Stronger Together chapter 153 (Patreon)

After the meeting with Lea we headed back to the house to pick up the  girls. Yang and Raven were going with us this time. Yang was one of the  better combatants we had after a year of klurkor, her Aura pool was  even bigger than mine. Cinder had connections to the far, Kara was part  god, and Barb was dealing with the company now that I'd decided to take a  step back so it would just be the three of us. According to Harry the  entrance to the Way we needed was in front of a fountain in some huge  square in the middle of Chicago so we piled into the beetle and headed  down there.

As we made our way there Yang was running  around spinning in circles "Ugh, I'm so happy to be going out! I get  left out of all the fun stuff, all I do is train anymore. This woods  place sounds fucking awesome!" We all chuckled at her enthusiasm but  honestly I thought she had the right attitude. Kick ass and have fun  doing it, what could be better than that. She whirled on Harry. So boss,  how do we get in, do we get to dive into that fountain, because I'll be  honest starting fights when my hair is wet is less than ideal. The  steam kind of gets in the way." Her happy expression and high energy  intensity were contagious and I found myself getting excited too.

Harry  was just as moved and laughed at her bouncing around like a big blonde  puppy. "No, you won't need to get your hair wet. Though if you could  refrain from bursting into flames either way firecracker that would be  great. This is a public place and people catching fire is pretty  noticeable." He gestured at her scantily clad form "Especially young  women such as yourself who are already beautiful and draw attention  everywhere you go, especially when you show off you..." He trailed off  making a pained grimace, he clearly didn't want to acknowledge Yang's  body parts.

Yang however had no such compunction she  grinned evilly "Boob? Tits? Hooters? Melons? Milk Jugs? Sweater Puppies?  You haven't been scoping out the girls all this time have you Harry?  And to think this whole time my beloved master was objectifying my  rockin' body." She put a hand to her forehead in dramatic angst "Oh,  cruel world, why hast thou forsaken me? Are all men merely beasts?"  Harry's face was turning red and combined with the grimace of discomfort  he wore he looked almost constipated.

Raven sighed  "Enough. We're almost there. Harry she doesn't feel objectified, she's  just teasing you. Yang, Harry is kind of a chauvanist but he's just  being protective which you know perfectly well." She gave the other girl  a scoff "Besides who's looking at your mosquito bites when I'm rocking  these king size whoppers." She smiled smugly at Yang, who, along with  the rest of us just stopped walking and gaped at her. She stopped  walking along with us and pouted "What? I can make jokes too you know."

Yang  burst into gales of laughter and stumbled over to Raven wrapping her in  a hug "Oh sweetie you definitely can. We were surprised but that was a  good one. Besides it's not like you were lying. My girls are mighty but  you put me to shame with these puppies." She snuck a hand up to grope  Raven, who just smacked it away with rolled eyes. Yang laughed it off.  "Anyway I suspect we've arrived since Harry isn't leading us any  further." She turned to Harry "So boss man, tell me about what's on the  other side of invisible door number one."

Harry shook off  his embarrassment pretty quickly, more than used to Yang's antics by  now. She teased everyone but with Harry she usually kept it pretty tame,  still once in a while she would get him blushing and she found it  endlessly hilarious. He coughed awkwardly "Right, well the path through  the Ways we have to take to get to The Wild Wood is through a forest, as  you might imagine. It's actually more of a jungle. Since this-" He  gestured at the buildings around us "is referred to as the concrete  jungle, we can use it to cross over."

Skin crawling  disgust was pretty much my immediate reaction to the proclamation. I had  a slight fear of jungles. The Amazon was a toxic hellhole the depths of  which had never been experienced by human kind and which most likely  possessed poisons, venomous animals, and pathogens against which we had  no defense at all. It was pretty much a death land that could destroy  the world if we accidentally fucked up when cutting down trees. That was  a normal mortal jungle. This was a fucking magic jungle. The forest I  could handle but I didn't want any of this shit right now.

Raven  felt my panic and stepped over to lightly rub my back. I turned to  smile at her and she went up on tip toes and kissed my cheek. Yang  noticed and clearly I must have looked pretty afraid because instead of  fucking with me about it she walked over and punched me in the arm.  "Don't worry so much Cam. It's all good. We'll watch your back over  there, whatever you're worried about won't touch you with me around."  She shot me a wink coupled with her usual grin. She was right though,  with them along I'd be fine.

Besides my body was like  thirty percent divine metal at this point, I wasn't even sure I could  get sick, and I sure as hell wasn't getting bitten by anything that  could actually hurt me. I would be fine. Harry looked concerned but  after a few deep breaths I nodded to him. His gaze lingered on me  uncertainly on me for a second before he slashed down with a hand and  murmured "Aparturum" A slash was carved in the skin of  the world. Harry's opening to the nevernever was nowhere near the style  or seamless grace of Joe's but despite the lack of aptitude he got it  done.

