Thimble walked north towards Dragonshore with purpose in his eyes. Shelby chased after him, shouting "Wait! Where are you going?"

  "To find the cave. I thought that would be obvious," the short mouse huffed out.

  Shelby jogged in front of him, "We can't go yet!"

  He slowed, but kept walking towards her, "Why? We could be killing that wolf right now."

  Shelby pursed her lips. Thimble didn't know about all the behind-the-scenes scheming AIDAN had done to help them, er, her. She tried, "We're not strong enough?"

  "I have the shield you gave me and we're fighting together better than we ever have. We're strong, Caramel."

  "W-what about the people in this village? They won't get help from people like us again for a long time!"

  "You can come back and help them when we're done, if you're so concerned," He said with a raised eyebrow, then stepped past her.

  "Wait, just hold on," she grabbed him by the shoulder, "it's just that... I need your help!"

  He sighed, "With what?"

  "There's a rare monster around here! I need your help to tame it!" Shelby pleaded.

  Thimble looked nonplussed, "I'm only here to help the people who were captured, not help you find some monster..."

  "It will help us!" Shelby sank to her knees in the sand, grasping Thimble's hand, "I was told it's super strong!"

  "You already have a strong companion," Thimble tilted his head towards Coda.

  "This one will help us rescue the people! Coda is amazing but he doesn't have the, um, special powers this monster has!" Shelby prayed that she wasn't overselling it. She had no idea what powers the monster had, if any. AIDAN wouldn't send me here for nothing, though.

  "It does indeed have powerful abilities," AIDAN confirmed.

  Thimble wrenched his hand free from Shelby and rolled his eyes, "Fine. It's not as if I can go into the cave without you."

  Shelby hopped to her feet, "Wonderful! Awesome! Amazing! Lets do some more jobs too! We can't find the monster until we slay a few more of the normal kind."

  She ran back to the contract board before Thimble could object and got another mixture of blue dragon and jorunnamander slaying jobs, then jogged back to where she had left him. He shook his head at her, then turned to the glittering piles of red in the distance.

  Their hunting was starting to become routine. Since their enemies had set special attack patterns, Shelby was becoming an expert at calling out and reacting to the enemy's tactics. They would occasionally miss a cue and take damage, but Thimble was also growing in skill, and he could avoid many of the attacks in their fights, so healing him became less and less of a priority.

  Shelby only needed six more jorunnamanders to get her token, and with the crabs, that would make 2 codex milestones, but the blue dragons were common so they may as well complete that codex entry too. Half an hour later Shelby had claimed two new tokens:

  AIDAN informed her that a token could be used anywhere within the zone where the source monsters lived, so a more open location on the beach could be chosen to make the fight easier. She certainly didn't want to fight in the sulfur pits. Just a few minutes ago she been randomly scalded when a goop ball exploded in one of the pools of water. Also, it smells weird there. Somewhere with no other monsters and lots of room to move would be best.

  They retreated back to town to summon the monster, and they had contracts to turn in anyways. They picked a secluded spot far away from the villagers' shacks and fishing tools, then Shelby pulled out the token. Again, it wasn't a coin. Why do they keep calling these tokens... It was a large globe-like glass bell on a short handle. The glass was flecked with golden motes that swam around inside of it.

  "I guess... I just ring it?" Shelby asked.

  "There's not much else you can do with a bell," Thimble offered.

  She raised the bell up, but before she rang it, she gave Thimble an apologetic smile, "Just don't kill it, okay? The lower its health is the easier it is for me to bond with it, but it can't die, or we'll have to fight 10 more of the sea bunnies."

  Thimble winced at the thought, "Okay, we'll stop when you say so."

  Shelby nodded, then rang the bell. It made more of a forlorn cry then a ringing sound, then the entire bell faded away into nothingness in Shelby's hand. Nothing happened for a minute, then, without warning, a beautiful creature slipped into view. The air rippled around it as it appeared, as if it had been revealed by someone ripping away an invisible curtain.

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  It was bigger than the other jorunnamanders they had fought. The others were about four feet long and fluffy white. This one was the size of a compact car. It was fluffy too, but every few inches a pale green... leaf? grew out from within the fluff, sprouting up a foot or two. The leaves were traced with fine white lines that gave them a succulent-like texture. They were slightly translucent, and green material subtly shifted around inside of them. The leaves were dense enough that they cloaked the monster's body and puffed out to form a skirt that spread out onto the ground. It was like a strange chia pet, or a leaf covered sheep long overdue for shearing.

  The jorunnamander's short bunny ears were replaced with long, cobalt blue horns. They looked soft and flexible, and the animal probed its surroundings with them. Finally, it had two perfectly round cartoon dots for eyes in between its horns. The effect made it look doe-eyed and bashful. Shelby loved this beautiful animal with every fiber of her being.

  But, It was not really bashful. The moment it spotted Shelby it shimmied in place, and a sheet of shimmering crystal clear water sprayed from the leaves on its back. The water hovered in midair, then coalesced into a giant globe before speeding through the air at Shelby. She cried out and dove to one side, narrowly avoiding the sphere. It slammed into the ground a few yards behind her and made a sound like popcorn on a hot griddle. The sand was instantly converted into a sagging pit of roiling mud. Shelby got the impression that getting caught in that mess would be painful.

