anyone with a sky manta or a way to float down. There’s no way Chrysta can pull us up and out, right?”

  “I cannot,” she said. “You would more likely freeze to death on my… what was that?”

  All of us looked around.

  Affinity check! You do not have the associated skill for this check. This check is Easy difficulty. Would you like to spend 1 Token for an automatic success?

  Total Tokens: 4 Affinity and 6 Free Tokens.

  I indicated that I would spend the single Token from among my Affinity Tokens, and immediately a rge shape lit up. This was like a sheet of air, near invisible at first but then coalescing into a cloud-like thing with darker, gray cloud eyes a moment ter. It was maybe ten or fifteen feet long, and it behaved oddly. It would swirl around a group of several of us, mussing hair and lifting backpack fps and skirts, or slither along the ground.

  You have spotted a slitherwind, an elemental of air! The UI expined. This is an uncommon type of Nakamamon.

  “Look at youuuuuuu!” Tara said in a sing-song tone. “How lovely you are. Oh you’re so beauuuuuuutiful.”

  She immediately did a cartwheel and spun around with arms outstretched and head back. The sheet of air paused before swirling around her. With a joyous ugh, she took off down the hill, waving her arms and turning around. It should’ve sent anyone into a fit of dizziness and would’ve made me fall down, but Tara did several cartwheels, front flips, and twirls I didn’t have names for on her way down the gentle slope.

  The creature followed her, leaving the rest of us and inspecting Tara as she went. Those two gray rain cloud eyes followed her every movement, and it zipped this way and that to get her from different angles. It was clearly

  “Is that safe?” I asked.

  These elementals are mercurial, as most air aspects are. It will either bond with her, leave, or suffocate her, Larelle told me.

  “Oh you are so wonderful!” Tara gushed, and did another flip. The snake bolted beneath her as she left the ground and was gone by the time her feet nded again.

  “Suffocate her… to death?”

  Naturally.

  “Um,” I said. “What is she supposed to do?” Clearly I hadn’t seen anything like this in the castle. Everyone either had their companion creature, or they didn’t and they compined about not having one. Tara had been out with me to try to find one, but the only thing we’d found was The Lovers, and the dripping sex session to follow.

  She should already be familiar with the process. Bonding takes many forms, but includes the sharing of mana. Tara has already begun releasing mana to draw in the creature. Now we wait.

  To see if Tara ended up drowned.

  I focused intently on the action at hand. The creature become a tiny whirlwind that went around her several times, lifting her bodily and completely messing up her hair. Tara ughed, then stopped ughing. She turned over slowly, hanging a good six feet in the air, like she was under water. She was too far away to clearly see the look on her face, but I took off running anyway.

  Chrysta was there as well, along with Ivy and Regina.

  We were just about to reach the situation when Tara’s feet touched the ground again. She spun around in a circle, grinning, head thrown back and look of pure ecstasy on her face.

  Slitherwind has bonded with expedition mate Tara, the UI informed me.

  I stopped, and clutched at the pces on my hips and thighs that would need to be massaged out whenever I went all out in a way I shouldn’t have. The ache spread out more quickly than I was used to. I hadn’t been in a sprinting mood in years.

  “Guys, guys!” Tara said, rushing back over toward us. “Guys I finally got mine!”

  The elemental rushed up between her legs and she hugged to the shimmer of cloud, then locked her knees around it and began flying, like she was riding the world’s rgest snake.

  “Whoooooo!” she called out as she passed by. “This is so flipping cool!”

  The snake slithered up into the sky with Tara riding it like a horse, and she pumped her fist as she soared by a second ter.

  Maybe this would help us deal with the ke situation. I certainly hoped so.

  ***

  We all took turns trying to come up with names. Except Trent. He was still bent out of shape about what he’d done yesterday and refused to travel with us, or talk to anyone but me. And even then, he limited all interactions to a grunt if possible, or a single word if not.

