???: Dragoneye Mortis (Patreon)

(Hey everyone, Thundamoo here. This chapter is extremely non-canon, although the things that occur within it can be taken as accurate representations of what would really happen if the events below legitimately took place within the story. This is a crossover between myself and the wonderful Selkie, who writes an amazing book called Beneath the Dragoneye Moons.  I highly recommend you give them a read, and in the meantime enjoy this nearly 10,000 word long chapter about Isekai Vita. Love you all!)

Whatever Vita expected to be doing this morning, it sure wasn’t hurling head-over-heels through an unknown void. Like getting sucked down a river, she tumbled uncontrollably, no memory of how she got here and no idea where ‘here’ even was.  Time seemed to have no meaning here, space was nothing but a force pulling her along.  She’d given up struggling, spending her time pulling mana into and out of her soul.  What else was there to do?  Only when she was unceremoniously dumped into the middle of a field, landing face-first in the grass, did she come back to her senses.

And then the voices start.

[*Ding!* Welcome to Pallos!]

[Name: Vita]

[Race: n<=£‡§ô!ã]

[Age: 16]

[Time remaining on System locks: -72,435:53:22]

[*Ding!* Congratulations! You’ve survived your early years, and the system is now fully unlocked for you!]

“What?  What the fuck?” Vita snapped, jerking her head up and looking around.

“Ooh!  We finally caught one!” a sing-song voice announced.

“What is this thing?” another voice grumbled.  “You were supposed to get a human!”

“This is a human!”

“I don’t think it is.”

“Who’s there!?” Vita shouted, trying to feel around.  But there was nothing.  No souls, anywhere.  It felt like she was still in the void.

[*Ding!* Congratulations! You’ve earned your first class – [Child of Nothing] - Mist]

[Child of Nothing] – A starter class for eÁ*Â>n £ÃûùZ9Ào¡ Aôâ/¥Wà ¼±»ÙBè! +4 Free Stat points per level.

[*Ding!* Congratulations! [Child of Nothing] has leveled up to level 1 -> 8! +4 Free Stat points per level from your class, +10 Mana for your race per level, +1 Speed and +1 Dexterity from your element per level!]

[*Ding!* Congratulations! You can now advance your class!]

“Class?  What’s a class?” Vita growled, standing up to look around.  “Who is saying all this?  Where am I?”

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Observe]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Identify]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Meditate]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Lying]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Conning]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Stealing]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Walking]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Running]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Climbing]!]

“Ow!  Ow, stop dinging!”

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Gymnastics]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Throwing]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Dodging]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Polearms]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Jumping]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Spotting]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Survival]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Knives]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Combat Reflexes]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Poison Resistance]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Pain Resistance]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Food Prep]!]

“What is this?  Stop yelling at me!”

“Aww, the poor thing is confused!” the first voice tittered.

“We should probably just choose for her,” the second commented.

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Mood Detection]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Lie Detection]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Food Detection]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Stomach Capacity]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Monster Muncher]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Corruption]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Blasphemy]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Cannibalism]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Pedicide]!]

“Pedicide!?” Vita snapped.

“Really?  You want that one?” asked the first voice.

“Well, I’m not sure it will come in handy, but if you insist!”

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Vigilant]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Adaptable]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Active]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Learning]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Loyal]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Dedicated]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Intimidating]!]

[*Ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Cute]!]

[*Error!* SKILL SELECTION OVERRIDE!]

“Right, well, we’re choosing Pedicide… and she’ll probably need Polearms…” the second voice mumbled.

“Stealing!” the first voice insisted.  “Stealing is fun!”

“Right, okay, Stealing… probably Survival? Oh, and Loyal, we should make her Loyal.”

“Give her Corruption!”

“We are not giving her Corruption.  We’re already going to be in trouble for this.”

"Conning, then! Everyone loves a good con! I can't wait to see what she does with that!"

“Right, Conning.  And… Intimidating, in case she gets delayed.”

“And Cute!”

There was a pause.

“You want her to be Intimidating and Cute?”

“Yes!”

“Shut up and show yourselves!” Vita shouted furiously, finally scrambling to her feet.

At least all her gear was intact, even if something seemed to be blocking her soul sense.  She looked up, down, left, right, trying to find the source of the voices.  She felt nothing, but everywhere she looked things just seemed more wrong.  A bright blue sky, devoid of even a single floating stone.  Some kind of super bright pain-orb floated up there instead, causing suffering whenever she tried to look at it.

“Show ourselves?” one of the sing-song voices cooed, high-pitched yet oddly androgynous.  “You’ll never see us if you merely look around.”

“Because we’re on top of your head!” squeaked the other, suddenly leaning down over Vita’s face.

“Ack!” Vita jumped, smacking at her scalp as the two giggling creatures leaped off her head and fluttered into the sky, buzzing around her.

They looked like tiny, doll-size humanoids, naked yet genderless, dashing about on dragonfly wings as they laughed at Vita’s ineffectual attempts to swat them.

“Where am I?” she demanded.  “What do you want with me?”

“This one does not listen to the System!” one giggled.  “Foolish, foolish!  You must listen to survive here!”

“You are on Pallos!  We brought you here to send you on a grand quest!”

“The grandest of quests!”

“Atop the spire of stone, a treasure unmatched in beauty and worth awaits! In the direction of the setting sun you will find it guarded by a beast most foul!”

“Most hungry!”

“Most vile!  There, you will slay the creature and claim your prize!  Only then will the champion be sent home!”

“...Fuck off!” Vita snapped. “If you can teleport me all the way to crazy land, then deal with the stupid creature yourself! Just zap it a few thousand feet into the air and leave me alone!”

Seriously, this could not make any less sense. Vita was becoming increasingly convinced that she was hallucinating, possibly under some sort of cognimancy spell.  Two tiny, flying, riddle-talking bug people definitely pushed things well over the cliff of possibility.

“The prize!  The prize!  We cannot claim the prize for the hero claims the prize!” the two fairies sing, clasping hands and dancing in a circle in the air.  “The champion from beyond the world shall quest and seek the prize!”

“Nope, nuh-uh,” Vita grumbled, starting to walk off.  “Fuck this Capita shit, I’m out.  How do I wake up?”

“Well, first, you go to sleep,” one of the fae answered, turning to face her with a grin.

“More fucking riddles!?” Vita complained.

“No,” the fae answers.  “Initiate class advancement.”

