Kijji's Journal, Entry 10

I’d just finished squishing Raspberry’s body into shape (although herethroy don’t even *have* a tail!) when the conquering heroes returned from the depths of the cave.

None of them felt especially heroic. Candyice and Rydia were exhausted and relieved to be alive, Tell-tail was ashamed that they’d killed the monsters without trying to talk to them first, and Darreth was drooling over the treasure they’d recovered (the monsters had glassy chitin, and they’d harvested a few pounds before the next group arrived to chase them off) and trying to scheme how he could keep it all for himself.

So they sat on the boat and argued. Darreth wanted to stay until they’d collected enough to make them ll rich – he pointed out that as soon as they went home they’d have to give up the airship to Jepa’s family. Rydia and Tell-tail tried to argue against that in different ways and ended up arguing with each other, instead. Candyice got fed up with the whole thing, and banged on the door into the ship’s hold. “Raspberry, are you okay?”

I dimmed down my wings, and folded the extra pair of arms close against my body. The hold was dark, with the wings mostly hidden, so she didn’t notice anything was wrong as I let her inside, and locked the door behind her. “I had a nightmare,” I said, in more or less Raspberry’s voice.

“Yeah?” Candyice asked, bored, looking around for somewhere to lay down and rest, and settling for the pile of blankets and clothing that Raspberry had been sleeping on earlier. She tossed her clubs and staff in the corner, and started taking off her armor. “Well, it was probably better than facing those damn Nrex.”

“I should have come with you,” I said, echoing a vague thought I’d seen in Raspberry’s mind before she went to bed.

Candyice snorted. “Why? We’ve got caves near the village, same thing only without the stupid glass bugs.”

“I should have come with you, because maybe I’d still be alive,” I said, spreading my wings, illuminating the hold enough for her to see the extra limbs and spikes, which I hoped would be recognizable even without the tail.

Candyice swore, recognizing that she was in for a fight and not really thinking of anything else right away, which was kind of a let-down – I’d been hoping for horror! She only got hold of one of her clubs before I was on her, and her armor was half off, and a herethroy body is a lot stronger than a fox! But she had a cley left, and used it to teleport to the boat’s deck, where she started screaming at her screaming companions about a more urgent situation than the airship *or* the Nrex.

Kijji's Journal, Entry 11

The stupid ship was fireproof, so I had to use the door – and of *course* they were all waiting for me by the door, although at least they didn’t really understand what was going on. They wanted to capture me so that they could find some way to cure Raspberry of her curse.

But the stuff inside the ship wasn’t fireproof, so the cloud of choking smoke that billowed out when I opened the door gave me the cover I needed to dart past their ambush, and they had to settle for a fair fight. There was pepper in the eyes AGAIN, and another winter serpent, but the mages mostly held off on the magic because they were low on cley after escaping from the Nrex. So it was mostly Candyice and Darreth that I was fighting, and they were way overmatched, even if neither of them was actually trying to hold back like Tell-tail and Rydia wanted them to.

I killed Candyice first, and Tell-tail healed her, and I killed her again, and he healed her again, and I killed her a THIRD time, and he healed her AGAIN, so I picked her up in four of my arms, held her over my head, staggered over to the railing, and tossed her over the side. She didn’t put up much resistance, having just been killed three times. Darreth, on the other hand, pounced me from behind and pushed me off the ship after her. Technically, he pushed himself off too, but Sleeth don’t fall, and Bonstables pretending to be Sleeth had better know how to levitate!

Candyice and I fell a long way. They’d flown the Zephyr out a ways to keep the Nrex from following them, so we didn’t land on any of the ledges near the cave entrance. Candyice knew she was going to die as soon as she went over the edge, since she was out of cley, but she was too messed up from repeatedly bouncing to care. She cursed when we missed the ledges, and I wasn’t really happy about that either – falling to another branch SUCKS. It’s SO BORING.

But we didn’t fall all the way to the next branch. The verticals are only mostly vertical near the top, so after a mile or two we hit a steep slope, bounced a few times, and careened into a forest of sideways trees. The largest piece of my body (we’d both basically splattered on the first hit, but that only killed Candyice) ended up impaled on a tree branch, and I hung out there for a while, waiting for something to come along and eat me, or maybe to die of exposure and thirst.

Sometimes, having a strong life force is a bad thing.