I’d actually been working on the cure for my mom the whole time we had been brewing up the cure for the God of Doors, and the whole time we’d been flying over there, and then blowing the bubbles all over it to cure it. I had in fact found out the secrets to Gravetwine and Celestine Myrillis while doing this. It doesn’t fit neatly into the narrative because it happened while the top Agency people were getting their stuff together.

One of the other things going on at the same time involved Jacoby’s Wizards. All of them had not only built a high level ritual to teleport us all back to Saxwhacket, but they had remained in the same place, enacting various different rituals to work in our favor, and stop the Agency from having anything easy.

Three of them were working hard on shutting down Divination magic, while the other three worked on spells to harry the HQ from their position in the forest. Celine and Wayne in particular were doing their level best to give me and the DRC the time we needed to work up several different cures.

Time first gave me levels.

The first thing Fletcher III did with the new levels in Healer was try out the new door. In order to have an ‘intimate contact’ companion, I’d needed to choose between Vellenia and Poppy, and it was easier to move unencumbered with a severely horny, tiny fairy hugging my manhood with her whole body. I could barely feel her tiny kisses on it, she was so small. Although it was a little uncomfortable, feeling like a bug was landing on me again and again, I got used to it.

The door, when I concentrated on the storage space, let into a large and mostly empty room of about twenty feet long and deep, and maybe that high. It had a hardwood floor, white walls with windows, and thick timber beams running across the top. It held a twin sized bed and a desk with a high-backed chair, both covered in white cloth like someone had been in here but didn’t intend to use this room or furniture for a long time. Or ever.

The windows looked out on a small village, and I couldn’t help but wonder just where in the world this really was. Did this room belong to someone? Was it safe and secure? Thankfully these windows couldn’t be opened, because I had no real idea what would happen if I climbed out of the room.

I did wonder if the original owners could get into it, and immediately received the knowledge that they could not. The God of Doors had somehow set aside this forgotten room just for me.

“Nice of Her,” I muttered.

It wasn’t clear what I should do with this at first. I did learn I couldn’t shut the door from the inside. When the girls came in to express their wow over the weird new space I’d inherited, I learned that I could shut people inside it. This was an odd and sort of terrifying sensation, like trapping them inside.

They didn’t suffocate, since air could flow in through the windows, just a touch. They also couldn’t open the door from within to get out. I had a prison, if I really wanted it to be.

The coolest part about the room was that I could shut the door on people inside, head to another door several blocks away, and access the girls there. It would be a comfy apartment for anyone but me to sleep while I traveled to the next door area, and…

I froze.

OG Fletcher also froze.

“What is happening?” Dick Johnson asked.

“Hold on a second. Trent?” I called.

It took a few minutes to get him, but eventually my voice reached him through the long tunnel he was excavating and shoring up. Trent had an ability that let him travel through stone without the need of a tunnel, providing a large pocket of air until he got to the cavern he had sensed, so now he needed to create the tunnel. I then got him to head back to the portal room after explaining the wacky idea I had for him.

“A door,” he said doubtfully. “A door… made out of stone?”

“Yep.”

“That doesn’t lead anywhere. Just a blank wall behind a stone door.” He looked at Garnet, who was bobbing on the floor as though the floor was water instead of solid stone. He was a commiserating look, like you believe this fracking guy?

“Correct. But I should be able to open it.”

“A stone door on functional hinges.” He sighed and got to work, muttering, “At least it’s not a sixty foot wide, thirty foot tall and ten foot deep wall to try to keep out a fracking god.”

Privately, though he complained, I felt like Trent loved the challenge. And I also knew that he loved non-combat ways to use his abilities and spells without resorting to combat.

“What level are you, if I may?”

“Sixty-eight.”

“Shame,” I said, grinning.

“Care to bring me up to speed on what it is you are hoping to accomplish here?” Dick Johnson asked.

“If it works, it’ll be way better to show you.”

Trent already had the wall flattened and the door itself outlined. He soon extruded the whole thing, pushing two inches of solid stone away and cutting it like a potter uses a wire to cut away a piece from the wheel. It was a simple enough action, but a genius way to separate the door from the cavern wall. Before it could slam down on his face, he two peg-like hinges formed on the door’s left side, along with two loops in the wall to accept them. One hastily made doorknob later, it was done.

“Doorknob doesn’t have to turn?”

“Nope.”

“No latch, no lock?”

I chuckled. “You’re making me seem like I routinely require the impossible out of you.”

He quirked one eyebrow up in response, and stepped away.

I pulled the heavy door open and smiled at the looks of absolute shock on their faces as the light spilled out.

“Would either of you like to say hello to the others, and meet with the new members of the Divinity Rescue Corps?”

Dick Johnson sprang to his feet, and even Trent appeared amazed.

“How—“

“Cured the God of Doors,” I explained.

“You were here the whole time,” both of them said.

“Head on in and I’ll show you.”

