Thank the bejeebers Shakindria stayed cool in the face of the Nightrous. As for me, Regina and I kept Buckley’s people away from my people. She quickly levitated Muppin up and out of the crevasse, followed by Tweedle Dee, Isabelle, Ivy and then Azalea. A furious Azalea, by the way. She ended up poisoning all the Wizards, the other Ranger, the Bard, and half the Guardians. She followed this up by levitating the paralyzed members of Buckley’s team, and pushing the Nightrous away from us.

Somehow the gaseous ball of terrifying evil had swelled up to encompass some third of the entire crevasse. The place had taken on an air of palpable evil. It felt like it was filled with more of the creatures, and that they were snake-shaped, that they would explode out of the darkness and latch onto you, drag you back into the darkness, and you’d never be seen again.

I launched Regina and I up into the air, and the dragon spirit tucked its wings in and shot us out of the Nakamamon-filled cavern.

“Dee?” Regina shouted. “Dee?”

The flower fox lay on the grass with an arrow sticking out of his flank.

The moment we landed I engaged Mending Aura and filled the whole area with healing energy. I had the unenviable job of having Regina in intimate contact with me while I pulled the arrow from her bond mate and heard him squeak in pain. The horror in Regina’s expression broke my heart.

“It’s all right,” I told her.  “He’ll be okay.”

Truly, the arrow wound was already healing up. I’d still have to make a treatment to handle the very light divine damage Dee had suffered from the arrow.

There was no sign of Reese or his Grypherial, which was probably for the best. Regina was ready to reenact John Wick on him and I wasn’t in a state of mind to hold her back. Ivy and Isabelle took over intimate contact duty, crashing into me with full body hugs and lots of thanks, along with some subtler gropes and quiet promises of fun to come.

Shakindria, ever the pragmatist, used her Telekinesis to securely tie each Guardian to a Wizard, and to blindfold all of them. Chrysta helped, using her ghost aspect abilities to keep them paralyzed with fear. I didn’t know she had the ability, but she actually disappeared directly into Buckley’s body to stop him thrashing around, and calmly stood there while he was tied up. Chrysta then flowed back out of his body, leaving him a shaking and tied up puddle on the grass.

Dakota we left untied. She had done what she could… unfortunately that wasn’t much.

With that done, I convened everyone.

“We’re headed toward Saxwhacket,” I told them all. “Unfortunately the HQ people were not amenable to our plans and offers. They tag-teamed me with dozens of Rangers, Wizards, Bards and Guardians when I came out after meeting with the people in charge.”

“Dumb ashes,” Ivy complained.

“Unfortunately I had to abandon Fletcher III, and that means another away team to go pick up Cinzy and Vellenia, and possibly Drat, to reconvene with the main group. Volunteers?”

This was really a job for Shakindria and Chrysta, who could fly, and Fletcher clone, who could manifest as a dragon to haul Cinzy back at speed.

Everyone raised their hands except for Azalea. The purple miscreant had slithered her way in between me, Ivy and Isabelle, and was looping all her tentacles around me until I was practically suffocating.

“Thank you, but I think this is a job for flyers,” I groaned.

“What happens to us?” Buckley asked shakily. Others were shaking out the cobwebs now that Mending Aura had lessened the effects of Azalea’s limblocker poison.

“Nothing,” I said. “I mean Reese is a dick and I hope he’s punished accordingly, and doesn’t come back an even bigger, meaner dick than before. Ugh, what an awful trope that would be. You and your team head back to HQ where they give you a task that has nothing to do with me, where you do some good instead of stopping me from healing up gods.

The new away team would naturally be Fletcher II, Shakindria, and Chrysta, while everybody else would make their way back to OG Fletcher on Muppin using Regina as a guide.

“Won’t you be undefended… oh,” Isabelle said.

With that, Isabelle and Muppin, Ivy, Regina and Dee, a very salty Azalea, this new Wizard girl Dakota, and two other Wizards from Buckley’s people all started off north and west. Apparently Dakota had been pretty persuasive after all. They all claimed to be amazed at a Healer who could manifest a dragon spirit and not only fly, but spew dragon fire, and amazed I had so many Nakamamon who helped me. They wanted to see more of that, and less of the HQ’s mostly-human stifling atmosphere of control, menial jobs, and pointless busywork. One look at Ivy and Isabelle told them all they needed to know about how much we trusted them, for now.

Azalea, miserable and frowning with her whole stretchy face, handed me over to Shakindria. The yellow-skinned psychic beauty smiled mentally at me, sharing a whole host of pleasant images and feelings with her psychic power. I got the smell of wildflowers, the times we’d spent in the empty town of Glumpdumpkin enjoying one another’s bodies, floating around like we were in zero gravity, taking romantic walks through mental recollections of earth so she could experience them, looking up at the stars together, and the like.

I kissed the back of her hand.

It is a pleasure to have you with me once more, she said.