  “Airy Styles?”

  “Airy Poppins is out,” Cinzy said. “You can’t copy me. But you could go with something like Breezy fo’ Sheezy.”

  “Stormfront? No. That sounds like a militia holed up in a compound in the back woods of Missouri or something,” Regina said.

  “Cumy?” Isabelle suggested. “Like cumulonimbus?”

  “I don’t know how to spell that in a way that doesn’t look like cummy,” Tara replied, to lots of ughter and grossed out calls. “Isabelle what’s the Korean word for cloud?”

  “Goo-rum,” she said. “Sounds strange, right? Wind is cuter, it’s Baram.”

  “Doesn’t look like a goat that goes ‘baa’ so I’ll say no,” Tara said.

  “The word for snake is BAM!” Isabelle shouted.

  “Meh,” Tara said, ughing. “Maybe for a fire aspect, if it had an explosion power.”

  “Alto? Like altostratus,” Regina tried. “Gosh, this is hard. I just went with Tweedle Dee.”

  “Gosharoo,” Drat said with that same bnk face. He earned a dark look from Regina.

  “Y-you could go w-w-with a s-s-snake thing and w-work toward a-a-air or w-wind or breeze or gust,” An said.

  “Python or Cobra or Boa Constrictor or Anaconda, like that?” Tara asked.

  “Air…aconda? Airaconda?” Ivy suggested.

  “Ohh I like that,” Tara said. “Do you like that, you beautiful boy? Do you like Airaconda?”

  The snake made of air curled around her whole body and then her outstretched arm, resting its chin on her fingers.

  And just like that, the snake’s name was Airaconda.

  I was, of course, jealous that she had not only found a companion creature right off the bat, but hadn’t had any trouble bonding with it. Also relieved that I didn’t have a dead team member on my hands. I was a Healer, but that didn’t mean I could bring people back from the dead. Even genies couldn’t do that, and I wasn’t even able to grant wishes or make miracles happen.

  I put aside my own envy and congratuted Tara and Airaconda. The rest of the girls and their Nakamamon did also, Ivy included. She was the only girl without a Nakamamon now. She was surrounded by a huge rock echidna looking thing, a yipping fox with flowers blossoming out of it, a teeny little fairy, and Larelle’s magmamander. Even Trent’s crystalline creature Garnet appeared out of the ground and extended its multifaceted protrusion of a body toward Tara and her new wind snake. An and I didn’t have one either, but the stuttering Wizard was beaming with joy.

  Cresting the next hill put us in view of the ke, stretched out below us, jewel blue and sparkling. It was enormous, stretching out far beyond view and into the horizon. Unless you grew up on the ocean, or maybe on one of the Great Lakes, I doubt you’d have a different reaction. All of us just stopped and stared.

  Surprising me were the boats at the far side, just specks right now, but definitely specks with triangur sails topping them.

  “Those are boats,” Trent said. It was the first time he’d spoken to anyone other than me all day.

  “Yeah. Huh,” Regina said.

  “We’re still about a half day’s travel out,” Tara said, and started bounding down the hill. She seemed even lighter on her feet than before.

  Knowing now about the lightning resistance Timmy got from Wendell, and knowing about the fire resistance Larelle no doubt had from her magmamander, there was no doubt a power swap was happening with the Nakamamon bonding to Tara. I’d read about it in the cy tablets from Allie. The question was always what kind of abilities or bonuses the bond would produce. They varied, but there were trends.

  If the creature emitted damage, you always got the resistance to it so your bonded creature wouldn’t hurt you. But there were a ton of other resistances, buffs and abilities. I couldn’t read through most of them, but a lot of stat increases were common. Earth aspects like Isabelle’s gave Durability, armor, and resistances to cold or air attacks. Some of the abilities granted were along the lines of being more surefooted, seismic attacks, regeneration so long as you were touching the earth, or amazing climbing abilities.

