Chapter 20: 20 – What A Benevolent Provider

Two hours later Corbin still hadn’t found anything. Well, plenty of things had found them: clouds of gnat-like things that seemed to want to feed on Kyessy’s sweat, lots of little leech things that apparently enjoyed the flavor of her clothes over her blood, because soon she had dozens of tiny bites out of her pants, and finally several hippo looking monsters made of literal rock. Bits of stone that appeared like eyes and ears floated off the place where perhaps the head was… but that meant the heads were the size of hippo bodies, and neither of them had any will to see how big the bodies got. They were called rugnegs, which seemed like a stupid name, until he remembered hippopotamus was a stupid name for an absurdly dangerous creature back home. The rugnegs were territorial elemental creatures, so they veered wide around them… the cost was in time rather than crushed limbs.

Luckily, they’d only been forced to kill one tenrill, the wily little bugger. The thing had exploded out of the water and attempted to attach itself to Kyessy’s face, but one use of Versatility turned his Strength from 5 to 14, and he’d clawed the thing off her without a single bit of trouble. Then, he’d flapped his wings a few times, and before it could curl around and snap at him, he’d chucked it a good fifty feet in the air, where it crashed through some of the canopy leaves and disappeared from sight.

Boom, more xp. Kyessy hadn’t been pleased that looting the thing wasn’t possible, but she hated tenrills so she wasn’t super bothered.

He spotted something big another ten minutes on, and she took his word for it by stopping immediately so he could have a closer look-see. A second later and he was hovering over the largest yellow area True Sight had ever revealed to him. It was easily fifty feet around, but wouldn’t respond to his Inspect attempts.

The whole thing appeared to be a large clearing in the midst of the swamp, ringed by great moss-covered trees, of raised earth covered by shaggy grass and… oh. Ringed by great white mushrooms. Check that, softly glowing mushrooms of pale blue.

“What do you make of a ring of mushrooms?” he asked.

“Consorting with the faerie realms is way beyond my pay grade,” she responded. “We have barely any iron, and you don’t know faerie court etiquette.”

“Right.”

“Meaning I’d have to try forever to free you, once you got turned into an hendan tree for eating their food or telling a lie or not complimenting the queen on her slippers or–”

“I got it. We go around it.”

“Great place to collect the moon sap, though.”

Collecting the moon sap involved Kyessy reaching out over the ring of bluish mushrooms with the jar the bog witch had supplied, for nearly an hour. Luckily, she was able to channel her Agility into Endurance for the final fifteen minutes of this, with the new Versatility card. The moon sap itself seemed to fall like clear, semi-translucent molasses into the jar, glimmering only when it folded over on itself. Otherwise it was quite invisible. The little gnat-like insects were attracted to this, and would sully the sap, so it also meant an hour of Corbin flapping like a crazy person to keep them out. He settled on eating them after a bit, which was disgusting. Even worse, they were delicious.

On the far edge of this near catastrophe, they found several of the flowers they needed, along with the relk. Corbin chased down this six legged spiny lizard, and was about to lift it bodily off the ground when its tail shot out at him and slammed into the tree nearest like an arrow.

That left the berries and the sligs.

Another hour of mucking about found them avoiding the second baskarand (though he could have killed it and argued that he should’ve), Kyessy getting into water up to her armpits (and nearly having an episode over it), and finally climbing, exhausted onto a rock that turned out to be a rugneg.

A bit of panicked flight later, he spotted a whole colony of star sligs basking under the moon on one of the original rugnegs, and used his Versatility to peel them off the elemental’s back. The huge elemental didn’t seem to mind this, but Corbin did. The sickly, moist white starfish things with the little tentacles were both gross and potentially poisonous if they got him with those tentacles. Furthermore, they didn’t taste at all like delicious eyeballs or gnats.

He shuddered in revulsion again. He had to stop being a friggin raven.

They gave up on the fither berries. You’d think that berries would grow everywhere, but apparently not. Not a single fither berry bush out here.

“We’ll just have to appeal to her sense of charity,” he suggested.

“Yes, I’m sure that will work. Do you have any idea what the Hideous Engorgement will do to us?”

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“Ahh… engorge us? Hideously?”

“Yes!”

Still, they trekked back to the cottage and stared at it for a little while. The sun was starting to turn the eastern sky orange-tinged indigo, or soft midnight, when Corbin flew up and perched atop the cottage.

And saw it.

She had rows of fither berry bushes on the other side of her cottage. He laughed in bone-tired, disbelieving glee. Ten minutes later this message appeared on delivery of all the promised materials.

 

Quest Completed! – Vital Ingredients

The witch’s feet thank you heartily, and luckily her enemies will never know it was you who provided the void blossoms.

Reward: Your continued safety. Learn to value that maybe?

 

They camped not far off. The witch’s cottage had been the eastern boundary of the swamp, meaning they now had solid ground under their feet and no whippy little snake birds or gigantic fungal centipedes. With the witch’s dwelling out of sight, Kyessy proceeded on just another minute through the light woods, surveyed the place for gigantic monsters, then nodded with finality. She then produced a bedroll with a flick of her wrist, unrolled it at the base of a tree, and immediately slept the sleep of the dead. Corbin wasn’t far behind, but selected a much safer tree branch directly above her, and fell asleep in moments.

He dreamed of the girl with the black hair, strangely enough. He still didn’t know who she was, but he dreamed of laughing with her on the couch, while some video game played on the television. She was laughing at him for being such a lame loser and picking Dhalsim. It was a KO, Guile had won. Later this had shifted to her making PB&J in an oversized t-shirt with half her butt showing.

He came to and discovered Kyessy’s empty bedroll. She returned bearing a creature with a dog-like head, the body of a velociraptor, and mostly yellow feathers.

“You’re awake,” she said.

“Sadly yes.”

“Here.” She brutally whacked the thing’s head off with a dagger and left it for him. Meanwhile, she stuffed the rest of the carcasse in her inventory, produced some berries and nuts, and had herself a midday breakfast.

“What a benevolent provider you are.” He remembered his mother’s face now, and thankful it wasn’t the girl from his dreams, he recalled her saying that sarcasm wasn’t any use to anyone. And, a world away, in a completely different body, with no idea where she was or if she was even still a part of the old Corbin’s life, he felt the specter of a guilt trip.

And he’d be damned if he didn’t eat those fresh, gourmet eyeballs.

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