The next few days passed peacefully enough for us, with each of us doing our own thing. Isabella continued to read her old book, and she mastered one new spell at a time until she finally had finally learned all eight of the spells from the original book -- Lifeflame, Bark Skin, Enchant Earth, Flash Freeze, Poison Spray, Raven Sight, Phantasm, and Flame Dance.

Lifeflame, flash freeze, enchant earth, and phantasm she’d used several times in the past, so I knew what those did. The others, she demonstrated and explained to us. Bark skin was a spell that made a person’s skin as hard to pierce or cut as the bark on a tree; it was basically a magical form or armor.

Poison spray collected the water vapor and mist in the air, and then corrupted it to make it poisonous before pushing the mist in a spray towards a target. It was a cone type attack that could cover a sixty degree arc of an area up to ten meters away, but we weren’t certain how powerful it actually could be – or even if we should use it. How long did the poison linger? How effective was it? How would it behave on windy days? Could we eat the creatures poisoned, or would the poison carry transfer like that? Or by looting them?

Poison was something a little spooky to think about, and hard to test and get answers from safely. I don’t know if poison spray will ever be something we’ll use, since it has so many uncertainties to it.

Raven Sight was a telescope type spell. Cast it, see further away. It also took some serious getting used to as it made certain things stand out a lot more. Shiny things drew the attention a lot easier – it’d be perfect for finding a lost ring in a field or something – and the edges of objects seemed crisper and sharper. In time, and with some practice, I think it could be used to help quickly find or search an area, but for now it simply gave me a headache after a few moments. Awesome potential, limited current possible application of that potential.

And finally, flame dance. Flame dance wasn’t a spell that created a flame or anything of that sort. Instead, it allowed the user to control an existing flame. Take a fire like a campfire, and you could shape the flame coming up from that campfire, turn it into a fiery tentacle, and lash out at things nearby if you wanted. Or take the flames from a fireball and split it in half so it goes harmless around you, or shape it into a spear so it directly focuses on one target.

Could you imagine having a flamethrower where you could control the flame and shape it however wide, narrow, hot, or intense you wanted it? How about if you could make the flame twist and dance sideways around a corner? Or go through a window and then fan out?

If you could imagine something that awesome, then you can imagine flame dance! All we need is a nice flamethrower from somewhere, and Isabella is set to destroy all sorts of evil nasties! I wonder what classroom those would be stored in? Home economics maybe?

With her new magic, Isabella got a few new earrings finally. One pierced the loose skin of her lower back, right above her butt, and another pierced the loose skin at the base of the back of her neck. With the addition of these two earrings, she could now make a full set of phantasmal clothing to hide her body. There wasn’t any real cloth there; just bare skin covered by a colored style cloud; but with the addition of bark skin it even worked as armor for her.

Isabella’s level had risen – it was seven now as well – and with the levels and practice, her ability to enchant had strengthened also. By separating the enchantments into four different earrings, each one only had to make a small phantasm to hide her body, so the energy cost was minimal for maintaining the ‘clothing’. The bark skin protection was a little more draining, so it was essential to keep it turned off as much as possible. With just the illusion clothing, the earrings would last for several weeks before needing to be recharged. Using the armor enchantment, that amount of time was reduced to hours instead.

But, it was still leagues better than what she’d had before, and Isabella was still growing as a wizard and an enchanter. Originally, the clothes themselves wouldn’t last but for a few hours. If she kept practicing and growing, I had faith she’d be able to make some amazingly powerful things in the future for us. Currently, it wasn’t feasible for all of us to have enchanted clothes or piercings, but sometime in the future, it might be, once the cost to maintain those enchantments is reduced for her.

Brandr would spend every morning practicing with me for several hours, while the yippy hound would growl, snarl, run in between us, and nip at our toes. I complained over almost tripping over it several times, and Brandr told me he was helping with my training – a warrior never knows what terrain or distractions to their footing may be around them. Since she was trying to adjust to wearing those high-heeled boots, I figured I’d serve my self-interests best by keeping my mouth shut and not complaining anymore.

Another thing I learned about Little Buster in those training sessions? It’s tuff. Helluva tuff!! I stepped on the runt dozens of times as we fought, and it simply yipped, wagged its tail, and tried to bite my toes off. The one time I stepped down on its head and stuck its tusks into the bottom of my foot, I instinctively jerked back and kicked it. The pup arced across the room, past Brandr, and crashed into the wall with a bang!!

