Chapter 27

Fey and Blade walked to the local slime territory, having ascertained that Firefly was a female (avian girl power!).

“Amethyst! Magic! Boris!” Fey called. They followed the sound of squeaking towards its source.

Magic was hopping up and down in greeting. In the night, he was harder to see than the bioluminescent Amethyst, but his bright blue cap and white stem were much more visible than Boris’ dark brown colour.

“Hello,” said Fey to the pets. “I take it you beat the King Slime?” Fey checked the pet menus.

“Huh, Magic learned a new subskill,” she commented idly to Blade, eyes still focused on the virtual screens she had called up.

Drain Spore: release health-draining spores that grow into immature blue mushrooms. Drained health does not go to the caster.>

Drain, effect range from Spore>

Fey looked around, but did not see any other blue mushrooms. She shrugged and moved on (apparently, she doesn’t have much in the way of parental instincts, either), checking Amethyst’s pet menu next.

Amethyst’s Double Membrane had reached level 10 and evolved into Queen Membrane, tripling the strength of her physical defence so that it now required thirty times the force to do any damage.

“Queen?” That sounded like a weird name for a membrane type (this is a set-up for a really, really bad punny reference).

“Ooh look, Amethyst has a piece of equipment!” (*side-tracked*)

“Very cool,” said Fey. She made a mental note to hunt down the boss versions of her (non-cannibalistic) pets when her pets were strong enough to fight them. “Your Royal Purpleness,” she said jokingly to Amethyst. Amethyst waved her bubble in a (cute) queenly manner.

Fey’s relaxed mood disappeared when she opened Boris’ pet menu. That his Charge skill had levelled up went unnoticed; she was focused on the status effect notification:

“Ahh!” Fey picked out Boris’ dark outline lying on the ground and rushed over. “Why didn’t you guys say anything sooner??” she chided her pets.

Magic squeaked (“Well, I tried, but you don’t speak Squeak and I’m not very good at acting things out.”), but was ignored as Fey focused on her injured pet.

“Aww, poor baby. Let’s get you to the healer’s.” She carefully shifted Boris onto her cape as a makeshift stretcher, then ran (smoothly) off towards town, even forgetting to pick up Magic and Amethyst on the way.

Blade looked down at the deserted Feypets. Whenever Fey ran off unexpectedly, Amethyst and Magic were used to hitching rides from Boris in order to keep up. Momentarily stymied, they milled about (cutely), squeaking to each other.

Blade could see the moment when they settled on him as the next-likeliest means of transportation. Amethyst lassoed the hilt of Blade’s sword with her bubble-arm and pulled herself up while Magic simply hopped up his leg. Both Feypets squeaked at him, which he guessed meant something along the lines of “go” (actually, Magic said, “Gogogo!” while Amethyst said, “Hurry up and follow, meat-shield-man!”). Blade walked back to town, following his unpredictable (or would that be ‘predictably random’?) party member.

Fey ran to the shop that displayed both the apothecary’s potion bottle and healer’s cross on its overhanging sign. She spared a thought for the fact that doors were much less convenient than tree-shops’ open archways when one was carrying an injured pet (probably more convenient when it rained, though).

Managing to get the door open, Fey rushed inside, calling, “I need help; my pet’s leg is broken-”

Fey stopped abruptly. “Kallara?”

The healer inside Newtown’s potion shop smiled. “You must have met my colleague in the Moonwood. My name is Kalinda, no relation.” Indeed, despite striking similarities in physical appearance, Kallara was an elf and Kalinda was human.

“A broken leg, you say?” Kalinda continued professionally. “Put him on the examination table.”

Fey complied with the healer’s orders while Boris bore the unavoidable jostling with stoicism (dunno where he picked up that personality trait, considering how whiny his owner is).

Kalinda examined the boar’s leg, which was bent at an angle that was clearly unnatural. Without ceremony, she began treatment.

“Numb.”

Kalinda casted a spell that was the equivalent of a local anesthetic (*scary healer abilities that would also work well in combat*). Boris visibly relaxed as all the nerves in his leg were disabled and no longer sent pain signals to his brain.

Grasping the injured leg firmly, Kalinda pulled it into alignment. Fey cringed (wimpily) at the sound of shifting bone.

“Bone Heal,” was Kalinda’s next spell. The specialized healing magic did not restore many health points, which most strongly related to blood loss, but was very effective at healing disabling injuries like broken and dislocated bones. In urgent situations, the spell could heal without the bones being set, but that required considerably more mana consumption.

Kalinda removed the Numb spell and handed Boris back to Fey (*Pokemon healing sound*). “There you go; all better.”

“Thanks so much!” Fey hugged Boris to her chest, an action which caused the boar to perform the porcine version of “teenaged boy embarrassed by his overly affectionate mom”.

Only a few minutes had passed since Fey rushed into the shop; Blade then entered, having missed the entire treatment process.

“Hello! How may I help you?” inquired Kalinda of the human warrior.

“Oh, I’m with her.” Blade indicated Fey, who finally had to put Boris down when the boar’s struggles became sufficiently determined (“Lemme go!”).

Focusing on the healer’s facial features, Blade commented, “You look a lot like the elven healer.”

Kalinda smiled as if at an inside joke. “Indeed, many have commented at the likeness. I am told I resemble the healers in other cities as well.”

Well, at least they didn’t name you Joy[i], thought Fey.

Magic and Amethyst dropped from their temporary ride and hopped over to Fey.

“Aww, sorry I forgot you guys.” Fey bent down and patted her pets. Neither slime nor mushroom took umbrage at being left behind; they understood that an injured comrade took precedence, and were resourceful enough not to have to depend on their owner all the time.

