Chapter 26

“Freeeedom!” Fey opened the carriage door and hopped out as soon as it was safe to do so. Players waiting at the travel post (it was literally a post in the ground) were treated to the unusual sight of the procession of pets that hopped and tumbled down the carriage steps after her. Blade exited in a slower, more dignified manner. He had to hurry (in a less dignified manner) in order to catch up to Fey, who was exercising her newly regained freedom of movement by walking rapidly into town.

Fey gazed around at the bustling human town. It appeared to be modelled after small villages before the advent of modern technology, with cobblestone streets and small one-storey buildings. A few of the shops reached two storeys, as did the clock tower with its huge bell. The majority of the crowd consisted of human newbies wearing the basic starter outfit, but there were enough players past the first day of playing that Fey and Blade did not stand out too much.

“Ooh look, a pet shop!” Fey rushed over to a glass storefront with “Pet Shoppe” painted on it in fancy lettering. Wanting to get out of the crowds, Fey opened the door and went inside. (Blade was pulled along by the invisible-but-powerful herd instinct.)

Rather than live animals, the pet shop contained many eggs of various shapes, colours and sizes. Players without any pet-related skills were unable to bond with adult creatures and had to raise pets from birth (hatching?).

Fey scanned the small cards that indicated the species and price of each egg. Prices started at 5000g and jumped into hundreds of thousands for the rarer magical creatures. For a population of players just starting the game, a pet egg was out of budget, and Fey’s party was alone in the shop.

“May I help you, miss?” The pet shop owner was a generic-looking human male (because the author is a lazy noodle).

“Uh, nope, just looking around.” Fey nudged Blade with her elbow. “You should get one.”

As Fey had hoped, the shopkeeper turned his attention to Blade. “Sir?”

Blade was rather inclined towards buying a pet. He had a fair sum of gold stored away, having not purchased exotic custom armour and weapons like Fey had. After observing Fey playing with her pets, he thought it would be fun to have one of his own.

“What would you recommend for a warrior?” he asked.

Sensing an impending sale (his first, actually, after several in-game weeks of players too poor to buy anything), the shopkeeper became extremely enthusiastic. “Of course, sir! I can recommend pets to fit every budget and fighting style! For warriors, we have magical pets to help balance your damage type, fast pets that deal that critical bit of extra damage, pets with high defence to help anchor your party, and pets with ranged attacks of all elements!”

“Er…” Blade was paralyzed by the variety of choices. He was not sure of his exact fighting style, let alone what pet he wanted, but the decision seemed too important to make arbitrarily.

Fey chimed in with her opinion. “Get a fire-element magic-type,” she advised. Fire was a properly destructive element that worked well against most monsters, even boiling away water and ice creatures with enough power behind it (plus, her inner pyromaniac insisted).

“Excellent suggestion, miss!” The shopkeeper pulled various eggs nestled in individual cushions off the shelves and placed them on the counter. They ranged in size from smaller than a robin’s egg to larger than an ostrich egg. Most were in various shades of yellow and orange, some evenly coloured, some with specks and swirly patterns (“swirly” is such a fun word).

Blade pointed at one of the smaller eggs near the top of his budget at 10,000g (holy crap, he’s a way better saver than Fey is. Also, he doesn’t have hoarding problems that stop him from selling junk items). “What’s that?”

“Ah, you have an excellent eye, sir! The fyrfalcon” (rhymes with gyrfalcon[i]) “has both powerful magic and physical attacks. At higher levels, it can create massive tornados of fire.”

“Sounds cool,” said Fey. She approved of the dual fire/wind affinity and would have immediately purchased the fyrfalcon, but Blade insisted on hearing the description of every pet within his price range.

The shopkeeper went through the line-up one by one; every pet had great potential to become powerful magical creatures (the author is too lazy to come up with descriptions of multiple pets, so just imagine a bunch of fire Pokemon), but the fyrfalcon was the only one that could fly. Fey made compelling arguments (*devious logic*) for the fire-bird and against the other pets until Blade agreed and went to the bank to withdraw his savings. Fey tagged along to deposit the small coins and junk items she had accumulated (*hoard*).

“Thank you for your purchase!” The shopkeeper removed the stasis spell keeping the egg from hatching and provided a bottle of complimentary growth potion, enough to make the fyrfalcon grow to adult size. “Just a dab of this will make the egg hatch, and then feed the bird the rest,” he advised.

“Thanks.” Blade took the bottle and his new egg, now nestled securely in a padded box, and headed out of the shop (in the lead, for once).

“Okay, let’s find somewhere to hatch this baby,” said Fey.

Blade began to head towards an unoccupied public bench on the street, but Fey stopped him. “Where do you think you’re going?” she asked in a big-sister tone.

“Over there?” Blade was rather susceptible to the big-sister tone, as it had featured prominently in his childhood.

Fey sighed as if the obviousness of the bench’s unsuitability weighed on her soul (*melodramatic*). “Don’t you know that baby birds imprint on the first person they see? You have to go somewhere without any people.” Fey’s knowledge of imprinting was related to baby ducks, and she was unaware that for birds of prey, the process was much more gradual and reliant on caretaking rather than vision. (Clearly, the author has spent time on her favourite search engine. And has a minor obsession with baby ducks.)

