Volume 1, Chapter 44: One, Two, Tomato (Patreon)

“Wake up, wake up. It’s time.”

I felt a woman’s hands pulling me out of a dream that had reminded me of something that happened when I was still a teenager. For a moment, I thought they belonged to Headmistress Elise, but as soon as my eyelids unstuck themselves, I realized it was Nicky.

“What’s flowing?” I asked, feeling the world spin around me. I grabbed my head. “My Psyche… still… apple, grass, galloping cow.”

“What?” Nicky asked, and I realized I had started babbling.

I must have slept for less time than I’d expected. Assuming I’d get some rest afterward, I had abused my soul as much as I wanted, leaving my Psyche only a few steps short of complete collapse in an attempt to exercise that unusual muscle.

“His Psyche. He’s delirious,” Sophie said, I think.

“Yeah.” Nicky glared down at me. “Listen here, troublemaker. Rodrick found us and said you’ll be leaving in a few minutes. Get your stuff together. Can you manage?”

“Fence post,” I replied with a nod.

“Mhm. Yeah, he definitely has, um, brain damage.”

Bri glowed brighter a few steps away from me, but contrary to her diagnosis, I quickly realized that the brief headache had only been caused by waking up. The only unpleasant effect of my overuse that still remained was this inability to pick the right words.

I summoned my Daimon in my mind and asked about my condition.

[Initiating soul diagnostics… Psyche recovering. Estimated time until full recovery: approximately two Earth hours.]

I thought it was strange that the symptoms of overuse lingered for so long, but perhaps that had something to do with how mild they were, all things considered.

I smiled in response to my fireball, slung my backpack over my shoulders, and picked up the bag where I now kept all my ropes, the spare clothes I had received from the quartermaster, and the ones given to me by the inhabitants of the Egyptian Earth.

I was dressed in something much more local now: leather boots, linen underwear, pants, and a shirt—all of it in a beautiful faded gray—covered by patchwork leather armor consisting of greaves, a belt fitted with plates protecting my thighs and crotch—but not my ass, so I could comfortably sit on a mount—as well as a breastplate and shoulder guards that extended into armor protecting the entire length of my arms.

Over all of that, I wore a long asymmetrical cloak that concealed almost everything except one arm—my right. It was sandy in color.

If I wanted, the shirt also had a cowl I could pull up to cover my face.

Reaching into the bag, I covered my head with something resembling a turban, made from overlapping layers of thick fabric.

I also had a short sword sheath fastened to my belt, which I was using to carry my knife.

Grabbing my staff, I pointed first at Bri, then at the cage resting on top of my mage’s attribute. She jumped inside in that characteristic way of hers, flattening herself vertically and horizontally as she went, and I quickly shut the little door behind her.

“I, well, hope you’re eventually going to let me, um, out.”

I answered with a nod, then looked around the tent one last time—the temporary home the women had made for themselves—before letting my gaze settle first on Sophie, then on Nicky.

“Cauliflower,” I said. I grimaced, turned my head aside, and hissed through my teeth. “Thank you…” I whispered, trying again.

“You’re welcome. Good luck,” Nicky said.

Then I noticed Bri shrinking and beginning to fade, scattering sparks all around herself. Even Sophie started waving her hands frantically and rushing toward the flowers arranged nearby.

I quickly escaped the tent and stepped out into the fresh air—or whatever passed for fresh air underground. I filled my lungs with it and started walking toward the tents that served as the stables.

I decided not to turn around to see whether they had come out after me to wave or say goodbye. I had already said everything I had to say on that subject, and I had no intention of repeating myself.

Their fate was in their own hands now.

Bri clearly disagreed with my approach. She practically pressed herself against the bars of her little cage, staring back in the direction we were leaving. She was so emotional that smoke kept pouring off her, and the sparks she shed forced me to hold my staff at an angle so she wouldn’t set my new clothes on fire.

I quickened my pace to spare her the depressing view, and within a few minutes we reached the tallest tents in the area, where those buffalo-like lizards were tethered to central support poles.

Several of them had already been led outside—two bright red ones and one more brownish-gray—and fitted with something resembling harnesses connected to long saddles. Rounded shelves projected from the sides and rear of each saddle, and under Plasario’s supervision, a soldier dressed in light chainmail, pants, and a cloak similar to mine—though worn over actual armor—was loading a bag onto one of them.

At the front of the saddle was a double sheath built directly into it, holding the man’s spear and sword. There had to be something similar on the other side, because a sizable shield was mounted there as well.

That soldier had one of the red-scaled reptiles.

The brownish-gray one had to be mine, because Peter was already sitting on the second crimson beast.

I hummed and pointed Bri toward him.

“Well, what? I don’t know what you mean,” she replied, completely missing my concern.

At the same time, Plasario noticed me approaching. He turned his head away from the flame at the tip of my staff with visible distaste, then looked at me with a calmer expression.

“Master Arthur, everything is ready. Mr. Peter will be joining you on the journey, as he concluded on his own that he may not get a better opportunity, and that whatever reward lies beneath the temple is probably not worth his effort, sweat, and blood.”

“Hell nah, them ain’t my words! I said that shit was probably gon’ be one big-ass pile of bullshit!” Peter shouted, apparently determined to clarify what the swordmaster meant.

“Messenger Hurrin will be your guide. The port lies only about fifty miles from here, but the road is difficult, so you should reach it sometime around the middle of the second day of travel. Twelve to fourteen hours with short breaks on the first day, then a stop for the night so the animals can rest, followed by the remainder of the journey the next day. Of course, everything depends on conditions. Hurrin is an experienced messenger. I am certain he will lead you safely to the city.”