“What is a—”

[*Error!* CLASS ADVANCEMENT OVERRIDE!]

With a snap of the fae’s fingers, Vita found the ground flying forward to meet her once again, unconsciousness rapidly approaching.

“I told you we should have gotten one from Earth,” the other fae complained.  “They always pick these things up faster.”

“Eh,” their companion responded.  “Call our sibling. We can do that too.”

--

Elaine groaned and rolled over in her sleep. She’d been missing home, and was sleeping with her mom’s pendant in her hands. Peaceful sleep eluded her though, as she was tormented by nightmares. By failure, by death dealt to her friends and dealt by her own hand.

Her hand tightened, like it was fighting the grip of someone strangling her, then loosened, dropping her pendant.

Three fairies popped in around her.

“She’s unprotected! Get her!” The one the size of a hummingbird yelled, pointing at Elaine.

“Just because you’re the tallest…” Grumbled the short one, weaving her hands, dusting Elaine with power.

“Wait! The Quest! We must tell her the quest!” The tallest one, still hummingbird-sized, said.

“Oh right. Flowers! Gotta get the flowers!” The middle one said.

“Idiot! You didn’t make it into a riddle!” The shortest one reprimanded, buzzing her wings with crossed arms.

“And now, I steal the sun!” the middle one interrupted, snapping her fingers.

Vanishing Elaine.

“Maybe we should’ve woken her up, before telling her the quest.” The tallest one said, tapping her chin, then shrugging.

“Ah well. It’s her fault for sleeping.”

Elaine woke up four feet off the ground, and falling fast.

She cursed a foul invective, trying to activate [Talaria] right before she landed. She hadn’t slept with her sandals on though, so the skill failed to activate, dumping a surprised Elaine face-first into the dirt.

She immediately flipped up, on guard, ready to fight against whatever had attacked her. Being teleported around wasn’t exactly a friendly move.

She narrowed her eyes at the still and silent jungle around her, mentally noting that the sun was high in the sky. She’d been moved a long, long distance.

Or massively slept in.

No System notifications. Elaine felt her heartbeat pick up, as she quickly tried to check her status. She breathed a sigh of relief as it popped up.

Just to make sure, she flickered through a few active skills really fast. [Mantle] still worked, [Shine] still lit things up, and Elaine pointed up and fired off a [Nova].

Perfect. Her skills still worked. Her mind was entirely intact - this time.

A bush rustled, and Elaine whirled around, seeing a human-sized dinosaur flying through the air towards her. Its feathers were broken and patchy, but its claws were long and its teeth were vicious.

[Bullet Time] activated as Elaine leaned back, firing a narrow beam of Radiance through the raptor’s head. It drilled through in an instant, but Elaine didn’t get a kill notification. Cursing, she fired off a [Nova], throwing up [Mantle of the Stars] behind the skill, protected by a mystical wall of shimmering stars.

[Nova] landed with a roaring explosion, blasting the raptor to pieces in a fiery, golden inferno, yet there was still no kill notification.

How tough is that thing!? Elaine cursed to herself as five more raptors leapt at her from the bush. Five more headshots, no notifications, and Elaine blew another [Nova] at point-blank range, swearing as her shield needed to protect her from her own skill as well, burning mana she couldn’t afford to waste.

Everything settled for a moment, and Elaine took a look around, seeing six burned and broken bodies laying on the earth jungle floor in pieces. Elaine picked the one that seemed to be in the most pieces, and piece by piece, started to incinerate it.

Halfway through, it clicked.

“Puppets. Or body hijackers. Or zombies. Wait, it can’t be body hijackers, they would’ve gotten killed. Spore jackers.”

Elaine threw her hands up in frustration.

“Either way! Not a living creature, no kill notifications.”

She moodily kicked one of the re-dead raptor’s bodies.

“And no experience by the look of it. Great. Just great.” She complained, continuing to talk to herself. Helped distract her from the fact that she had no idea where she was, or which way home was.

Still, this was hardly the first time Elaine had been almost literally thrown into a jungle with no equipment to survive, so she didn’t bother to waste any time panicking about it.

A screech made Elaine turn her head, and immediately she saw dozens, if not hundreds of raptors storming across the jungle towards her.

That part was new.

Elaine started running away, to give herself more time and space against the raptors. She blindly fired [Nova]s behind her as fast as she could - it wasn’t like she needed to aim to hit 5, 6, 7 of them at a time! As the dead started to fall, however, their master took notice.

The explosions also helped get her attention.

“...The heck sort of monster did they find?” Vita mumbled to herself, planting a shard of her soul into yet another dinosaur corpse and feeling it spread throughout the inside like the branches of some ethereal tree.  The body rose, her power flowing through it. The Dreg stood and waited for instruction.

“Follow me and attack on my command,” Vita ordered, drawing her spear.

Each of the dozens of dinosaurs in earshot moved into formation, surrounding their master in as even a formation as possible.  [Voice of Command] and [Coordinated Horde] at work, she supposed.  Dreg zombies were infuriatingly stupid, and back home they’d barely be able to walk without tripping over each other.  This… “system” stuff was definitely a bit weird and abstract, but Vita couldn’t deny how helpful it was.  Especially since, for some insane reason, nothing in this damn world had a soul. Her army was made out of Dregs because she couldn’t make anything but Dregs! If not for the [Horde Queen] class, she’d be sunk.

Her other class seemed like kind of a dud.

More blinding explosions thundered nearby as Vita mounted a raptor zombie, riding it as her force approached.  Anything capable of unleashing magic that powerful would easily overpower an unled section of her horde, but Vita was hardly above letting her minions tire whatever it was out, especially now that the system changed the stakes.  Her entourage leaped over the half-vaporized bodies of her former minions, and she raised a hand.

“[Soul Reclamation],” Vita muttered, feeling a leap in power as the shattered dust of her broken shards spiraled towards her in a radiant swirl.  At least she wouldn’t lose any parts of herself invested in the Dregs, even if they got smashed to dust. Still, Vita hated this damn world.  There was nothing here she could feel with her soul sense.  Nothing but her.

Which was why she ended up so surprised to find a human shooting the explosive blasts at her army.