Instantly, the little bastard was up and yipping and running over to try to nibble on us some more, while I hobbled around and cussed. I’d broken my toe on it! Kicking that mutt was like kicking a solid chunk of concrete. Or steel!

And the one the girls babied and made over as if it was dying?

It! And it hadn’t even noticed where I’d kicked it, or the dent in the drywall it’d made. It didn’t need to be called “Little Buster”. We should’ve named it “Damn-Ugly Toeslayer!”

Another problem with it? It ate. And ate. And ate. And ate. And then pooped a pile bigger than it was! A smelly, stinky pile – and do you want to guess who had to clean it up and flush it? If you said, “Not the girls”, you’d be correct! Sometimes I really did wonder who was in charge of things around here.

After training, we’d all sit and eat together for breakfast. Isabella didn’t each much in the mornings, and my problem with my overactive loins wasn’t occurring anymore either. Apparently, Isabella has been sneaking midnight snacks while everyone else is sleeping, and she’s been pigging out and eating a lot of 'my-food'! Since the end result was a lot more comfortable for me than having a volcano bulge up in my pants all day long, I was happy to go back to pretending like I didn’t have a clue what was going on. Isabella could pretend to be “watching her diet” at breakfast, and I could walk around without a perpetual stiffy. Win-win, as long as she didn’t get tired of feeding in the middle of the night, and since she never complained, I never asked.

After breakfast, Isabella went back to studying her spells and Brandr went out on patrol to make certain that nothing dangerous had decided to take up residence on our wing. From her reports, the Christmas Event had truly helped to reduce our worry for food. The candy creatures that had climbed out of the cracks were still around, as long as nothing living approached them. The ones down around us were all destroyed as they mindlessly tried to charge Jello and attack it as it patrolled down the hallway, but on the other side of the barricade were rooms full of the idiot creatures.

The candy monsters didn’t have any need to eat, sleep, or reproduce; they were lacking all the usual motivations one would find in a living creature. They were more like candy golems of some sort, which had been give the mindless task of “kill the living”. They were almost like the stories of zombies or the living dead which we used to hear about so often in the Pre-Crack World. Idiot creatures that just stood around until you got too close to them and then they simply tried to swarm you.

Since Brandr had killed the Goblin Champion before in her classroom, she hid herself and scouted several different places in the south wing past the barricade before she found where it had reappeared. Apparently the month respawning was the means which people could be certain to get all the necessary kills to clear a floor. Before, I’d soloed the Rat Champion and Brandr had soloed the Goblin Champion, and as such, we’d made it impossible for either of us to get all the required kills. Now with the creatures respawning, Isabella and Brandr had gotten the Rat Champion kill, and the Goblin Champion had respawned back in the right side of the south halls.

Thank goodness, Jello didn’t eat him!

While Isabella was reading and Brandr was scouting, I spent my time trying to work with the goblins and even the two ‘weak ones’. I made certain that the goblins were staying out of trouble, and I collected the fruit they offered to us each morning as “tribute”. (But, honestly, I didn’t ask how or where they got it from. I knew the weak ones were involved in producing it, but I didn’t bother to ask how. I wasn’t certain I really wanted the answer.) For the two girls, I made certain that they were being walked (crawled really as neither of them stood upright) for exercise, and I made the goblins go bathe them every morning and dress them in a set of the clean outfits we’d gotten from the evil Santa. If there’s some other way to help them improve, I don’t know it. Either they heal on their own, or they just stay mindless fruit-makers for now. It’s the best I can do for them.

As for the goblins themselves, I started trying to teach them what was acceptable for human levels of cleanliness. Twenty goblins could poop a pile of nasty in a days’ time, and they had no idea how to use the toilets in the restrooms. Usually, they just went and squatted in the corner and left it to pile up. As a guy, I didn’t know how to explain the whole “sit and shit in the ceramic bowl” concept to them, so I left that to Isabella. Once again, by whatever talent of genius she had, she managed to explain and teach it to the goblins with very little effort. I could’ve broken my brain trying to figure out how to teach goblins to poo in the loo, but Isabella did it in no time!