  I doubted Tara would get the ability to fly. It didn’t seem like any of the humans in the castle had that ability just from bonding. But she could get a gliding power, slow fall, or gravity having less of an effect on her. Wind bsts were a cool one, which could fling you in one direction or fling something away from you. Common stat increases were to Affinity or Ingenuity: sensing magic, or thinking on the fly.

  “What’s our py here?” Regina asked.

  I realized everyone was looking at me. This having responsibility for other people’s wellbeing thing was unnerving. How was I supposed to know what the best course of action was? Should I try to ask the UI for an Ingenuity check?

  “I see what you mean about no getting around it, Chrysta,” I said. It went on forever out into the horizon to the east. “How often did you say it shifts?”

  “The m-m-m… the m-mana on it is s-s-strange,” An added.

  “Every week or so, if I recall the report correctly,” Chrysta replied.

  “Then I’m happy to remain at the edge of the ke for the time being. See if we can’t get some leveling done, earn some more skill experience for outdoor survival.”

  “And we can see if An’s being skittish about a mobile ke or if he’s onto something,” Drat said.

  The descent down to the ke took a good two hours. We had to crest yet another hill, and we were all happy to reach the top, because it was all downhill from there.

  “Bad analogy,” I told myself. “It’s all good news from here. All easy peasy.”

  The ke looked even more enormous, imposing, and vast from up close. Also inviting. The girls dropped their packs and started rummaging around in there. Cinzy, Isabelle and Tara soon came out with swimsuits and bikinis, making Regina shriek with recognition and excitement. She went rifling through her pack too.

  “Folks!” I called. “We are, unfortunately, not going to be swimming inside the body of a possibly votile elemental god.”

  Faces fell.

  “I’m not saying don’t put on swimwear. It’s a gorgeous day, and you should feel comfortable or try to soak up some sun and get a tan.” You could practically hear An’s blood pressure rising. “I am saying we should avoid touching the gods. And I am saying I can’t believe I just said that sentence out loud.”

  Chuckles mixed in with groans of disappointment.

  “An and I will try to run a test to see if it’s dangerous.”

  The young Wizard peered at me through thick spectacles. “A-are you s-s-sure you m-made the right choice having m-m-me… on this t-team? There w-w-were dozens of b-better w-w-w-wizards.”

  “Oh, I made the right choice,” I said. So many of the Wizards were stuck up, arrogant, insufferable know-it-alls that it was refreshing to have one that was an actual human that recognized he could make a mistake. “Now, Wizards should have divination spells for figuring out this sort of issue, right?”

  He shrugged. “S-s-skill, actually.”

  The ke itself was just like every other ke you’ve ever seen: big, blue, water rippling this way and that. It was slightly different based on the rge dinosaur-looking creature poking its head and flippers out of the water. This was a possible sign that we might end up in the water at some point, but not conclusive. The other big and unsettling thing about the ke that made it very different from earth was the ck of a tide. No little waves coming up the beach. No white caps crashing against one another creating foam. The edge of the ke just sat there.

  An removed a small device from his pack and muttered a couple of magic words into it. I’d noticed that when he was doing his casting, the stutter was missing.

  The device lit up and beeped.

  “I-i-it’s definitely a g-god,” he said.

  “Safe for us to touch, or not?” Based purely on my Identify check difficulty, it seemed clear that any attempt to diagnose, treat, or work up a cure was going to be practically impossible. Even with the assistance Tokens from the remainder of the team, I doubted it would work. We’d spend ourselves dry, and then… Tokens replenished every 5 levels and with special conditions, so we’d just have to wait and wait and wait… so if there was any danger here, I wanted to be able to avoid it.

  “Hmm,” An said, and muttered some more magic words. He stared at it, frowned, tried again, and again it beeped. “D-device… readings… in… inc… inconclusive.”

  So he did something utterly insane, and dipped his hand directly into the water.

  This is Christopher wondering how long it will be before there’s a team member fatality.