I let her know that her boundless patience was going to pay off in the near future, and that made joy blossom within her mind, spilling over into mine.

Now that we’d accomplished one of our three missions, it was a much more relaxed journey. We had time to enjoy the landscape, Identify and log a whole bunch more species of Nakamamon, and enjoy one another’s company. And that definitely included Chrysta.

***

My mom, Tara, the as-yet-unnamed new member of the team, Airaconda, Larelle, Magmamander, Alan and April all reached Saxwhacket just as the other team met up with us. I would have greeted them, but Saxwhacket was… a lot.

“Are you seeing this?” My mother asked.

“Loud and clear,” I said distractedly. It made no sense. It didn’t have to.

“What am I looking at?”

“Candy bar city,” I said.

“That cannot be the real name.”

“No… it’s Saxwhacket.”

Saxwhacket was a complete oddity. It was also the first city I’d seen here in this mostly-wilderness world. Not a village, not a town, but a city.

As for what we were seeing, it was difficult to even describe, but here goes: if you imagine a bunch of candy bars, swell them up to the size of city blocks, and then pepper every available inch of those candy bars with buildings. Not just the sides and top, but the bottoms and the ends too.

Now imagine those gigantic candy bar city blocks floating around in the sky, inching back and forth in patterns that didn’t make much sense. It was only after I stared at it for several minutes that it came to me: it was like an infinity loop, except they were looping around all the other blocks. All of them. Each of the blocks came into close proximity with all the others over the course of their time. They also slowly rotated around so everybody got sunlight.

Some of the buildings had to be either sprawling mansions or apartments. Water was spraying out of several of them. People were moving everywhere, with some of them leaping, falling, floating, gliding or flying from one block to another.

So of course we stared. Flunt-on-the-Rustle had only been this strange from the inside, and the invisibility of the town as you looked upwards at the sky made it seem almost normal. This was anything but.

“Fletcher?”

Ivy and Isabelle had already met and hugged my clone, but they rushed at me and embraced me yet again. Then Azalea appeared, huffed, and attached herself to me for several long moments, before rising up to my height using her long hair tentacles.

“You owe me a mating, Master,” she said stubbornly. 

I grinned awkwardly, hoping my mother was far enough away that she wouldn’t hear.

“You’ll need to keep it down,” I told her. “My mother doesn’t really—”

“She doesn’t know you put your super super mating stick inside all these yummy yummy female friends?” she asked innocently.

I blinked. “She does not, as a matter of fact. So if you could refrain from talking like this, that would be lovely.”

The poison Nakamamon smirked as though she now had a dangerous secret to employ like a weapon, and made her way over to the new baby.

It was decided that we’d stop for lunch and catching up with everybody slowly acclimating to the sight of Saxwhacket. The girls all immediately freaked out over the baby, and I saw Regina reach down and press her hand against her abdomen in a way that resembled Tara’s action. She had a far off look on her face, and occasionally flicked a glance over at me. When they weren’t cooing over the baby, they traded stories and generally sat around chatting. Alan spent his time making eyes at April, while she only had eyes for the tiny human.

Even Azalea seemed taken with the tiny bundle, getting uncomfortably close and quietly freaking Tara out. After all, Azalea had poison spines in her tentacles, a toxic substance in her saliva… gods knew whether her sweat or the natural oils in her skin were dangerous.

All the new girl did was eat, sleep and cry. Not exactly revolutionary activities, but whatever effect babies had on the girls, she also had on me. It was difficult to look away. Even Tweedle Dee, Muppin and Airaconda couldn’t stop watching her every move, or rubbing an affection face on the newborn. Muppin had to be carefully watched because the gentle giant was made of stone. Still, the huge rochidna somehow knew how not to damage the child.

Dakota and the two new Wizards peered around in disbelief at the mass of people.

“I’ve got it!” Tara shouted.

Everyone stopped and peered at her, chewing silently or stopping with cups raised to lips.

“Dori!” she exclaimed.

“What are you talking about?” Regina asked.

“That’s what I’m naming the baby,” Tara said. “She’s named after the name of this world.”

“Endorphin lily ant toes?” Isabelle asked, then stomped and frowned. “Why can’t I ever say that word?”

“Dwarf really alters,” Ivy said, and snorted laughter. “I can’t do it either.”

“You were closer than me,” Isabelle said, laughing. “Dorky filial throws. Ugh that was terrible.”

Everyone started trying to say Dorfilialtos, which was apparently the name of the world. Everyone was wrong, in increasingly terrible ways. The laughter and amused frustration that ensued were beautiful.

Finally we all focused back on Dori, who had begun chuckling at everyone trying and failing to say this world’s name. Or the fact that her face was being licked by Tweedle Dee or tickled by Dee’s flowers.

***

We ended up meeting with the mayor of Saxwhacket, but it wasn’t entirely his choice. Ours either.

After lunch we packed up and started hiking towards the city, only to find a door. It was just a door standing in the middle of an orchard. Nothing behind it, nothing to the sides, a wooden door with some elaborate carving done, a brass handle, a keyhole.