Fey kidnapped (egg-napped) Blade’s egg and led the way out of town to the more secluded wilds. She settled on an empty grassy area and set the egg down. “Here.” She walked a short distance away so that the chick would not imprint on her. As she left, she added, “You’d better not name it anything stupid.”

Blade stared at the egg, trying to think of a name Fey would not consider “stupid”. He probably would have ended up naming his pet “Fyrfalcon” without intervention.

Finally, he unscrewed the bottle of growth potion. The cap was also conveniently a transfer pipette (eyedropper), which Blade used to drip a drop of potion onto the egg.

Upon being quickened, small cheeping sounds could be heard from inside the egg, which soon resulted in a crack on the shell’s surface. After several minutes, the fyrfalcon chick struggled free of its confines and emerged into the world, small and pink and looking almost featherless with its chick down still wet. Its eyes were still shut, preventing the kind of imprinting Fey imagined.

Blade thought that the chick was an ugly kind of cute. “Hello,” he said to the little bird.

“Firefly,” Blade decided (which, by Blade standards, was very creative).

Firefly opened its beak and cheeped demandingly. Blade released a few drops of growth potion inside.

At the sound of the chick’s demanding cries, Fey approached. She examined the baby fyrfalcon, now slightly larger and with its eyes opened. Its down feathers had dried (no idea why growth potion would speed evaporation, but just go with it), so it was now fluffy with pinkish fuzz.

“Cute,” she appraised. “What’s its name?”

“Firefly.”

“Shouldn’t you be named Malcolm, then?[ii]”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.”

Firefly cheeped demandingly and Blade fed it some more growth potion, making it visibly larger in size.

“Looks kinda useless, though,” Fey continued. The fyrfalcon chick’s wings looked short and stubby without the long, stiff feathers that would enable it to fly.

“I have to feed it the rest of the growth potion.” Blade was stymied when Firefly closed its beak, apparently full. “Aww, come on,” he coaxed, poking the beak with the tip of his pipette.

Fey was highly amused to see Blade’s struggles with the tiny, stubborn bird. “It looks like this is going to take a while.” She would have been happy to settle down and observe the entire frustrating process, but in the interest of saving time, decided to go herb-collecting. “I’ll go ahead and collect the tear grass while you do your thing.”

“Okay,” Blade responded absently. The chick had opened its beak long enough for him to drip a little more potion down its throat, then promptly closed it again. “Aww, come on,” Blade repeated.

Walking away. I’m walking away. Ahh, but this is so amusing. Okay, for real this time. Fey (finally) walked away, following Kallara’s map to find some tear grass.

A (n indeterminate) distance from Newtown, Fey found a patch of bright blue grass. Kallara’s instructions called for Fey to collect the leafy blades of grass rather than the roots. She (not-so-carefully) grabbed a handful and ripped it away from the ground. She had learned from her previous adventures that it was likely something (bad) would happen after the plants were damaged, but did not see a way to avoid triggering whatever was to come, and therefore got on with the harvesting in a fast and straightforward manner.

The broken edges of the grass immediately began to emit a white, smoky substance that spread out in a cloud. As if signalled, the undamaged grass followed suit, and Fey and her pets were quickly engulfed in the foggy substance.

As soon as the smoke reached her face, Fey’s eyes began to itch and water. Breathing it in caused uncontrollable coughing, much more irritating than normal smoke from a fire. (Anyone get the pun yet?)

Coughing hard and effectively blinded, Fey backed out of the smoky area as fast as she could. Boris followed suit, suffering the same affliction, but the rest of the Feypets were unaffected due to their non-animal physiology.

Amethyst squeaked angrily, incensed at the indignity done to her owner, and began smashing her bubble around. Very small clods of earth went flying. Her Whip had very strong force, but small area of impact, so was not-very-effective in killing a lawn of grass.

Magic was more effective. His Drain ability quickly took care of the small area of tear grass his stem was planted in. He hopped around (like a cute harbinger of blight), leaving circular patches of dead grass in his wake (like the weirdest footsteps ever).

Amethyst grew impatient at the gaps of live grass Magic’s attacks were leaving. She squeaked commandingly at the glooms, and they proceeded to roll the mushroom around for more continuous coverage (*tumble*). The shadow-rabbits were rather haphazard in deciding what direction to roll him in (picture rabbit soccer), but eventually, the entire area of tear grass was dead.

Eventually Fey stopped coughing. Wiping her streaming eyes, she saw the destruction of nature her pets had wrought. “Overkill,” she said fondly (please note that neither Fey nor the author advocate the destruction of the natural environment in real life).

Fey began to gather the tear grass she needed. The entire lawn had far more grass than Kallara needed, but since it was already dead, Fey figured she might as well take it all.

Gathering completed, Fey shouldered her backpack and headed back to Blade.

Firefly the fyrfalcon had molted away its fluffy chick down and now had the plumage of an adult falcon. While real-life gyrfalcons were various combinations of white, brown, grey, and black, the fyrfalcon was a dark carmine red, with rusty red-brown mottling on its wings.

