Chapter 90: Chapter Eighty Nine: Volcano Shop Hub

Before they summoned Scaley-waley, Qube insisted that the Chosen One explain that the wyvern was his friend to Squiggles. 

 

“I just think it will help her understand why she shouldn’t try and eat him,” Qube explained. 

 

“Scaley-waley’s a him now?” the Chosen One asked, slightly humorously.

 

“I don’t know,” Qube confessed. “Are they?”

 

“Sure, why not,” the Chosen One shrugged, and so Scaley-waley’s gender was decided.

 

Thusly, once they reached the gate out of Cobbletown, the Chosen One turned to Squiggles and knelt down, coming face to face with the sharktopus.

 

“No fighting Scaley-waley,” he said sternly.

 

Squiggles looked at him. She yawned.

 

“Excellent,” he said, and immediately summoned the wyvern.

 

“Chosen One!’ Qube exclaimed. Squiggles arched up on all her legs.

 

“No!” The Chosen One pointed a finger at her. To Qube's surprise, she subsided. Somewhat grumpily, true, but nevertheless she splorped over to Sewer Bard and Sexy Screamy Spider Lady, and tried to hitch a ride on the pair of them.

 

“Right, let’s go!” the Chosen One crowed, as Scaley-waley reared back, and then started running towards the volcano full tilt. The Chosen One pulled out his wings, and slapped them on his back where they burst out, full sized. This made Scaley-waley start flapping his own wings in solidarity, and soon they were both airborne, Chosen One still in the saddle, rising ever higher.

 

Qube and the others ran as hard as they could to try and keep up, Qube continuously glancing at the sky to make sure that they were on the right track. After a minute or two of flying, the Chosen One swooped back down.

 

“Okay, who wants to join me?” he called from his vantage point. “I think I can get him to pick one of you up.”

 

“I have no need to be picked up by a wyvern, my dear,” Sexy Screamy Spider Lady managed to sound seductive even when running with Squiggles on her back.

 

“I would not deny someone else the experience, Noble Patron,” Sewer Bard said easily.

 

“No,” Definitely Bad Guy bluntly replied.

 

“Do you think he can pick me up, even if he can’t see me?” Qube asked, trying to avoid running into anything as they ran across the rolling hills.

 

“Dunno,” the Chosen One said. “Let’s find out!”

 

Scaley-waley’s claws opened, then clamped shut around thin air. The Chosen One, frowning with concentration, nudged the wyvern slightly closer to Qube, until the wind from its massive wings was beating down on her. Given the size of Scaley-waley, the Chosen One couldn’t actually see Qube when she was directly underneath him. As she looked up at the underbelly of the beast, and saw how wickedly sharp its claws were, Qube started to have second thoughts.

 

“Um, Chosen One, actually, I don’t know if this —”

 

Claws closed around one of her arms.

 

“Did I get you?” the Chosen One called, starting to rise again.

 

“Chosen One, no!” Qube cried, as she started to lift off the ground.

 

“Okay, I’ll try again!”

The claws opened, dropping Qube back onto the ground.

 

---

 

It took several more attempts before the Chosen One was able to successfully pluck his childhood friend from the ground and gracefully lift her up. Surprisingly, the claws didn’t actually hurt Qube. She’d thought the first pickup not cutting her was a fluke, but no matter how Scaley-waley grabbed onto her, his claws didn’t puncture her. He was, despite his appearance, a surprisingly gentle creature.

 

Once again, Qube was humbled by the realisation that just because he was a giant, fanged and clawed beast that had been attempting to rip her from the embrace of gravity, didn’t mean he wasn’t also a good boy.

 

She told him this as he carried her, much to the Chosen One’s amusement.

 

“I know you can’t hear me, but you’re a good boy,” she told Scaley-waley, reaching up and patting one of his talons. “You’re very good at picking things up! Good boy! You even managed to pick up an invisible person! Such a clever wyvern.”

 

From below, Qube could feel a certain someone directing a very wounded look at her.

 

“You’re a good girl too, Squiggles,” she called down to the group. Squiggles continued looking at her reproachfully. “You need to get along with your new brother!” she continued.