The other side of the gap in reality was to borrow a  phrase "Dark and full of terrors" I could vaguely make out the moonlit  shape of massive trees and towering flowers strung liberally with thick  vines. Between the trees I caught the occasional flash of light, but it  was impossible to say if it was just the shake of the wind disturbing  the plants in the dim light or eyes in the dark. I could practically  feel a palpable aura of hunger and gleeful bloodthirst wafting through  the open portal. Sadly we were in the middle of a city even if it was  empty right now so we couldn't dilly dally.

Yang took care  of that easily enough by shoving me through from behind. I rolled  through, luckily missing the edges which I thought I remembered being  able to cut off limbs and landed in a heap on the jungle floor. Jungle  floors in case anyone was wondering, are gross. Aside from the bugs and  plants and what not, dead leaves and decomposing plant matter cake the  thick soupy mud. I was up on my feet in seconds, spinning to glare at  the cheerfully smiling blonde.

I wiped the disgusting mud  off my black slacks t shirt, luckily the stuff hadn't really caked on. I  wasn't worried about stains, this stuff would turn to ectoplasm after  we got back to earth anyway. I was more concerned about the noises  coming from around us. I could hear the rustle of leaves and the shift  of branches above and around us. I considered activating my magic eye  but honestly I didn't want to look at a magic faerieland jungle with  magic detecting vision. Even if I didn't go blind I'd probably have a  nervous breakdown from seeing all those predators.

Harry  however didn't seem upset at all, he just spun on his heel and strolled  off into the jungle. We all had to run to keep up with him because of  his freakishly long legs but luckily the directions seemed to do the  trick because he led us through the jungle pretty easily for the most  part. We crossed an old rope bridge over what I could have sword was  literal quick sand, swung across a small pond full of alligators (or  possibly crocodiles I genuinely cant tell the difference) and avoided a  horde of very pissed off monkey demon things before finally coming to a  stop in front of a huge raging river.

When I say huge I  don't mean fifty feet. I mean like five lane intersection huge. When we  stopped at the bank Harry paused and frowned. I didn't like that. He  hadn't done that before and starting now seemed like a bad sign. I  cleared my throat "Ahem. Boss, why are we stopping here, is the exit on  the other side?" The major issue here was that Ways changed. Margaret  left the secrets to predicting and using those changes but that didn't  mean they would all be safe or easy to use even with those predictions.

Harry  grimaced, staring out over the rushing water, which was probably full  of some horrifying nightmarish jungle parasites and flesh eating fish at  the very least. "That's the problem. The next spot we need to get to  isn't on the other side. It's in the middle. That's not really water  luckily, this is the nevernever and everything is made of magic and  running water grounds the stuff but it's close enough to drown you if  you get pulled in. My mom's research says there should be some kind of  stepping stones if we can find...oh, yup. There they are." He pointed at  the rushing water, where I could just barely make out a tiny jut of  stone above the apparently not water.

I  turned to glare at him. "That's not a stepping stone. That's a stepping  pebble. Do you see how fast that stuff is going? How the hell are we  supposed to keep our footing? Does your magic voice gps say what's IN  the not water? Because I'm betting it's not singing crabs and half fish  redheads in seashell bras." Ok, I might have been slightly freaking out  right now, sue me. The Amazon river is even worse than the forest. There  was a type of parasite in the Amazon river that would swim up your dick  if you pissed in the water. It was one of my greatest fears as a kid.

Of  course unlike my imagination apparently you had to be actually  submerged in the water when it happened, it couldn't just swim up your  pee stream when you were peeing from the banks. Still it was horrifying,  and that was just the normal river. Who knew what kind of horrible  faerie nonsense lived in whatever the hell that stuff was. Yang just  groaned and walked over behind me, taking my legs out and swooping me up  in a princess carry. She turned to Harry "Get a move on boss man,  before Cam has a full on meltdown."

Harry  nodded, and began to very carefully hope from stone to stone. The rocks  seemed to be actual impressions you could shove your feet into just  below the surface and he didn't fall though it was close a few times.  With a muttered word he split the world again and hopped through. Raven  had Yang go first and then flew behind us just in case but we made it  through ok, and the portal dumped us put somewhere completely  unfamiliar. Yang put me down and I collapsed to the ground.

I  gagged and almost threw up but my new godsteel stomach digested  everything I ate perfectly so it was mostly just five minutes of really  awful dry heaving. Raven patter and rubbed my back while it happened. We  were standing in a cave outside the snow and wind was whipping up a  powerful cover so we couldn't even see out. However Harry was facing  deeper into the cave. He saw me looking "Hey kid. You Good?" I nodded  with a harsh exhalation and he smiled. "Good, well last leg of the  journey is through this cave." I smiled and stood up, caves were fine, I  didn't mind caves. He turned back towards the dark with a grand gesture  "Welcome to the Himalayas guys, let's get the lead out."