Plasario finished his explanation, and I only nodded before approaching the mount prepared for me, which was currently chewing on some kind of mushroom.

Its mouth was fairly flat, with layers of skin hanging down along it from above and forming folds. Beneath them, though, mostly sharp-pointed teeth protruded, which suggested a considerably more carnivorous diet. The reptile studied me with eyes that moved independently, almost like a chameleon’s.

Once I got closer, I placed my bag on the shelf on the animal’s left side and slid my staff into the slot meant for a spear.

Using the shelf on the right as a step, I climbed onto the reptodon and settled into the fucking miserable, hard leather saddle. I could feel that something beneath it was supposed to cushion my weight, but whatever it was, it did absolutely nothing to make the ride more comfortable.

I already knew my balls, dick, and ass were going to keep me on their shit list for a long time after this trip was over. And that wasn’t even mentioning my thighs, which I had to spread wide just to wrap them around the animal’s thick back.

“Do you know how to steer a reptodon?” our guide asked, walking over to his own and climbing onto it.

“With that, I leave you in Hurrin’s care. May the wind never lose sight of you, yet never blow into your eyes,” Plasario added, adjusting soldier's crooked cloak clasp before walking off toward the palisade still being built nearby.

“Man, I ain’t got no damn clue. Where I’m from, we got cars. Maybe horses too, if somebody got more money than they know what the fuck to do with. But lizards like these? Shit, back home they way smaller than this, bro.” Peter replied.

I just shook my head when the one-eyed man looked my way.

“You grab the reins—that’s the strap in front of you, at the front of the saddle. The saddle is what you’re sitting on. Pull the reins toward yourself once and the lizard will move forward. Pull only one side and it’ll turn in that direction. A sharp tug will stop the animal, while tapping rhythmically against its scales will make it pick up speed. Don’t overdo it, though. They’re not the fastest creatures around, but they are quick to get irritated.”

He kept explaining everything for a while longer, demonstrating on his own mount how they responded to different commands and correcting our mistakes on that worn patch of ground where we weren’t getting in anyone’s way.

Once we had finally learned enough to steer them without too much trouble, we set off along the road running through the forest opposite the temple, heading toward the river where the ruined bridge hung.

The trees rustled here, and the wind blowing gently between them—which, I realized, had to be some kind of draft moving through ventilation tunnels leading outside—washed over my still-uncovered face, refreshing both my skin and my mood.

Bri, sitting quietly like an ordinary ball of fire, sometimes looked toward me and sometimes simply admired the tiny creatures jumping through the grass or across the branches of the trees.

The closer we got to the rocks and the deafening pounding of the river, though, the sparser the vegetation became and the more alien it looked to my sense of aesthetics. Grass slowly gave way to fungal growths glowing with bioluminescent yellows and greens, while trees and shrubs were replaced by mushrooms of every size.

Crossing the bridge went surprisingly smoothly.

What I hadn’t realized was that when the caravan had approached from this direction, it had stopped before crossing and worked on filling the gaps with both timber and chunks of fungal matter. Now several people were still there, stirring some gray mixture in enormous cauldrons and pouring it over the roughly patched holes, hardening the crossing for future use.

Once we reached the other side, though, we didn’t follow the same path the caravan had taken toward the old camp. Instead, we headed in the opposite direction, climbing sharply upward across the rocks.

The lizards, as it turned out, were excellent climbers. More than once they surprised me with their agility and grip, scaling surfaces that looked almost vertical.

“Jaw test, jaw test,” I muttered quietly to myself, moving my face and jaw around as much as I could, stretching the muscles and forcing the bones into configurations that felt unnaturally wide to me. “One, two, tomato.” I started counting, delighted that the distortion in my speech seemed to have passed, but the sudden appearance of a vegetable in the middle of it quickly made me realize that it hadn’t completely.

“It’s, well, um, better,” Bri whispered to me, her voice sounding almost like the crackling of fire itself.

We were climbing across rocks where nearly horizontal mushrooms grew out from the stone, forming something like shelves of living material and, by extension, a ladder for our mounts to use.

Every now and then, mine bit into one of them, tearing off a solid chunk of mushroom to chew on as we climbed.

Our guide had barely spoken a word throughout the journey so far. He only stopped from time to time to look around for recognizable landmarks, which was no small challenge in the ever-present gloom, illuminated only by glowing vegetation and tiny animals.

“Why you ain’t sayin’ shit? You mute or somethin’? Somebody cut your damn tongue out?” Peter suddenly asked, holding tightly to his lizard as we climbed.

“I’ve got a temporary pot with speaking. Psyche exhaustion made my words like each other,” I replied with a sigh.

“Like each other? You mean you tryna use ’em? Man, I don’t understand none of that shit. Then why the hell you so quiet?”

“They like each other,” I tried to correct myself, but that didn’t come out any better.

“They’re getting, um, mixed up,” Bri said, trying to imitate me while lowering her voice. It sounded like someone had suddenly dropped a log into a fire. When she finished, she winked at me.

“Mixed up! Man, you shoulda just said that shit from the jump instead of tellin’ me they like each other!”  Peter replied as his mount disappeared over the edge of the rocky wall we were climbing.

Bri and I were only just reaching that section, and our beast was hooking its first foreleg over the ledge to haul itself up.

A deep chasm opened beneath us, but even if we fell, we probably would’ve survived. Those horizontal fungal shelves grew all along the wall, soft enough to form natural platforms that could break our fall.

“Quiet,” Hurrin said, raising his voice slightly. “We’ve got company.”

From among the densely packed mushrooms, with strands of mycelium stretched between them like pulled dough, creatures began to emerge—creatures that, according to every bit of logic I had brought with me into this world, had no right to exist.