OG Fletcher closed the door, and Fletcher III opened it just a second later some dozens of miles away. Both stepped out of the empty room and had to pick their jaws up off the streets of Saxwhacket.

“Welcome to the city of Saxwhacket,” I told them. “You’ll find that Fletcher can be in multiple places at the same time, and now has the ability to teleport his friends between those places provided there’s a door.”

“I wasn’t aware,” Trent said, “that Healers had the ability to be in two places at once.”

They stared up at the various blocks of the city floating nearby, and farther off, festooned with houses in such a way as to thumb their noses at gravity. Looking at it through their amazement brought the reality back home that this world, and specifically this city, was totally awesome, in the purest sense of the word. Inspiring some awe. Holy moley, this city.

I didn’t need to reply to Trent’s comment, as they either forgot about me being multiple man, or I left them to think maybe I had gotten a Healer ability they just didn’t know about. “Mr. Johnson, you’re welcome to stay a spell, but Trent will need to head back pretty soon. The Agency does need to get their people to the portal, which as I consider it now, should work now.”

Poppy squeezed with what felt like all her might, and I was forcefully reminded that I’d made a promise to ravish her thoroughly when I had a moment. The tiny fairy was surprisingly randy. Or rather, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that she watched me bed almost all the ladies around me, and then demanded the scales be evened out as quickly as humanly possible. I’d need to satisfy that requirement soon, but with a ticking clock it didn’t seem nearly as pressing as finding the correct ingredients to heal up my mom.

Trent met with the rest of the DRC, and wasn’t pleased to learn Ivy and Isabelle had been… taken from us. Instead he mourned their loss with the girls, and afterward congratulate Tara on having such a vibrant child in the space of weeks. And the labor was relatively easy? Well, in that case, double congratulations were in order. He commiserated with Alan and Drat for a while, what with being the only members of the DRC they suspected hadn’t slept with Fletcher. The same guy who presently had a tiny fairy in his pants, had slept with several Nakamamon

Dick Johnson did indeed stick around a longer time. A long time in fact. He had a lot of questions to answer, and a lot more questions to ask. The whole of the DRC

I settled on storing all the old expedition camping gear inside. It was a job April and Azalea could handle easily.

Finally, I could get to spending points.

Level 37: Ability Upgrade: Mending Aura, Verdant Rejuvenation

Level 38: +12 skill points

I’d been close to level 37 after delivering my own child, and the God of Doors situation was worth a little more than a whole level. Excellent.

Mentally rubbing my hands together, I opened up the UI and took a look at my

Verdant Rejuvenation IV

(Special Ability, uncommon, passive)

Herbs and plants harvested by you and stored by you will last twice as long as normal.

I- By placing cuttings of plants in the soil, watering and tending them, they will sprout if they remain within half a mile of your location over the course of 18 hours.

II- By placing cuttings of plants together in an enclosed space and tending them they will sprout a hybrid plant if they remain within half a mile of your location over the course of 48 hours. Hybrids may not be bred with other hybrids.

III- Plants you have tended and grown personally have enhanced recuperative properties, and grow 33% larger than ordinary plants of their species.

IV- Plants you have cultivated and harvested, when used in cures and treatments, reduce difficulties by 3.

Mending Aura III

(Special Ability, Rare, Aura)

Make a Treatment check with Affinity to immediately begin healing all wounded beings within range. Targets are healed by 8 hit points for each success you scored on your check, per second. Symptoms experienced by targets are reduced in intensity by 90% for an hour, per second of exposure to this aura, to a maximum of two days. Targets may only benefit from this aura once per day.

III- The range of the aura is increased to a twenty foot radius.

Both of these were excellent, but I was hoping that Verdant Rejuvenation pulled more weight than Mending Aura. Lowered difficulty rating was better than more hit points recovered per second and a better radius. I could theoretically help out the wounded survivors of a terrible battle, but here I was hoping there wasn’t going to be a terrible battle with a whole ton of wounded.

Next, it was time to apply all my skill points to all the places where I was going to need them right now. With Arcane Focus, I could enhance the skills I wanted twice per level, so up to 4 levels. I still had 20 skill points left over from leveling Pleasure Seeker twice. It was time to spend 32 skill points all at once.

I threw 4 into Diagnostics, Treatments, Develop Cure (Human), Mana Affinity, Mana Shaping, Instinctual Casting, Administer Cure, and then paused… I had something I wanted to do. Therefore 2 levels went into Pheromones, and with the last pair, I put them into Transmutation.

It was still far too easy to spend over 30 skill points. I chuckled to myself, thinking of the times when I was stuck spending 3 or 4 at a time, and trying desperately to make the right choices. I still spent all of them too easily, but thankfully now I felt like I was putting them in most of the categories I wanted to, instead of always missing out somewhere.

That done, I turned my full and undivided attention back to my mother. She’d been dead set against me curing her almost since we got here.