Hmm.  Threat or potential ally?  It probably depended on their opinion of animancy, considering that she was currently riding a zombie.  Without her soul-sense, Vita couldn’t get a good handle on how powerful this armored kynamancer was, but the way she was tearing through the raptors like wet tissue paper felt like a pretty good hint. Just to be safe, she quietly subvocalized an order, letting [Voice of Command] carry it to her minions. Hidden zombie raptors started circling around to flank the human. If things went badly here, they’d be able to attack her from all sides. Given the wary distance she was keeping from the Dregs, she wasn’t a close-in fighter.  Probably since she’d just blow herself up with whatever that offensive kynemancy spell was.

The human noticed Vita, immediately identifying her as the source of the zombie raptor plague by merit of her riding one of them, and shouted her way.

“Oi! You! Call off your raptors!” she yelled.

Oh, hey, she was talking.  Vita decided to take that as a good sign.

“Okay.” Vita answered, glancing over at her attacking zombies. “Stand down!”

The raptors immediately halted in their tracks. Elaine blinked in surprise.  That didn’t usually work.  A quick [Long-Range Identify] picked the girl up as a [Mage], maybe in the high-two hundred low-three hundred range? A potential threat, but unlikely to be a big one.

“Um. Hi. I’m Elaine,” she said, waving a hand but not coming closer. A cape, seemingly made out of stars, appeared on her back. “What’s your name?”

“...Vita,” the girl muttered in answer, not meeting Elaine’s eyes. Getting a good look at her, Elaine realized this ‘Vita’ seemed barely thirteen years old, the poor thing.  Although she was also armed and armored to the teeth and surrounded by an undead raptor army, so point in her favor there. None of her equipment seemed to be metal, though, for whatever reason.  Maybe it was cultural, like the Dwarves?

“Vita. Cool. So do you know where this is, kiddo? I seem to have gotten yoinked again, and I have no idea how to get home.”

“...M’not a kiddo.” Vita grumbled, eyes narrowing. Why did people keep calling her that? “And no.  I have no idea.  This place is weird and the sky is empty and blue and something called ‘the system’ keeps screaming in my ear and nobody has a fucking soul.  Why doesn’t anyone have a soul?”

“I am pretty sure I have a soul,” Elaine insisted, raising an eyebrow. It wasn’t like she could have gotten flung through the aether and drop-kicked into Pallos without one.  “And, wait, are you from somewhere without a system? Oh man! Are you from Earth?”

Vita blinked.

“You mean like… the ground?”

“Guess not,” Elaine muttered to herself. “[World Traveler]. Gotta be more than one place. Plus, there was that whole mess with the fairies and those other people that one time…”

Elaine snapped her fingers.

“Fairies! Did any faeries do anything to you?”

Vita scowled.

“That depends.  Are fairies like... tiny assholes with bug wings that never answer any questions?”

Elaine looked more than a little nervous at that description.

“Fairies are wonderful people who simply enjoy a few harmless pranks now and then. Yup yup.”

Elaine locked eyes with Vita and slowly nodded twice. Or, she tried to lock eyes with Vita, but Vita seemed distracted, not looking in her direction.

“They’re of the most perfect tiny size,” she said, pinching her fingers together in roughly the size of a fairy. “And they’re the most beautiful, elegant, gorgeous people ever, with enough power to pull a half dozen people from different planets into one spot for a practical joke. Aren’t they just AMAZING!”

Elaine was slowly shaking her head at the last part, praying to Papillion and all the other gods and goddesses in the great sky above that this Vita would pick up the hint.

Vita did not pick up the hint.

“...No, can’t be them, then,” she concluded.  “Mine were annoying assholes.  They stuck me with a bunch of dumb skills, talked like crazy people, and then I ended up getting attacked by… whatever these things are.”

She motioned at her menagerie of undead dinosaurs.

“I got excited when a few of them shot lightning at me, but of course they can’t replicate the trick once I’m controlling them.  Fucking Dregs.”

Elaine facepalmed.

“Right, what did your totally-not-fairies ask you to do? For all I know, they told me while I was asleep, and considered it fair game. Then again, this is still Pallos, I could just try to find my way home normally…” Elaine muttered to herself. “Do you have any sandals on you?”

That is... certainly a question a person could ask someone that just attacked them with zombies, Vita thought to herself.

“I’m sure you are going to be shocked to learn that I do not,” she deadpanned, kicking her legs lightly to show off her leather boots and greaves.  “Is that really an important question right now?”

“Well, if by some miracle you did, I could fly and look around.” Elaine said, as if acquiring sandals equalling flight was the most normal and reasonable thing possible. “Guess I’ll have to climb a tree instead. Ook ook, imma monkey.”

Vita blinked, not sure how to respond to that.

“Um, have fun, I guess?” she hedged.  “If you can find a ‘spire of stone’ in the direction of whatever the fuck a ‘setting sun’ is, that’d be a big help.  Apparently the assholes are keeping me hostage here until I kill something there and claim a prize for them.”

Elaine was already halfway up the tree, moving far faster and more nimbly than Vita would’ve given her credit for.

“...Do you not know what a sunset is?” Elaine asked, as she slowly scanned the horizon. “Do you not have a sun? Are you some sort of mole-person, living under a planet?  Is that why you’re short?”

Elaine was finally taller than someone. Finally.

“Firstly, fuck you, I’m still growing,” Vita snapped.  “Secondly, the only kind of son I know of is the family member, thirdly no I’m not a goddamn mole person and fourthly what the shit is a planet? I’ve heard you say that word twice but I have no idea what it means.”

Elaine slowly looked down at Vita. Mostly because she was still in the tree. She blinked.

“Why don’t you tell me about where you live, and we’ll compare notes while we walk that way?” She said, pointing in a direction. “Saw some big fuck-off temple-looking thing, which is probably where we should go, one way or another.”

Elaine then just jumped out of the tree, nimbly slowing herself down with little flares of starlight steps that appeared under her feet.

“Huh,” Vita muttered, watching the scintillating magical flares.  “You are a really powerful kynamancer, aren’t you?  Well, we don’t have to walk if you don’t want to.  Feel free to pick a zombie, any zombie.”

She casts a hand out to indicate her horde of unblinking, unliving reptiles.

“I promise they don’t bite.  Unless you do anything stupid.”

Elaine shrugged.

“If they don’t bite my head off, I’ll be fine. I can just regrow stuff.”

Vita eyed Elaine, wondering exactly how that worked.

“Why would you tell me that?  Also, wouldn’t you just starve if I had them keep biting you?”

“Maybe, but you’d have to bite me a lot.  I’m pretty mana-efficient.”

“But where do you get the mass from?”

“It’s created from mana.”

