Reese watched Fletcher shoot up off the ground and into the air with an air of confusion. The reports were, he had started working on some kind of uber complicated Healer potion and would be at the process for hours. Of course, the reports were also that Fletcher was deep underground, and also in some kind of small apartment room, forking some sludge’s brains out.

Reese had gone up against Fletcher’s team before in Flunt-on-the-Rustle and he wasn’t going to make the same mistake again. The first one was that they’d angered the natives. You couldn’t do that in a city. You had to flush out your target without using violence on the natives. Meaning Rangers had a real rough time shooting arrows; you missed, you were potentially in some seriously shirt.

Since the natives all had powers of some kind, ranging from simple elemental powers to friggin telekinesis, collateral damage was really risky.

They’d taken out the defenders with some ease, another strange and surprising occurrence. They didn’t have their Bard, didn’t have their Nakamamon Guardians, nor the Rogue, and didn’t have their second Ranger. The biggest strangeness was that Fletcher wasn’t out among his people. In almost every report they’d gotten, from Jacoby’s people or the natives, Fletcher was always together with his people.

Now he was running away? This didn’t add up.

Reese also had not seen Fletcher fly using fairy wings. He’d seen and heard about Fletcher using some kind of dragon power.

“Ranger Rick, let’s move it!”

Reese seethed. Ever since his real first name had come out, this new commander renamed him after some kind of old school magazine he’d never heard of. He thought Richard Reese was a pretty cool name, actually. Ranger Rick sucked. And was apparently a fracking raccoon. Reese would have preferred it if this man tripped, fell, and landed on a whole bagful of spiked dildos.

The douche of a commander ordered everyone off after the flying Fletcher, again.

“Commander,” he urged, pointing at the divine compound. “Something’s not right. Why was he in there? Why isn’t he working on the cure?”

“You get after that man, right now, or consider yourself court martialed,”  Commander Douche snarled.

“Yes, sir!” Reese said, snapping a smart salute and running off. As soon as he got to the edge of the compound, he took a quick right along the side of the white marble wall. He then engaged his Stealth skill and ducked behind the nearest house beside the divine compound. His check succeeded, and the commander stomped down the street shouting ‘Ranger Rick!’ over and over. Finally, Commander Douche gave up and, with one loud threat about Reese’s future, went after Fletcher with the rest of them.

Reese figured he had some Nakamamon working for him that could copy his face, like a shapeshifter. Either that or he had some Wizards who were constantly using that mirror image spell that gave you clones in combat. Why any Wizard was ever in combat was another great question, but not for now. Neither should’ve have given them the power to deal with the Agency’s people trying to scry his whereabouts, but these were the only two that made sense.

But Reese had to admit that since he’d come to this godforsaken place, with its diamond-toothed crocodiles and its cyclone-spewing owls and bonfire flamingoes and the fucking gods to boot, there were possibilities he hadn’t thought of yet. So if the real Fletcher was still down here where they’d scried him, he was going to find him, and this time he was going to put an arrow through Fletcher’s smug throat.

“Throats can be smug,” he told himself, and left cover to go and inspect the compound better.

***

“Would you like to know if it’s a boy or a girl?” I asked Cinzy.

She howled in terror as we lifted off the ground and flew into the air above the divine aspect eels’ holy compound. Instantly, several arrows zipped past, to the howls of annoyance from whoever was commanding the second team down there.

“I know the prospect of motherhood can be a terrifying one,” I told her, “but look at it this way: you can start picking out names, buying up baby clothes, and planning a gender reveal if you want.” I personally didn’t love gender reveal parties as a concept, but I figured they could be done tastefully. A cake was just fine if you wanted to go that route.

The world still fell away from us at a rapid pace, and yet we quickly rose towards another large floating city block, with its buildings sticking out in all directions.

Cinzy continued to be insensate with horror, since a) she’d never flown with me before, b) she didn’t have a method of flight on her own, and c) I hadn’t exactly warned her this was coming.

“Plus, you can arrange a registry at your local store so all your friends can bring great gifts to the shower.” I squinted. “Obviously the announcement of the registry has to happen after the gender reveal party.”

“Fletcher would you watch what you’re doing?”