“What’s going on?” I asked her. I still had Vellenia attached to Fletcher III, while Fletcher II organized rangers, harvesters, and security detail to watch for Agency people, all with a fairy in his pants. Thankfully it wasn’t yet dark, and only people who were looking were bound to find Poppy body hugging my dick.

“Ohhhhh I don’t know,” she said, with a heavy sigh. “I do know, actually. I’ve lived with this for years now. I knew it was coming, I knew it would overwhelm my system, and I knew it would be hard on you, and Sarah, and of course your father.”

She was building to something, and I wasn’t going to get in the way of it. Vellenia did little ballet flourishes as we walked, but also kept quiet.

“And then you come along with a fairy tale story about this magic world with its weird trees and weird creatures, and curing things. Of courses I wanted to see it, but Christopher, you have to understand, I’ve known for a long time that I wasn’t going to be around for long. I prepared myself for that. I worked on your father to prepare him.”

“And… that’s all changed.”

“It’s hard to accept,” she said.

“Right.”

“And then there are other pressing matters you could focus on. Why not? This place already makes me feel healthier.” I knew that wasn’t the entire truth, but let her keep going. “In any event, you’re right. I should stop being a defeatist about this, and I should trust you to do your job. Also, there are three of you now, so I guess if you say you can handle multiple things at once, you can.”

I was gaming the system here, and luckily it hadn’t come back to bite me in the ash.

We hugged it out, while Vellenia ballet danced around us and summoned snakes of water to weave all around us. They broke apart into mist, and tiny rainbows appeared, and I thanked Vellenia with a tight hug.

My mother seemed mollified by the sweet and more rational response from Vellenia. And really, my bond mate was right: this wasn’t our fault. This was some unknowable creature’s fault, or her master’s. We were forced into a difficult position where we had to make difficult decisions based on their ridiculous demands.

“Hey Alan,” I asked. “Is there any way for you to get at knowledge even if you don’t have it in your binders? Like, if we wanted to know about Jocinda and Claudius, is that knowledge you could dredge up?”

He pursed his lips in thought, then opened up his magically treated tome of spells and flipped through several pages. I was just about to pick up where I’d left off with cancer cure preparations when he looked up and adjusted his glasses.

“I-i-i-i-it should b-be possible,” he said. He explained that this would be Divination magic he didn’t yet know, but he had a way of inventing new spells, or finding them from the aether. It wasn’t clear. It was called Tyridge's Eldritch Knowledge Summons, which didn’t seem as straightforward as he made it out to be, but sounded like his Ingenuity ability.

“How do you feel about peering into the secret depths of Agency history?” I asked, and only got a feral grin in return. He began summoning eldritch knowledge right away, so he could get down to figuring out who Claudius and Jocinda Funktiliosaurolophus were in reality.

As it happened, everyone here wanted to take part in the cure for cancer. It would literally make history. It was equal parts that and they liked my mother. I also liked my mother, so I could sympathize. She’d given birth to me and raised me, and put food in me for years and years and succeeded, against my best efforts, at not allowing me to die. Even the Nakamamon among us, like Larelle and Vellenia and Chrysta, who didn’t quite know what the fuss was about, were caught up in the excitement and agreed. They liked my mom too.

We discussed what it would probably take to concoct this cure: a lot of insanely difficult skill checks, with a whole lot of trial and error in between. We needed basically every medicinal plant that ever existed, and some that didn’t. Some of the more mobile among us, or the ones with Potioncraft, would range out with the Rangers and grab up samples of all the different flowers, roots, herbs, and trees they could find. The garden was going to get a whole lot bigger. I was already splicing together some plants that I thought might work.

This is Christopher about to win the Nobel Prize for Magic.

Christopher Fletcher

Healer - Apprentice Arcane Mender 37

Pleasure Seeker - Initiate Indulgent Consort 45

Attributes:

Affinity 9

Durability 8

Ingenuity 10

Likability 10

Agility 5

Muscularity 6

Free Tokens 8

Healer (Arcane Mender) Skills:

Diagnostics 16

Treatments 16

Develop Cure (swarm 6, small 6, medium 6, large 6, huge 6)

Develop Cure (All Aspects 9, unique 9, human 17)

Administer Cure 16

Instinctual Casting 16

Mana Affinity 16

Mana Shaping 10

Spellcasting (Abjuration 1, Conjuration 1, Evocation 1, Transmutation 5)

Meditation 4

Divine Resistance 16

Physical Resistance 5

Psychic Resistance 3

Pleasure Seeker (Indulgent Consort) Qualities:

Girth 6

Load 6

Stave Off 6

Length 6

Tongue 6

Adaptability 20

Pheromones 20

Refractory Period 5

Flexibility 6

Group Play 7

Seduction 6

Fertility 7

Other Skills:

Identify 10

Hiking 4

Cooking 2

Persuasion 2

Stealth 2