Vita’s eyes went wide.  What?  That was incredible!  The possibilities were endless!

“How efficient is it?” she asked excitedly.  “If you cut off your arm and then eat your arm, is that enough food to regrow your arm again?  Less?  More?  I bet if we chopped off enough of your body parts and I hid soul shards in them we could create a mass-enslavement trap zone. What about blood loss?  Do you get dehydrated?  Can you create water too?  Oh shit, I’m so happy I found you.  I thought I was going to starve out here!”

Elaine looked at the raptors they were riding on, and back at Vita.

“Starve? Really?” she asked with a quirked eyebrow. “Also, I’m attached to my body parts. Pun intended. Yes, I can regrow more. No, I don’t plan to lose an arm. Even if it’s for a, um...”

Elaine stumbled over ‘good cause’, because really, she couldn’t see it that way. ‘Let me be an endlessly regrowing food source for the hungry offworlder’ was low, low down on her ‘to-do’ list, no matter how friendly and disarming said offworlder might be.

“Of course I’d starve, I don’t recognize any of these plants and I don’t know the meat-treating spell,” Vita explained, as if that were some common sort of thing. “Although… I guess you have a good point.  If you’re a strong enough biomancer to regrow limbs mid-combat and form matter out of mana—which I thought was impossible, but I’m assuming it’s one of these weird ‘skill’ things—you probably can make meat safe.  We can eat one of the zombies if you want.  Hey!”

She pointed at one of the raptors and snapped her fingers.

“Head to that lady over there, rip your arm off, and give it to her, would you?”

Elaine’s eyes bugged out as the raptor did exactly that, a sick tearing sound echoing between the trees as the arm’s bones and tendons were ripped out of the shoulder.  It politely offered her the morsel with its remaining forelimb.

“Um. Thank you. For your… arm.” Elaine managed to choke out, minding her manners. She held the arm up, and let golden, burning light emit from her hand to the arm, starting to cook it.

“Why are you doing that? Is that your meat prep magic?” Vita asked.

“No, this is cooking it. Because I like cooked food. Meat’s generally safe to eat, except for parasites, bacteria, possibly prions if you’re real unlucky. Cooking handles almost all of those. Ascaris suum, listeria, salmonella, and probably a dozen different tropical diseases I don’t know about.”

“Never heard of any of that. What about heat-resistant magical diseases?” Vita asks seriously.

Elaine shrugged.

“A possibility. Worst-case, I’ll just heal myself,” she said, taking a huge bite of roasted raptor wing.

“Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. Tastes like chicken.”

“Wh- hey!  Give me some!” Vita complained, spurring her riding raptor closer.

“Sure, here you go.” Elaine said, handing over the roasted arm. “Let me know if you want any healing.”

“Sure, I’ll take free healing.  Mom always said to take everything free you can and to never piss off the healer!  ...Or was that ‘make’ everything free?  Eh, it works either way.”

Elaine looked at Vita, amused.

“Gotta eat the arm first before I try healing you of any problems the arm can cause, yeah?”

“Oh, right.”

Vita took a brief moment to decide whether trusting this random stranger was worth eating zombie flesh over, immediately decided that yes, obviously it was, and chowed down on the chicken wing. Er, raptor arm.

“Right! Healing please!” Vita said.

Elaine just glanced at Vita, making sure both were in sunlight, then her jaw dropped.

“WHAT THE HELL!?” she yelled. “Are you even human!? Healing you just drained every drop of mana I had!”

Elaine seemed to check something floating in the air, then did a double-take.

“And what’s up with my mana regeneration!? You are human, right?”

Vita shrugged, taking a moment to swallow her zombie flesh.

“Depends on who you ask,” she answered frankly.  “Why do you care?  I thought you said you were something called a monkey.”

“Because my healing has efficiency factors. If I can imagine what I’m doing? More efficient. If I’m closer to you, or touching you? More efficient. If I’m healing something small, rather than large? Less mana. The more human someone is, the more efficient I am. Restoring an arm takes a few thousand points. You? For an internal bacterial problem that might not even be there?”

Elaine leaned in, intensely studying Vita, drinking up every detail about her.

“Over one hundred thousand mana gone in an instant. Vita. Are you sure your System says you’re human?”

Vita fronwed, following Elaine’s lead and glancing at something invisible in the air.

“...My ‘race’ category just says a bunch of jibberish characters.  I just thought the whole thing was broken or something, though.  I mean, my mana is listed with a period and an ‘e’ and shit like that.  Not even real numbers.”

Elaine’s mouth opened, paused, and closed again.

Open…. Pause…. Close.

“Yeah, okay, I’m going to call the race thing a bug and say that’s why healing you is so inefficient,” she said. “Don’t lose an arm or anything, I’m not sure I can regrow it.”

“What about my mana?”

Elaine shuddered.

“Please tell me the numbers after the E are small. Please.” She begged.

“Um, it says… nine point four five three seven seven E... forty-three?  And my mana regen is negative a thousand something.”

Elaine just shook her head.

“Right. Negative mana regen can kill you, if you let your mana get to 0. That’ll happen for you in…”

Elaine twitched her fingers a few times.

“I stopped counting at a few trillion years. You’ll be fine.”

“That’s a long time,” Vita opined. “But you said it was just broken, right?”

“The race sounds like a bug. The mana?”

Elaine shuddered, changing the topic.

“How about we get a move on to that ziggurat? Also, do you have some sort of mana regeneration buff? My numbers are going crazy.”

Vita shrugs.

“Uh, I think so.  My [Infinity Beyond the Veil] skill might be doing that.  Kind of a pretentious name, right? Whatever brought me here picked all my classes and skills without giving me a say in the matter, so I’m not totally sure what everything does.  This [Maw of Mana] class seemed totally pointless since people can’t run out of mana anyway, but… I guess you can?  I bet that sucks.  Also, how come it’s purple?”

Elaine gave Vita a look.  Okay, so maybe the girl was a lot stronger than her level let on.

“So… about telling me where you’re from?"

"Oh, right, I mean, I don't know if there's much to say. I'm from Verdantop island? Country of Valka?"

Elaine answers Vita with the kind of flat, blank look that made it clear she’d never heard of those places.

"Have you heard of either of those places?" Vita asked anyway.

Elaine sighed. The girl was more than a little strange, not picking up on expressions, only rarely emoting, and never making eye contact.  She was probably somewhere on the Autism spectrum. That had to be wretched in the type of medieval society that the girl’s equipment seemed to imply she was from.