“My, you have three pets,” commented Kalinda.

“Er, well, actually, nine.” At Fey’s words, Onyx, Inblot, Ebony, Shadow, Midnight, and Obsidian reverted to their rabbit forms and dropped from their various spots hanging about Fey’s person.

“That is quite a number of glooms. What caused you to seek so many of the same pet?” asked Kalinda curiously.

“…It was an accident, really. I saved them from total annihilation, and they decided to become my pets.”

“Annihilation?”

“Holy light,” Fey clarified.

“Ah. For a gloom, that would indeed constitute annihilation."

Blade had never heard this story before, having learned that questions usually led nowhere in terms of answers. Given the half-story, he had to ask, “What holy light?”

Leandriel’s existence was not a secret, but Fey was irrationally reluctant to discuss the angel. “Oh, you know,” she answered vaguely. “Anyways, thanks for all your help,” she said to Kalinda. Handing the healer a 100g-piece, Fey collected her pets and exited the shop.

“Goodbye,” said the healer with a professionally cheerful smile (with healers, it’s probably in bad taste to say “hope to see you again!”).

“Know what?” asked Blade as they walked from the healer’s shop.

“Know what?” Fey repeated quizzically, having forgotten her earlier verbal dodge.

“You just said, ‘you know’.”

Fey shook her head dismissively. “Obviously, you don’t know.”

Blade was starting to get confused. “Know what?”

Fey grinned. Blade was the perfect target for the silly facet of her sense of humour (despite her mistreatment of him, she has and will continue to refrain from inflicting the sadistic facet of her sense of humour onto her party member). She patted him consolingly on the arm. “Too easy.”

Now Blade was definitely in ‘confused’ territory. “What?”

Fey felt slightly bad for the warrior. By this point, she herself would have started to get annoyed, but he remained good-naturedly annoyance-free. She decided to explain her gloom-taming adventure without mentioning any angels. “There was a guy casting Purifying Light in a gloom territory; these six took shelter in my shadow. After I got him to stop, they spontaneously became my pets.”

“Oh. Cool.” Blade considered the story. “How did you get him to stop?”

“I asked him politely,” said Fey in a tone that suggested she had “asked” in a violent manner, despite the fact that she had actually asked politely (we shall classify this as the ‘double meanings/puns’ facet of her sense of humour).

“Oh.” Blade could see that Fey did not have the Player-Killer tattoo – a drop of blood – on her forehead, but his imagination spun up various violent scenarios in which Fey was the very believable aggressor.

Fey laughed. “I really did ask him politely,” she said in a much less scary voice.

Okay, I probably should stop joking about violence until he gets to know me better. Fey could tell that Blade thought her dramatic shifts in tone marked her as emotionally unstable, and probably mentally unstable. Since reassuring him of her sanity would probably have the opposite effect, she decided to log off a few minutes early.

“Gotta go. Go train your pet or something. See you tomorrow.” Fey logged out.

Blade stared at Firefly. “Sometimes, that girl scares me,” he said to the fyrfalcon. She nodded back without much comprehension, still at level 1 and having low intelligence.

Despite her possible insanity, Fey’s suggestion to train the fire-bird had merit. Blade did not need to wake up as early as Fey did, so he had over an hour until he needed to log out. He headed back to the slime territory with his pet perched on his arm.

***

(And now, the author will demonstrate that she understands the concept of “skipping time for the purposes of advancing plot”. Behold, the “summary”!)

The rest of the work week passed in stable routine. By day, Arwyn went to work (masquerading as a normal person); by night, Fey and Blade travelled steadily towards the coast. The party got into the usual mishaps collecting herbs for Kallara; these adventures, along with some training between travel coaches, resulted in each player gaining two levels, Fey reaching level 23 and Blade level 24. Fey delivered them to the healer after purchasing a teleport key with (a fairly large sum of) real money.

Out of curiosity, they visited all the healers in the towns they passed; each one had a name that started with K and bore strikingly similar – though not identical – facial features.

Blade noted a curious behaviour from his party-mate whenever other players happened to ride in the same travel coach: Fey would suddenly shift her body language to indicate that Blade was the party leader, directing the strangers’ attention to him. The first time it occurred, he was caught off guard, but he became accustomed to being in charge of making polite conversation with other players.

Fey simply did not enjoy talking to strangers, especially for the extended periods of time one was cooped up in a travel coach. She had no problems pretending to be shy in order to avoid the task, keeping her eyes lowered and speaking in a soft voice if necessary. Eavesdropping on the inane conversation Blade made, she did not notice anyone interesting enough to drop the pretense for. For most of these rides, she sat in a corner with Blade between her and other people, quietly training Immunity and casting Enchant on her flask of water.

The pets steadily closed the level gap between themselves and their owners. The glooms turned out to be extremely effective at killing plant-type monsters due to the blighting effect of their bites, and reached level 20 at the same time as Amethyst, Magic, and Boris (this isn’t because the author is tired of keeping track of different levels at all); all the Feypets gained another boost in intelligence and developed more distinct personalities.

Firefly reached level 10 very quickly and was level 15 by the time the trip was over. Her personality from an early stage was noticeably different from the Feypets; she acted in a much more dignified manner and was slightly in awe of Fey. The fyrfalcon had yet to display any signs of magic or fire, attacking her opponents with purely physical attacks by wing and talon. When not in combat, she perched quietly on the stand Blade had purchased along with a falconry gauntlet.

Friday night, Arwyn logged onto the game (early), anticipating her arrival at the coast before (virtual) nightfall.

Footnotes:

[i] In Pokemon, all the nurses at Pokemon Centers are identical cousins named Joy, and all police offices are identical cousins named Jenny