I dipped to avoid getting hit by something like a whale shark drifting slowly across the air with a number of passengers on its back. And in its mouth, since I knew the species. It was a Gale Shark, and it used the force of wind to inhale food, generally tiny plankton-like flying bugs. But they could be tamed and fed, and once they knew they were going to have a steady source of food, they could be used as air buses. The beings that rode in their mouths generally had to sit or lay down, but it wasn’t uncomfortable.

I zipped up under the Gale Shark towards a place in Saxwhacket where we could provide some excellent distractions. The team needed to feel like they were hunting me, and sadly I needed to have Cinzy along for the ride. I skimmed along the streets, dancing around and dodging the masses of Nakamamon going about the business of getting the town back in order. There were still people who, because of the God of Doors, had other people’s belongings strewn about the various rooms of their houses. And because Saxwhacket was arrayed in all these giant, flying, house-studded candy bars the size of city blocks, the residents had to travel between them to The Humps.

I circled around this blocks Hump, a gigantic mass of clothing and possessions still unaccounted for. Nakamamon were in the process off sifting through all the junk for their precious junk. ᴛʜɪs ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɪs ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ʙʏ novel•fire.net

“Fletcher, you’re freaking me out,” she said. “When did you get a flying fairy aura thing?”

“Just let me tell you whether it’s a boy or girl,” I said. “Come ooonnnnn.”

We swooped behind the block, and went parallel to it so I had cover. Then I picked one of the nearest tall buildings and landed on it, crouched low. If possible, I’d like to keep this cat and mouse game up as long as possible. I had already spent the extra 2 Likability Tokens to bring the duration up to an hour. I seriously doubted Cinzy wanted to fly around that long though, and that kind of adrenaline rush wasn’t good for the baby.

“Fine!” she blurted. “Just, can we take it easy?”

I grinned, and made the simple Diagnostics check. God-given powers gave me the right tool for the job, and for this, an elaborate silvery glove studded with small vials of magical goop, a little bit like a universe-ending gauntlet if you made it from silver and instead of gems, had sloshing magic stuff, and instead of six, there were only four. So… not like much like a universe-ending super gauntlet.

After lightly rubbing my hand over her tummy, and grinning like a fool the whole time, I got the UI to give me the gender reveal.

“It’s a boy.”

All the fear inside Cinzy softened up. She drew in a sharp breath. “Oh my God, Fletcher. Ohhhhh my God.” Then she beamed at me. A moment later, she gave off a high pitched squeal of delight. “It’s a boy? It’s a boy!” She took my face in her hands and kissed me, repeating over and over again. “Now, can we not fly around so much?”

“So long as none of the Agency people find us, it’s no problem.”

They would be using all kinds of flight powers and Nakamamon. I couldn’t be sure without Alan’s help whether they could be slowly whittled down on magic power or available spells or something. I doubted it. These were all the most powerful Wizards out there, except for dumb Claudius. They could make the Guardians and Rangers and Rogues fly.

“We’ll have to be quiet,” I said.

***

“We’ll have to be quiet,” I said, and blinked several times before focusing on Trent’s face. Myriad Mind was working, but I’d just been flying and trying to use magical ultrasound, and OG Fletcher was deep in the weeds with our cancer cure. Third Fletcher was losing out a bit in the concentration department.

The castle around us had never been this empty. It had never been this easy to sneak around and find no one. Ordinarily you’d have to stride around with purpose, but trailing three gorgeous Nakamamon that wouldn’t work, so instead it was down to checking around corners and having Trent create openings in walls so we could hide in a pinch.

We’d made it, slowly, to the Sorcerer’s training room, which I’d never seen before. It had a big pool of water, a huge heap of different types of stone, and a brazier big enough across to host Arthur’s round table.

“We were being quiet until you opened your mouth and said we need to be quiet,” Trent said. “You okay, Fletcher?”

“I’m trying to do a million things at once.” I realized I’d lost track of Drat. That slippery punk had better not be deep in some kind of betrayal plot right now. He had been the one to plan to get my mom into this world, after all. Then again, the slippery butt got experience points from doing sneaky things, finding out secrets, and betrayal.