"No. I have not,” Elaine clarified. “You mentioned something about the sky being the wrong color and not knowing what the sun is so I imagine we're from different worlds entirely."

"Yeah, my sky is yellow," Vita confirmed. "And all the other islands are visible above, while you guys have… nothing. It's weird. Is this not like… one of the top islands, or something? Oh! Maybe it is! Maybe you guys can run out of mana because we’re super far away from the Mistwatcher!"

"See, now it's my turn to ask you what that is," Elaine prompted.

“Um, it’s the big mass of eyeballs and tentacles tens of thousands of miles across that you see when you go to the edge and look down? And gives people souls, though… hmm.  I guess you don’t have one.”

“I still definitely do,” Elaine protested, though Vita ignored her. Still, a mass of eyeballs and tentacles tens of thousands of miles across? What the hell? What kind of insane Lovecraft world is this girl from?

“Also, the planet we’re on has no edge.”

“What happens when you walk in one direction forever then?” Vita asked instantly, since obviously there had to be an edge somewhere. Maybe they just hadn’t found it?

“You end up back in the same spot,” Elaine answered easily, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Vita hesitated, wanting to argue more, but decided to leave it be. As long as she never saw the edge, what did it matter to her?

“So… okay, maybe we’re not orbiting around the Mistwatcher at all,” Vita admitted hesitantly. “But… what does that mean?  Where are we?  Is this your… ‘world?’”

“I think so,” Elaine said. “Although we’re a long way from where I’m used to.  This world is called Pallos.”

“Oooh!  Yeah, Pallos!  That’s where the naked flying assholes said I am!”

Elaine winced.

“Please, please stop calling them that” she begged. “We really do not want to make them mad.”

Vita frowned, looking around.

“I… guess I need them to get home, so that’s fair.  Do you think they’re listening to us?” she asked.

Gods, I hope not, Elaine thought to herself.

Instead of answering, she spurred her raptor on, trying to make it go faster. The lifeless construct reacted by... not reacting at all.

“Uh, you okay there?” Vita asked. “Are you trying to make it go faster? Let me. Speed up!”

The raptor Elaine was on shot off, and she swore as she tried to keep a grip. Raptors weren’t exactly made for riding, nor was Vita any sort of master [Leatherworker], able to make a saddle.

Vita didn’t need one. The Dregs carried her with unnatural grace, like she was some sort of royalty, and she seemed utterly unbothered by the bareback journey. Dropping Vita? Literally unthinkable. Mostly due to a lack of brainpower. Elaine’s butt was not so lucky, but what was ranger training for if not being flexible enough to ride a zombie dinosaur?

As they traveled, making small talk, comparing notes about the two, three worlds they knew about, Vita’s undead horde grew. Zombie raptors jumped and tore apart other, lesser creatures, bringing the kills to Vita like a particularly proud gaggle of cats. Vita didn’t even seem to glance at the bodies, but each one brought to her was soon reanimated into her service. Monkeys and snakes, raptors and the occasional crocodile, beasts from the paleozoic to cambrian era all joined Vita’s ever-growing swarm.

I could totally get used to not having to do all the heavy lifting for once. Elaine thought with wide eyes, seeing the numbers grow. At the same time - should I be stopping this? If Vita turns on me, I can’t handle that many monsters at once. Especially since I’m pinned to the ground.

I should totally ask her to cook another raptor for me, Vita thought.

“Hey, can you cook another raptor for me?" she then asked, hardly one to let anything get between thoughts of food and the potential acquisition of food.

“Suuuuure… but can it start off dead-dead? Like, not moving dead? And not ripping its own arm off?” Elaine shuddered.

“Sure, I guess,” Vita answered, shrugging slightly. “Stop moving.”

At Vita’s order, the entire raptor horde promptly froze like someone had taken a photograph and made it reality. Elaine nearly flew off her mount at the sudden halt, but held on. Glassy-eyed frozen raptors surrounded her in every direction.

“Take your pick!” Vita told her happily.

Elaine facepalmed, but figured this was the best she was going to get, not without another long, awkward conversation.

“Raptor or something else?” Elaine asked, noting the wide variety of animals in the horde. Raptors were the dominant species, but there was enough variety if Vita was feeling spicy.

“I’m the furthest thing from picky,” Vita answered. “I’ll eat anything you cook.”

Elaine was getting ideas. Terrible, terrible ideas.

“How hungry are you…?”

“Yes,” Vita answered, without a hint of humor.

“Mind if we eat more than one of your- um - one of the, um, ah… creatures?”

Elaine was still struggling with “zombie”

“I will eat.  Anything. You cook for me.”

Elaine had a brilliant grin split her face.

“Right! One jungle smorgasbord coming right up!” she said, deftly navigating through the horde, playing discount Noah.

Instead of two of each animal for an ark, it was one of each animal for the firepit. Vita watched with enraptured attention, a grin widening on her face with each animal Elaine selected.

“How hungry are you, exactly?” Vita asked. “You like eating monsters too?  My team always thought it was gross.”

Elaine shrugged.

“Using mana - well, technically, regenerating mana - is hungry, hungry work. I’ve been away from towns, in the wilderness often enough to just not be picky. When it’s do or die, eat or starve? Everything looks like food.”

“Huh.  Most of my experience starving has been in the towns.”

Elaine patted Vita in what she imagined was a comforting way, though Vita mostly just stiffened up at the touch.

“Well, don’t worry about it. I’ll make sure you’re well-fed here.” She said, expertly burning through dino-joints and roasting each piece one-handedly, then handing it off to Vita. The other hand already had a hot, greasy raptor-wing, as Elaine tore into it between words.

“We’re friends now,” Vita declared, and immediately started tearing into the food with startling speed.

The impromptu barbeque continued until the pain orb - err, sun - fell, both young women displaying appetites far outside their weight class. Vita watched with awe at the growing sunset, her childlike face morphing into the greatest display of emotion Elaine had seen on her since they met.

“What is that? Oh, wow.  It’s like… like giant blotches of flower colors in the sky!” she announces, raising a grasping hand as if trying to touch one.

Elaine glanced over, and with a lazy wave, summoned a [Mantle of the Stars] next to Vita.

“For closer looking.” Elaine said, eyes up at the endlessly spiraling stars above winking into view as the sun finishes passing over the horizon.