 

Squiggles burrowed into the back of Sexy Screamy Spider Lady’s abdomen, partially disappearing into one of her body pockets.

 

Qube sighed. The first part of bonding was always difficult, but she knew soon Squiggles would take to her new party member. Hopefully.

 

Unless she tried to eat him again.

 

Regardless, that was a problem for the future. For now, she was soaring!

 

All too soon they were passing over the blasted landscape preceding Death Volcano, and arriving at the base of the giant cone, next to the still-present portal. Qube sighed in disappointment as she was gently placed on the ground, next to a river of lava with a few lava slime shyly watching them. As the wyvern landed next to her, she looked at Scaley-waley thoughtfully.

 

“Chosen One, I remember the salamanders were descended from dragons, and longed to get back to their roots. Do you think they would be interested in meeting a wyvern? I imagine that it would be almost like meeting a cousin.”

 

The Chosen One hopped off the wyvern and gave her an interested look.

 

“Sure thing,” he said, as he stepped through the flickering portal.

 

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Qube squinted as they teleported into the volcano proper. The place looked substantially different from when they had left it. It was currently in its magma form, with lava slimes happily blowing bubbles in their various pools of red hot magma, their chubby pink cheeks still flushed from being well fed. The Giant Lava Slime had taken their crown and placed it on its own, separate cushion, and seemed content to bob around in the biggest magma pool.

 

Scaly-waley was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he just hadn’t followed them? Strange.

 

“Oh [snacks], I forgot. Everyone, get changed,” the Chosen One was sweating profusely as he pulled out his fireproof outfit. Qube, not game to try her luck in getting changed in front of everyone, instead focused on the greatest threat in the room.

 

A small lava slime, with a tiny monocle somehow stuck to one of its eye stalks, was sitting behind a small desk hewn from the volcano itself. On the desk there were various items, mostly potions and accessories.

 

Shopkeeper. Qube glared at the hapless slime. It burbled at her, causing all anger at being forced to go shopping to instantly melt away.

 

Could she hug it? It would probably set fire to her. But still. Would it be worth it?

 

Before she could potentially immolate herself, the world blinked, and everything was replaced with salamanders. But what interested Qube was what didn’t change. The first constant was a strange wooden door embedded in one of the far walls. The second were the small messages carved into the walls. They’d been harder to see, in the magma world, but in the gold world they stood out, shiny and bright.

 

Ignoring the King Salamander, who started a very grand speech to their favoured Light Bringer, she examined one of the messages.

 

It was to “Salamander With Rose-White Wig,” from “Lava Slime With Two Bends In Tail”. It was halfway through being written, so far only asking the salamander how its day had been. Next to the message, a tiny salamander noble, who did indeed have an elaborate, albeit miniscule, rose-white wig, was carving some kind of reply into the floor.

 

Then the world blinked again, and Qube noticed a lava slime, its double-kinked tail proudly held high, assiduously holding a sharpened piece of obsidian in its mouth, ducking under the magma to work on its message, now hidden by the magma.

 

Looking around, Qube noticed several lava slime also working away at various projects. Some were writing, it looked like one or two were attempting to play tic-tac-toe with their salamander equivalents, and several of them had crowded around a particular message and were making excited tea-kettle screaming noises at each other. Sexy Screamy Spider Lady started to drift over to the ground, intrigued by their excitement. Squiggles clung to her still, glaring at the magma with distaste.

 

“Friend of the Slimes!” the Giant Lava Slime bellowed, before flickering out of existence. Across the room, King Salamander continued his speech, hissing his way through it.

 

A small cluster of salamander nobility were seated at a golden table, selling similar (admittedly more golden-looking) potions and accessories to their lava slime counterpart.

 

The Chosen One graciously indicated that the King Salamander (and the Giant Lava Slime, when they reappeared) were to discuss any political topics with his Bard by pushing Sewer Bard forward and saying:

 

“Hey. No, listen to me. Listen. Talk to him. No. Stop talking to me. Talk to him. He loves this stuff.”