Once they’d learned a little about personal cleanliness, I took time to teach them about wiping down things, straightening things up, making things look decent again – as much as possible. A lot of the chairs were organized in the rooms and stacked in lines once more, and broken boards, tables, lids and such things were laid across them in a makeshift path to create raised rows of connected “shelves”. The fungus and remains on the floors were scraped up by the goblins using their claws and smeared across the “shelves” of boards and debris between the chairs, and then Lucy was brought in to help grow the mushrooms upon them.

It took a little work and effort with the goblins, but a lot of the mess in the rooms was cleaned up to make them into harvestable mushroom plantations. Once finished, the rows of makeshift shelves gave off that strange florescent glow with the fungus, moss, and mushrooms growing on them, and in their own way were actually very pretty. It seems that even in the darkest of places, beauty can find a foothold.

And as for the little muppy (Monster puppies are muppies, right?), he was a complete pain in the ass during this time. He’d chase the goblins while yipping and barking at them, and frighten off the one I was trying to talk to or work with. Given a chance, he’d knock them down and slobber on the poor little things from one end to another. He didn’t hurt them – to be honest, I’m not certain if he could hurt them. Even when he goes on “toe attack” mode with Brandr and me practicing, he doesn’t hurt anyone. (Unless you trip over him or kick him and break your own toe!)

But, he scared the poor little goblins to death! For about the first two days or so…

Then they realized he was just an affectionate kisser, and some of the little ones started chasing Buster and trying to catch it and lick it from top to bottom! In some ways, it was disturbing to watch, but in others, it was almost heart-warming and amusing to see a goblin curled up licking on its paws while it licked on the goblins foot or leg. I just hope the damn thing doesn’t grow up to be some sort of perverted horndog when it gets older.

Another thing the goblins learned about Buster – he can be bribed with sweets. Even though the damn hound ate constantly in the room and was always chewing up the fruitcake and candy left over from the rats we’d killed, it still wouldn’t refuse a snack from the goblins. I am not exaggerating when I say I bet the dog ate more fruitcake in a day’s time than would be used to sculpt a life-sized statue of it! Two or three fruitcakes would probably be enough to sculpt a life-size puppy out of; the little beast probably eat twice that much in a day’s time! It was a good thing we’d found a sustainable food source, and that we had all the extra from the Christmas event, or else that muppy would have ate us out of house and home!

In the evenings, Brandr came back from her time scouting and searching the building – she had to go slow and careful now that the candy beasts had respawned and moved into the rooms, and that’s when all three of us gathered and spent some time together. Isabella recharged her energy from both Brandr and me, and then we’d have mock battles to try things out.

At first, it was just the three of us on the roof fighting with each other while the little muppy kept interfering, but after a few days some of the goblins even got up on the roof and played with us using the candy-spears which Santa had carried. We had to be careful not to harm the little runts as they didn’t have even half the health that Isabella had, but we let them join in with us. Who knows? Maybe someday the little goblins might even help us fight to protect our new little home.

Isabella seemed to draw most of the little goblins to her and they joined her ‘team’ in the battles, but after a bit, a few even came and stood beside me and joined my ‘army’. Only Brandr had to fight alone, and almost as if it thought that wasn’t fair, Buster stayed by her side and joined her the most.

Personally, I think that the idiot little beast was just attacking based on pure percentages – twenty goblins plus Isabella plus Me made twenty-two targets. Brandr was just a single target. It makes sense that the little idiot would be twenty-two times more likely to attack someone that wasn’t Brandr, than it would her – but she didn’t see it like that. Brandr saw it as proof that the little muppy loved her the most and was protecting her from us “meanies”.

And somehow, that made Isabella pout.

Which somehow lead to the two girls getting mad at each other.

And me and my army getting our asses kicked from all directions!

I’ll never understand women!!

And then the worst part? They’d both cuddle up and snuggle at night with me and each other as if nothing in the world had happened earlier. How the hell can two girls fight so hard, beat each other so silly – and ME, in the process – and then snuggle up and cuddle together afterwards like nothing happened?

Even with the passage of the next few days, with us all learning and growing in our own ways, I still hadn’t gotten even a fraction of a percentage closer to figuring women out. The goblins I was starting to work with and manage. My fighting skills were starting to improve. Isabella was starting to learn new magic, and Brandr was starting to learn where all the monsters had respawned.

And women were still a complete mystery to me!