“Woah.  You’re right, the sky is just… going dark,” Vita whispered, idly pawing at the mantle. “Where’s that thing you talked about?  Your kinda-sky-island?  The moon?”

“It’ll come. Just give it time.”

“This is so cool.  I still can’t believe all the light in your world comes from such a tiny ball! And now all these white dots…”

Vita stared open-mouthed at the sky, for once her hidden, inner eye being the one of her three incapable of seeing an otherworldly beauty.  Utterly entranced, a look of childlike joy and wonder on her face as she tried to trace the stars above, count them, understand them via any sort of equivalent from her world yet coming up empty.

And then she saw the moon.

Moons.

Two full moons rose above the horizon, washing the land in their baleful red light. Two moons, with crimson irises and slitted pupils, looking anything like a pair of eyes, overlords of the world looking down upon all the puny mortals below them. A snake, freezing a mouse in its gaze. A dragon, watching the world she owned from above.

The Dragoneye Moons.

For a fraction of an instant, Vita froze, her breath gone.  Then an overwhelming terror consumed her features, and she bolted, trying to hide from the sky behind a tree.

“Oh fuck, it’s here!” Vita hisses. “I don’t think it saw me!  Elaine, we can’t let it see me, we can’t.  The raptors aren’t fast enough to… oh shit, oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck…”

“Calm down! Calm down! Breathe!” Elaine said, sliding next to Vita. “Okay, talk to me. What’s wrong? What’s here? They’re just the moons. They’re not going to hurt you.”

Elaine mentally had a dozen asterisks on that particular statement, but the general idea was correct. Like, if some crazy high level Gravity mage decided to pull them into the planet, yeah, they could hurt, and it could be possible to do…

But that was for another day.

Elaine was struck with inspiration as Vita continued to freak out. She layered [Mantle of the Stars] over her gourmet companion, then lit up with [Shine].

“See? It can’t see you now. Just stars and light here.” Elaine tried to soothe Vita.

“That’s the eye the Mistwatcher used to look at me!” Vita squeaked, her tone suggesting not only terror but the revelation of some grand secret. “If it glances my way again I might cause another perception event!”

“What’s a perception event, and the Mistwatcher is the big thing from your world, right?” Elaine asked.

She didn’t wait for an answer.

“Look, I have it on good authority that those moons have been there for over four thousand years. They’re just rocks, created by mad gods and goddesses.”

“Yes!  The Mistwatcher is a god! It’s the god! And it has at least one eye which looks like that!”

Elaine debated telling Vita about her experiences with gods and being in the realm of the gods, and how gods tended to stay there, and not really go to Pallos. Not unless a divine miracle was requested.

She skipped all that, and thought about how Vita described the place she lived.

“You normally avoid its eye? Eyes? By being on the island, right?” Elaine asked to confirm.

“Yes, but now it’s in the fucking sky!” Vita screeched.

“Sure, but I have an easy solution. Let’s bury you in dirt and mud. Then it can’t see you.” Elaine said matter-of-factly.

There was no reasoning someone out of a position they hadn’t reasoned themself into, and Elaine wasn’t about to try and play therapist to Vita, and convince her that the moons were harmless. For all Elaine knew, they weren’t actually harmless, given their unnatural state and complete and total not-how-moons-should-be-ness, but that was neither here nor there. She just needed Vita to get through the night, and one night at a time she’d come round - or they’d be done with whatever bullshit the fae wanted them to do this time.

“I… have no idea if that will work,” Vita said hesitantly, “and if it doesn’t work, you, me, and everything remotely nearby is gonna get annihilated by a ten thousand mile long tentacle.”

“Okay, do you have any other ideas how to not get annihilated?”

“I… no.  I don’t know.  It’s in the sky!  It’s not supposed to be in the sky! Maybe a cave?  I don’t know if a layer of dirt will do much, but I’d feel safer with solid rock between us.”

Elaine frowned, then brightened up.

“I’ve got an idea!” She said. “Can you let me command the zombies?”

Vita nodded.

“[Queen’s Commander],” she murmured, uncurling slightly and poking Elaine in the thigh.

[Necromancer] Elaine in the house! Not where I expected to be a day ago, but hey, that’s life.

“Right. You, you, and you - I need those three trees cut down and moved to the side. You, you, and you. Bring back wood. You and you - find stone. You four - cover Vita, don’t let the eyes see her. You-...”

Elaine started to efficiently bark out orders, like she’d been trained to do it for years.

She was used to intelligent Rangers though, not the near-mindless Dregs. Some of her commands were interpreted in interesting ways.

“No, not like that!” Elaine cried out, grabbing her hair in frustration as a raptor brought her a stick the size of her finger. “Big wood! Like the trees!”

Still, with much frustration, grumbling, ordering and reordering, Elaine’s vision started to come to un-life.

Charitably, it could be called ‘A giant pile of logs and sticks.’

“Here. Crawl inside.” Elaine said, as it started to come together. “It’ll shield you from the eyes in the sky, and we’ll keep making it bigger and thicker while you’re inside. Keep you safe.”

Elaine lasered the leg off of one particularly bad-at-following-commands raptor, fried it, and passed it to Vita.

“Here, have a bite while you wait,” Elaine offered.

I am getting way too used to lasering meat off of moving creatures.

Vita, for her part, just grabbed the food between her teeth, nodding a quick thank-you before scurrying into shelter. From her perspective, hiding behind a tree hadn’t gotten her killed yet, so hiding behind a structure of trees should hopefully work the same.

Elaine kept working for hours, building the fort larger and larger, hoping that it wouldn’t all collapse on itself. She occasionally threw in more pieces of the unhelpful raptor into the center, where a scrawny arm would dart out to grab it and drag it into its maw.

Finally, Elaine felt like she’d done enough. She roasted the last few pieces of the raptor, told the rest to “Guard”, and crawled in herself.

“Hey. It’s going to be okay,” Elaine said, lying down next to Vita. “It’s all going to be okay.” Elaine closed her eyes.

Vita nodded numbly.

“Well, if it isn’t, at least we’ll probably die instantly before getting our souls eaten,” she muttered.

Elaine didn’t hear her. She was fast asleep.

“Wow.  She… passed out fast,” Vita mumbled to herself.

When day finally rose, Vita still hadn’t managed to do the same.

Elaine yawned and stretched, her sleepy eyes going to instantly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as she applied [Sunrise] to herself.