I shook that thought free of my head. “I’m not… doing great right now.”

“Well we apparently need you to deal with this Claudius guy once we get there. You can do that, right?”

Big sigh. “Yes. Yes, I can do that. Any idea where he is?”

Trent frowned. “I’ve been trying to get a sense for this castle’s structure for some time. It may actually be constantly changing its shape… so if there is a secret room with this guy in it, it’s always in motion. Plus, the whole castle’s actively resisting me.”

“You’re practically the god of stone,” I said, only to get a sharp look from all four of them. Vellenia, Azalea, Trent, and even April stared at me like I’d just said ‘shart in my mouth.’ I ducked my head. “Okay, no comparing you to a god in a world full of actual gods.”

“Better,” Vellenia said, patting my hand reassuringly.

“Garnet’s been enhancing my powers the whole time,” Trent said, shaking his head, “but there’s a powerful spell over the whole castle trying to keep me out.”

“How do we help you?” I asked.

Trent’s face scrunched down again in consternation. “It’s got to be a ritual… there have to be some kind of focuses used to keep it working. Powerful artifacts. If we can break them…”

“Breaking things, yeah!” I said. “Let’s go break some stuff.”

The only teeny tiny trouble with that situation was that the thing we needed to break had Blake guarding it.

***

Stirring, infusing with mana, and adjusting the heat using our trusty Magmamander occupied all of my time. The minutes stretched out, in which the ginger was slowly absorbed into the cure. To me, what was astonishing was that the Agency wanted to stop me. Although it made no sense, I relaxed and focused on the work ahead of me.

The Eelysians and the Celesteels had stopped clustering around me, peeking into their large temple building where I’d set up my laboratory. My hope was that the Agency people would see nothing more than a large lump of rock with holes in it where the eels rested.

The glowing cure defied that, but not much… yet. As with the other cures, it would slowly grow in intensity. So far, the periwinkle had caused the potion to become a pale purple with a hint of blue, but that had faded and was replaced with a pleasant beige hue. The strong scent of ginger was warring with the huge mass of garlic I’d cultivated, dug up, cleaned off, and processed.

Next, it was time to figure out how to add that turmeric. Only about half an hour had elapsed, but that was going to run longer the further I got into this process.

I skipped down to the difficulty, and found it to be 28.

This first check is Nigh Impossible, with a difficulty of 28. You do not currently have enough Tokens to succeed at this check automatically. Would you like to spend Tokens to lower the difficulty level?

Total Tokens: 10 Ingenuity and 8 Free Tokens.

No, I told the UI, and used my insane 84 skill and attribute levels to obliterate this skill check as well, coming in with 42 successes. I gave a low whistle of approval, and noted that 14 successes beyond the target number gave me only 200% speed boost on getting through the garlic preparation and onto the next ingredient. That brought the time necessary to infuse mana and stir (Widdershins this time) to a half hour.

I shook my head.

Having sex with Cinzy was giving me a +3 on all skills and a +3 to my Ingenuity, for a half hour per relationship level. Since we’d ascended to level 5, Devotees, the time would come in the process where I’d have to stop Trent and tell him I’d need to take a little conjugal break. Getting a 12 level bonus as a result of Post-Sharing Clarity wasn’t yet indispensable, but we would get there.

The scent of turmeric had been buried under the sharp, sweet smell of ginger and the uniquely incredible smell of garlic, but once I got it under my nose, I couldn’t help but note the parallels to ground pepper. That wasn’t right, there was some bitterness in addition to the acrid assault, but it was close enough.

I needed the distilled turmeric, and I needed to add all of it to the mixture at the same time. This meant spreading it all out like a tortilla and picking up the whole thing with my Telekinesis. I swirled mana into it from the center in a spiral, going outward, until I’d gotten every bit of the whole ten or twelve inch dose. From there, I gently floated the whole thing into the cauldron and watched as it shifted in color from a milky beige to a concerning metallic black. The oily sheen and the color didn’t help the eerie feeling it gave me.

“Trust the process, Fletcher,” I muttered, and started to stir counterclockwise at the speed my Mana Affinity instinctively indicated.

This is Christopher with a ways to go.