“What—”

“It’s the God of Doors,” I said, and grasped onto the handle. “He or She is sick in Saxwhacket. It. They.”

“Pronouns, am I right?” Regina said, waving a dismissive hand.

“God of Doors,” Dakota breathed, and when everyone looked at her, the small black-haired Wizard shrank back like we’d all launched attacks at her.

“You’re part of the team now,” I said, though I had already tasked one of the Guardians to keep an eye on them.

Then I opened the door.

I’ll tell you, opening doors that appear to be magical, in the middle of an orchard, you expect them to glow, you expect to hear the heavenly chorus of angels when you open it. You don’t expect to smell disinfectant chemicals or old musty mop bucket.

The door opened into a mop closet.

“Well,” my mom said. “That is a bit anticlimactic.”

We all filed through, turned around, and immediately found ourselves in a large estate. This was a wood and plaster house with massive crossbeams, high vaulted ceiling, great big windows and lavish furniture. The type of house you’d have been very jealous of in any time in history, from when it was built five hundred years ago, to today. 

“All the doors are open,” Tara said. 

It was true. Every single door in the house, and all the shutters on the windows were open. A small Nakamamon like a monkey but bright yellow and frowning. Identify told me it was a Lemonkey.

“Unreal,” I breathed.

“Well, you are the team with the Healer, are you not?” the Lemonkey asked in clipped tones.

“That’s right,” I said. “I’m Christopher Fletcher, and this is my mother.”

“Charmed,” my mother lied smoothly.

“Her name is not ‘charmed,’ though,” I said.

“Dana,” she said.

The Lemonkey regarded us with open hostility. “Of the names provided to me by your lady Jocinda, I eventually decided upon Oxnard Ha’penny Gildenthorn Widdershins von Castille de la Crucifix. I understand Oxnard is a prestigious place on your world.”

“I’m familiar,” my mother said, with far more diplomacy than I could muster at this point. I was giving myself a stomachache trying not to double over laughing, fall and bonk my forehead, and then roll back and forth for a half hour until my face hurt, my sides hurt, and my face was all splotchy from the tears.

“Is this house a decent enough place to set up my garden and laboratory?”

He made a sour expression. Of course he would.

“This is my mother’s house, and she’s far more acidic than I. However, allowances have been made ever since the god began making things difficult for us.”

“The god is sick,” I said.

“Quite. Quite. It has been nothing but a series of headaches, let me tell you. First, instances of looting, vandalism and bad neighbor interactions spiked like we have never seen in our lifetimes. In any event, please have your people take up residence here HOWEVER!” He froze before whirling and pointing a monkey’s paw accusatorially at all of us. He loudly declared, “You are not to shut any door or window under any circumstance! Nor are you to open any. If the door is closed, it MUST remain CLOSED! If it is open, it will remain OPEN on pain of SEVERE punishment, hear me?”

“Why?” Mom asked in a quiet, calming tone. I had to say I didn’t like the wild shouts.

It didn’t work. “It is forbidden! Strictly forbidden! And as I have the treaty here, signed by your very own paragons of your Agency, one Claudius Smith and one Jocinda eh…” He squinted at the handwriting on the parchment he produced. “Jocinda Fum… Jocinda Fumiliator… no…  Funk… Funktiliosaurolophus.”

If she had changed her name legally to that, I wouldn’t have been surprised. As always, I tried not to laugh. Several others didn’t fare so well, and snorts of amusement escaped.

I turned on them. “Let’s assign quarters upstairs. Don’t get too comfortable,” I said. “This is going to be a quick in and out. We’re going to solve this god problem, then we’re on our way again.”

“What seems to be the problem?”

My mother and I followed him out into a parlor while everybody else dropped their packs, unstrapped gear from Muppin, and went off to choose bedrooms and find out whether there was hot water like in Glumpdumpkin and Flunt-on-the-Rustle.

“I am the mayor of Saxwhacket!” he cried.

“Congratulations on your… elevation to mayorship,” my mom said. Good gods she was amazing at this.

“I take my job very seriously, I will have you know, Mrs Dana Fletcher and Mr Christopher Fletcher.”

“That was never in doubt,” I said.

He eyed me with a frown fairly dripping off his face. “My rivals have forced upon me a snap election. Five days hence I will lose my position as mayor, and do you know what will happen then?”

“I can truthfully say—”

“My mother will DIE of SHAME and EMBARRASSMENT!” he shrieked. He literally shouted himself up off the ground, fists balled and quivering with rage. “Her son will have FAILED. And then I will live with the grief of having been responsible for her DEATH!”

I locked eyes with my mother. So far, I hadn’t encountered anger like this… sorrow and grief for the supposed deaths of their unborn eggs, I’d witnessed that. Simmering anger over the slow speed of progress, yeah. But this?

This is Christopher about to put a rush job on getting my Bard here.