“Gooooooood morning! How did you sleep? Did the hut help? I hope it helped. It took me and the dinosaurs aaaaaaages to do. Well. You would know. You were watching! Whoof! I need to go burn off some energy. Then let’s get to that ziggurat, and figure out what those fairies want! Let’s gooooooooooo!”

Vita blinked the tiredness out of her eyes, mentally cursing Elaine several different ways.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if a perception event happens now if it spares me her early-morning energy. I want a soul. I miss souls. I wish I could eat one to keep me awake, but this stupid place doesn’t have any!

Vita was still trying to muster the strength to get up when Elaine popped back into the hut, brimming with energy.

“Oh! I almost forgot! Here’s a snake skewer. One of the zombies got it last night. And a pick me up!” Elaine tapped Vita, pulsing [Sunrise] through her.

A jolt of energy shot through Vita, waking her up faster and more thoroughly than anything she’d ever experienced before.

“Woah, what the fuck?” Vita said suddenly, jumping to her feet. The child-like girl’s potty mouth never failed to seem a little out of place. “What was that? I feel way better!”

“[Sunrise]!” Elaine happily told Vita. “My energy pick-me-up-go-forever skill! Never leave home without it!”

She laughed like she made the best joke ever. Vita didn’t see how it was that funny… but she couldn’t deny it was useful.

Either way, between the food, the stream, and the zombie-raptor transportation, Vita and Elaine were off towards the ziggurat in no time.

The horde grew fatter than Vita’s and Elaine’s waistlines, the most impressive part of which was that said waistlines actually managed to grow a little after their legendary barbecue. Each of them seemed remarkably incapable of putting on pounds. They spent the time luxuriously being carted around, feasting on the bounty of the jungle delivered practically to their mouths.

Then, like a particularly small, fast, brightly colored and tasty bird, they were delivered to the foot of the ziggurat. It looked old, an ancient relic from before time began. Given the relatively young age of Pallos, that was entirely possible. The temple was overgrown with vines, the stone cracking. Each step was bigger than Elaine was tall, and the ziggurat seemed to soar endlessly towards the heavens - which wasn’t at all what it looked like from a distance.

“Now what?” Vita asked, more annoyed and impressed by the structure.

Elaine shrugged.

“If it was easy, the fairies wouldn’t send us to do it, would they?”

“From what you told me about the tiny assholes, yes they would. Because it’d be funny.”

Elaine tilted her head, conceding the point.

“This has all seemed too easy so far, but… zombies first?” Elaine asked.

“Yeah, sure, they’re all replaceable.” Vita agreed. “But where’s the entrance?”

Vita and Elaine looked around, not seeing anything. They circled the ziggurat, only seeing the giant steps repeated all around.

Elaine looked at the overly large stairs, big enough that only Vita standing on Elaine’s shoulders would be able to crawl up.

One step.

There had to be hundreds.

“What’s the bet that the entrance is on the top of the ziggurat?” Elaine asked rhetorically.

She knew the answer.

It was on the top.

It was always on the top.

Vita sighed, silently agreeing. What a pain. Still, painful problems were what zombies were for. With a few quick, snappy directions, three zombies—two raptors standing on each other and a third in front of them—formed a climbable step that Vita and Elaine ascended up the first stair, enough of the horde following to make a second step and then a third and so on. The Dregs were not kind to their fellows, and the crushing, shambling footfalls of a zombie horde crawling on top of one another required the steps to be frequently replaced as they got periodically pounded into meat mush. Still, eventually the majority of the horde managed to reach the top. When only the zombies forming the stairs remained, Vita simply used [Soul Reclamation] to kill them all from a distance, leaving the unfortunate dinosaurs left behind to collapse back into restful death. Again.

Turning back towards the entrance, the pair saw that the top of the ziggurat was filled with statues, pillars, and more. A giant golden bell, somehow whole despite the tests of time and the elements, stood proudly in the middle, over the largest statue. Cracked stone with hardy vines that had somehow grown through the literal mountain worth of stone were interspersed with little yellow flowers that gently blew in the breeze. Pillars in various states of ruin and decay were scattered in neat columns along the top, clearly having performed some ceremonial purpose once upon a time.

Statues of suchia, each statue large enough for Vita and Elaine to comfortably rest in their enormous crocodilian mouths, lined the edges of the ziggurat. They were all facing the centerpiece of the ziggurat - a gigantic monstrous statue, depicting some part-suchia, part-fish, part frog with toothy mouths on its shoulders, knees, elbows, and a few other random spots.

“Wow.” Elaine breathed, gazing around the sights. “This is quite something.”

She walked forward, looking at each statue for a moment before moving onto the next one.

“Yeah, that thing almost has as many mouths as the Mistwatcher’s soul.” Vita agreed, eyeing the statue in the middle. “It’s also sucking my mana. I can see it with [Eye of the Maw].”

Elaine paled.

“That’s not made out of Arcanite.” she realized.

“So?” Vita asked, glancing around the ancient temple with disinterest.

“So only living things and Arcanite get mana!” she yelled.

Vita blinked.

“...So it’s edible?”

“That’s not the right question!” Elaine snapped, running back to the stairs.

A deafening roar from a dozen different types of mouths burst out behind them, as the Cipactli ‘statue’ started to chase after the latest offerings brought to its altar.

“Attack while we climb!” Vita ordered the remains of her horde, suddenly changing direction. Without hesitation Elaine switched from running back to the too-large stairs to climbing one of the large pillars with Vita.

They scrambled up while the zombies died in droves, seemingly incapable of even scratching the monstrous Cipactli. Elaine’s ascent was boosted by her stats, Dexterity making sure she never put a foot wrong, Speed helping her hands quickly move from place to place, Strength letting her haul herself up sooner, and Vitality tying it all together.

Vita had stats, but also something beyond them as well. It almost looked like Vita was a puppet, her limbs getting pulled around by some force that couldn’t possibly be her muscles. Elaine figured there were more pressing things at the moment than worrying about it, though, even as Vita handily beat Elaine to the top.

The monster roared, and crashed into the stone column, trying to shake Elaine and Vita loose. The two clung onto each other and the top of the pillar, holding on.

“Think you can handle it?” Vita asked Elaine, deathly calm as she stared down from her perch.

Instead of responding, Elaine fired a [Nova] down at the monster, following it up with a beam of Radiance, trying to burn through its eye.

“Nifty.” Vita commented, as Elaine unleashed a burning inferno directly at the furious beast for 10 seconds non-stop.