 

After a few repetitions to each ruler, they seemed to understand, and started talking at both the Chosen One and Sewer Bard.

 

“Close enough,” the Chosen One said, patting Sewer Bard on the shoulder. “Go nuts, buddy.”

 

Sewer Bard, although looking somewhat bewildered by the whole exchange, especially the Chosen One’s cryptic order to “go nuts,” nevertheless settled in to try and discuss as much lore as possible with the alternating leaders. The Chosen One, meanwhile, went straight to the merchants.

 

“Okay, I’m going to pick up this potion to examine it,” he told the tiny noble salamanders. They hissed, the tiny flames on their foreheads flaring. Then, with a pop, they were replaced by the monocled lava slime.

 

“Is this yours?” the Chosen One asked the slime, holding out the golden potion. The lava slime looked at the potion so hard its eyes crossed.

 

“No,” it said eventually in a high pitched voice. Then it disappeared.

 

“Is this yours?” the Chosen One asked the salamanders. They swarmed over each other, examining the product. They conferred with each other in hissing undertones.

 

“No,” they agreed, and were instantly replaced by their slime side.

 

The Chosen One chuckled to himself. Definitely Bad Guy, perhaps seeking more understanding, also picked up a potion and looked it over carefully.

 

“It must break the connection somehow!” the Chosen One failed to explain to the Mage. “How does that work? Hang on, let me try…”

 

Seeing as he was absorbed in shopping, (although she was unsure quite why the shopkeepers kept saying the potion wasn’t theirs, some kind of negotiation tactic perhaps? It wasn’t like he was stealing) and the others were similarly occupied, Qube wandered over to the mysterious wooden door. Something about it looked familiar. She could have sworn that she had seen this door before.

 

Then she noticed the sign over it. A small, wooden sign, with many wounds inflicted on it over time but, still visible, it had the etchings of a carrot, a heart, and a potion vial. With the tang of magma and gold, it was hard to smell anything else, but there was the faint, all-too-familiar taste of varnish, salt… and customers’ despair.

 

It was Mr. Igma’s shop.

 

Almost timidly, Qube opened the shop door. She was invisible, right? So it wasn’t as if Mr. Igma would even notice her.

 

He was glaring right at her.

 

After nearly having a heart attack, Qube realised that the infamously grouchy shopkeeper was, in fact, glaring somewhere slightly beyond her. She shuffled along one of the shop’s walls. Sure enough, his gaze remained fixed on that one point.

 

She shivered, but crept up to the counter anyway.

 

She’d addressed the letter to Alderman from the village via Mr. Clockwork, in the hopes of being able to give it to Cobbletown’s Mr. Igma next time they went back. She just hadn’t wanted to do it while they were arguing about economics, afraid of another fire situation. She’d also added a few lines as well, asking if the other Potentials were going to join them, and informing them that they could stay at the inn.

 

She hadn’t checked with Zakora that guests could actually stay at the inn, what with it being a smouldering wreck, but she reasoned that Zaroka would at least be able to guide them on where they could stay. The Royals had been staying there, so there should be spare bedrooms.

 

Maybe they would even stay in the same bedrooms that the Exiled Prince and Exiled Princess had used, she thought reverently. ‘Not that they would be worthy!’ she mentally added.

 

Just because they were dedicated to saving the world, didn’t mean they should expect the Royal treatment.

 

Having reached Mr. Igma’s battered desk, she carefully placed her letter on the counter. Not by so much as a flicker of the eye did he acknowledge her, instead continuing to stare unblinkingly at something beyond the door.

 

Leaving the letter where she hoped he would eventually notice it (if he ever stopped glaring long enough) she walked out the shop. As she opened the door and stepped out, she realised what Mr. Igma had been glaring at.

 

He was glowering at the exact space where the Chosen One was still enthusiastically waving potions around at the lava slime and salamanders. She glanced over her shoulder to see that he had yet to blink.

 

With one final shiver running down her spine, she stepped out of the shadows of Mr. Igma’s store, and firmly closed the door behind her.

 

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