  Shelby yelled, "Don't get hit by the water!" but Thimble was already looking towards the boiling sand behind her with wide eyes. She pointed urgently back to the gigantic sea bunny. It was advancing towards Thimble at a faster pace than the other sea bunnies had, albeit still at the speed of a leisurely walk. Its horns flashed with a steely blue light and it slashed them through the air at Thimble. They clashed against Thimble's new shield and threw out sparks. A pair of red "4"s floated away from him and he was pushed back a step.

  That's not good...

  Shelby thought that the leafy puffs all over the monster looked a little less grabby than the normal sea bunny fur, but she couldn't risk Coda getting caught by the face if he tried to bite it. Instead, she ordered him to use his Claw attack. Coda had been burned by the other sea bunnies, so he was cautious in his attack. He landed behind the monster and raked one claw through its leaves. They didn't seem to try to grab his foot, so Shelby ordered a second attack. He struck harder with both feet, and though the leaves seemed to deflect his claws, there was no trickle of damage harming her bat.

  Shelby drew an arrow and released an attack into its side as she ordered a Heartsap from Coda. Thimble stepped to the side of two vertical slashes from the monster's deadly antennas, then stabbed down into its side as Coda clamped his fangs down on a particularly long leaf. A second later, Coda flapped back and released a deep red bead that healed Thimble for "5".

  It wasn't clear if the monster was reacting to the attacks or if their timing was just bad, but the monster's leaves rustled intensely in an imaginary gale as another sphere of water formed above it. Coda flapped away, gaining distance quickly, and Thimble jumped backwards with his shield ready. The orb tracked Thimble as he jumped, then slammed down directly in front of him. He took 10 damage from the spray and the leafy beast trudged through the boiling mud towards him. A handful of green "2"s popped off the monster as it waded into the impact left by its attack.

  Shelby groaned, "Move it away from the mud! It's being healed!"

  Thimble slashed the beast across the face and bounced back, drawing it away from the pool. A dozen healing indicators had drifted away from it, but getting it to leave the pool stopped the effect. Shelby grimaced as she checked the monster with Shadow:

  Oh... Shelby blinked back surprise as she read the health value. They had barely scratched it. She shook her head and focused, drawing an arrow and firing a successful Measured Shot. It slammed into the jelly-like fur of the monster's exposed head and it took 15 damage. Just... two hundred more hits to go...

  Shelby concentrated on getting Coda in the right position to alternate between using Claw and Heartsap, when it was off cooldown. Claw did 18 damage, and Heartsap did 10. Thimble needed to concentrate on blocking damage and moving the monster away from any healing sand before their work was undone, but he slashed out for 5 to 7 damage every few seconds. All together... about 40 damage between us? I don't need it to get to 0 either, just enough to use Bonding.

  Shelby shouted, "We can do this!"

  Thimble swatted aside a strike from the horn attack, returned a cry of "Yeah!" and smiled at Shelby for a split second.

  The Leafy Costasomething had a repeating pattern of attacks. It would lumber towards Thimble and harass him with strong slashing attacks, and then every 10 seconds it would summon a huge sphere of water and lob it randomly at Shelby, Thimble, or Coda. Thimble was the most vulnerable, and the first few attacks against him led to the monster being healed for about 24 health. By the time the fourth such sphere had locked onto him, he dashed under it and turned the monster away from its rejuvenating mud bath.

  Shelby whooped at his quick thinking between two shots. Its health bar was starting to fall quicker now that Coda and Shelby could assault it without many interruptions. Shelby even managed to keep firing as the powerful orbs flew by her, taking just enough time to slip by them.

  The eight bubbling pits that had been formed by the monster's attacks remained where they were. Shelby was hoping they would eventually dry out, or something, but the longer the fight went on the less likely that seemed. She got her answer about what the pits were going to do when they reduced the sea faerie to 75% health. Just like the other monsters in the area, the leafy sea bunny stopped in place and started to undulate. The water in the pits around them rose from the ground as thick orbs and left the sand dry beneath them. The risen spheres slowly started to circle the monster in long, slow orbits.

  The monster had been standing near the edge of the scarred battlefield, so most of the orbs were random distances away from it. That meant that there wasn't really a safe distance to stand from the angry sea faerie. Thimble broke off and wove between the orbs' paths, and Shelby regrouped with him. Coda was safe in the air, so she didn't worry about his positioning.

  The orbs were moving at slightly different speeds and getting closer together. A little too late, Shelby realized they would eventually align their orbits and form an unavoidable wall. She desperately took a shot at one of the orbs as she narrowly ducked around it, and a bit of it splashed onto the sand and faded away. She pointed it out to Thimble, "We have to destroy one!"

  He slashed at the orb closest to him, but it was obvious that he wasn't going to be a huge contributor to the mechanic. Shelby instead whistled to Coda and had him follow behind the orb she was targeting and chip away at it with his wind blast. She shot once, twice, but the slightly smaller orb swung around and caught up to a long wall of liquid death. She backed up as she fired and Thimble looked over his shoulder at her nervously. The orb was getting smaller, but the orbs around it didn't leave much room to slip by. She had a premonition that getting caught in the wall would cost them dearly.

  She got two more shots off before the wall caught up with Thimble. He slashed forward with a powerful strike, then held his shield up to weather what was about to come. The small sphere burst as it touched him, kicking up a wave of sand that bit into Shelby's arms. The orbs on either side burst in turn, until the entire line of them had exploded in a storm of sand and hot water.

  Shelby dragged a gritty arm across her face to clear away the splatter of mud blinding her, then caught sight of Thimble down on all fours. His health was down to 6 and the monster had started to crawl forward with its steely horns reaching towards him.