Then, abruptly, she stopped.

“Fuck,” she swore.

“What?”

“I’m out of mana.”

Vita shrugged, as if this could not be any less of a problem.

“Take some of mine?”

A terrible grin broke on Elaine’s face, as she remembered that Vita seemed to have a skill to transfer mana… and somehow had a mana pool measured in fucking tredecillions.

It was like a second sun erupted on top of the ziggurat, as Elaine, finally unconstrained by pesky little things like “running out of mana,” was able to unleash her full, unlimited arsenal. [Nova]’s were dropped and exploded, looking like an entire galaxy worth of stars was exploding at once. Beams of Radiance mixed with cones and balls, wide-spread auras and surgical lasers. The air itself started to become uncomfortably hot with the sheer amount of heat and energy that bled off from the attacks. The stones blackened and cracked under the heat, and both Elaine and Vita started doing the “the floor is lava and my feet are cooking” dance.

Didn’t stop Elaine in the slightest.

The Cipactli roared, angered that the sacrifices brought to it were resisting, trying to tear down the sturdy pillar.

In its boredom, it had knocked down and smashed most of the pillars on top of the ziggurat that it could. The architects, so long ago, had built the temple well, and what remained wasn’t so easily brought down.

Especially when being cooked alive. Eventually, the creature, used to being treated as a god, decided to stop sticking around and turned to flee.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Vita growled. “Quit shooting for a sec.”

Without waiting for an answer, Vita lets herself fall from the pillar before suddenly kicking off of it, shooting towards the fleeing many-mouthed monster like a javelin.  She hit it spear-first, to basically no effect on its stat-boosted crocodilian hide.

"Vita!" Elaine yelpedin surprise, barely avoiding frying her with a stray nova. "What are you doing? Just let it go!"

Ignoring her, Vita instead pulled out a huge fragment of her own soul, grinning as she pressed it into the body of the monster. With no soul of its own, or at least with nothing that Vita considered a soul for her purposes, nothing stopped her shard from spreading through the monster as if it was just another corpse. Her power strained against the living body's muscles, causing the enormous beast to twitch and spasm as entirely different forms of movement went to war inside it.

"All right!" Vita shouted back to Elaine, leaping off the monster. "Now hit it with everything you've got! As big as it gets!"

"What skill is that?" Elaine asked, charging up the mother of all [Nova]. "This thing is way too high level to get crippled by one tap of just anything."

Vita shrugged, scrambling back up the pillar.

"No skill," she said. "Just part of me. Although I guess if you want to blame a skill for that trick—"

Elaine didn’t wait for Vita to finish talking before unleashing the rest of her arsenal at once, the combination of seemingly limitless mana regen, prep time, and a mostly stationary target being all she needed to annihilate the temple-owner once and for all.

"—I would say [Soul Reclamation] is the one I like most," Vita finished, activating the skill and recovering her lost power. “Back home I can’t get free refunds.”

The aftermath of the fight left little standing in what was once an altar to the ex-divine beast.

“So now what?” Vita asked, looking at the stones. They were so hot they were warping the air, making the floor look wavy. She could feel her skin start to crack, having nowhere near as much heat resistance as the woman who regularly shot lasers.

Elaine shrugged.

“What did the fairies want?”

“They just said to 'slay the creature and claim the prize.' Didn’t say what the prize is, though."

Elaine facepalmed.

“Of course. OF COURSE! It’s never easy with them.” She looked around the room, trying to spot what this elusive prize could possibly be. “Maybe the bell?”

The enormous golden bell in the center of the room indeed looked like quite the prize. Vita’s eyes went wide.

“Wait, is all of that metal? Yeah that would be the fucking prize all right. Fat lot of luck we’ll have hauling that around, though.”

“Yeah… why don’t we just grab everything up here, just in case?” Elaine suggested. “Maybe it’s one of the statues. Or vines. Or pillars.”

“Or one of the flowers.” Vita said, picking one up that somehow, miraculously, survived the scorching inferno Elaine had unleashed on top of the ziggurat.

Three tiny flying assholes popped in around Vita the moment she grabbed the flowers.

“The flowers! The flowers!” One cheered.

“She got the flowers! She wins!” The second one cackled.

“Plant genitals! Just the thing!” The third one swooped in and grabbed the flower from Vita.

“Ew,” said Vita, wrinkling her nose. “So, I guess I got your prize. Do I get a prize?”

“Yes, of course!” One said. “You can see my tonsils! A most rare and valuable prize.”

“Your what now?”

Elaine facepalmed.

“The back of her throat.”

“That’s dumb.”

Elaine cringed at that, while the fairy laughed in Vita’s face.

“Too slow! You had the chance to see, and you did not! Like that, your prize vanishes!”

“If you guys had souls, I would shatter them,” Vita grumbled.

“From me, I give you… COURAGE!” The next fairy said. “No more will you fear to walk in the jungle! No more will you cower in your home!”

Vita frowned.

“I’m a hunter. I already regularly go into the forest.” She pointed out. “Plus, didn’t you see what I did to this jungle?”

The fairy giggled.

“See? The best gift EVER!”

Elaine was coming round to Vita’s way of thinking. ‘Complete assholes’ and ‘Would kill if I could.’

“From me…” The fairy paused for dramatic effect, before realizing.

“Hey! You jerks let me go last!” He complained at the other two, who giggled at his misfortune.

“Too slow!” The first one said, zipping around him.

“Lazy bum, lazy bum” The second one sang.

He just grumbled.

“GO HOME!” He yelled at Vita, who popped out of existence.

Elaine’s eyes bugged out.

“Um. If it’s not too much trouble…” She said.

The first fairy sneered at her.

“You’re already home! Go fly back!”

“I can’t fly! I didn’t bring my sandals!” Elaine complained before being struck by inspiration.

“Hang on. Send me back, and I’ll tell you a secret,” she said, dreading making a deal with the Fae, but not seeing too many other options. Besides spending decades trying to get out of the place. Fairies liked secrets, right?

“Oooh! A secret! Tell me, tell me!”

“No, tell me!”

Elaine held up a finger.

“Ah ah ah. Send me back first, then I’ll tell you the secret,” she insisted.

“The secret will be mine!” One of the fae yelled, popping Elaine back to her home.

“Ok, now tell me the secret.” the fae demanded the empty air.

There was, of course, no response.

“Hello? I’d like my secret now?”