Firefly perched on Blade’s right forearm, where he had wrapped his newbie tunic in order to give the fyrfalcon’s talons something other than smooth steel to grip.

“Hello there,” Fey said to the bird of prey. (Blade got a brief glance to acknowledge his existence.) Elf and falcon examined each other curiously. So, this is what a normal pet looks like, Fey mused. Other than its reddish plumage, Firefly looked like a normal gyrfalcon, with predatory forward-facing eyes, a hooked beak for tearing flesh, and sharp-taloned claws for catching prey. Its wings were long and narrow to facilitate high-speed flying.

Unlike Fey’s pets, who looked cute and cuddly even while they unleashed merciless (and OP) attacks, Firefly looked like a creature that meant (violent) business, even though it was still fairly helpless at level 1. Fey appreciated the falcon’s in-your-face style of threatening elegance, but did not envy Blade his pet over her own (go Feypets!).

One detail that Fey could not determine was the bird’s gender (she knows that “gender” is technically a sociological construct and not a biological state, but prefers the word over “sex” because people have dirty minds and get distracted very easily). She knew that female birds of prey were larger than their male counterparts (avian girl power!), but having never seen a fyrfalcon (or any kind of falcon) before, she had no frame of reference to judge by.

“So, male or female?” she asked.

Blade stared at his new pet for a moment. He was unable to glean any information from the inspection. “Dunno.”

“Let’s go ask the pet shop owner,” Fey suggested.

Blade nodded, and the pair turned to walk towards town.

“So what about your pets?” he asked conversationally.

Fey smiled wryly. “Well, most of them can’t be classified as male or female.” She rattled off the list, having scientifically classified the pets through observation. “Amethyst is some kind of oversized, undifferentiated animal cell that probably reproduces through mitosis. Magic is a fungus, so I guess is technically both male and female, or maybe neither. The glooms appear to be animated dark element that happen to like being in bunny shape, so I have no idea what they do. Boris, based on his tusks[iii], is definitely male.” If pets reflected their owner as Leandriel had suggested, Fey wondered what the genders (or lack thereof) of her pets said about her.

“…I see.” Blade was fairly certain that the last time he had heard the word “mitosis” was in high school (which means that he clearly hadn’t majored in any of the life sciences in university). “You put a lot of thought into this,” he ventured.

Fey shrugged. “Not consciously, but yeah.” Unless she focused on a particular task, a large part of Fey’s brain devoted itself to random musing about things like the reproductive capabilities of glooms (which is probably why she tends to trip over her own feet once in a while).

The sun started to set during their walk, growing dim enough that careful observation could make out Amethyst’s slight bioluminescence. The glowing purple slime interrupted their walk by jumping down from Fey’s shoulder and jumping up and down excitedly, pointing in a direction away from town.

“King Slime?” Fey asked. Amethyst nodded.

“Okay, let’s go.” Fey bent down to pick up Amethyst and carry her to the slime territory, but Amethyst hopped over to Boris and Magic. The slime squeaked meaningfully, making a circular motion with her bubble that encompassed the three Feypets.

Fey was not particularly good at charades, but she did her best. “You three… want to kill it yourselves?”

The pets nodded.

“Okay, off you go, then.” The three senior pets were now level 17, so Fey judged they would have little trouble against one level 15 boss monster if they worked together (*sniffle* they grow up so fast, don’t they?).

Amethyst and Magic jumped onto Boris’ back, and the miniature boar trotted off.

“Uh, do you think it’s okay to let them go off like that?” asked Blade.

Fey shrugged. “How much trouble could they get into?” (Ah, how the irresponsible pet ownership just goes on and on.) She called after her pets, “Stay in the slime area, and we’ll come find you!” Amethyst waved her bubble (cutely) in acknowledgement.

Fey strolled insouciantly towards town. Blade sent an uncertain glance after the pets, then followed, Firefly still perched on his arm.

***

(This narrator is very pleased to introduce the very first scene written from the pets’ point of view! *throws virtual confetti that doesn’t have to be cleaned up afterward*)

Amethyst was hungry. Her membrane had been strengthened on the carriage ride by being poked (and chopped), but she had not consumed anything to fuel the changes. If she had had a stomach, it would have growled in anticipation as the panicked yells of newbies indicated the presence of her favourite food.

A player came into view, running directly at Amethyst and her companions. In the deepening shadows of evening, blinded by fear, the newbie missed seeing the diminutive pets despite Amethyst’s faint glow.

Judging that if the player was allowed to continue his forward trajectory, he would trample the Feypets, Amethyst (conscience-lessly) snapped out a Whip attack, shattering the player’s right kneecap (*excessive unnecessary violence*).

Crippled mid-stride, the newbie performed a spectacular example of the phenomenon known as “faceplant”, falling down with a yell of pain that was abruptly muffled by the ground.

Magic squeaked (“Nice aim.”).

Amethyst squeaked (“Thanks.”).

Boris, having remained at a steady trot throughout the whole affair, chimed in with a grunt (“I could have dodged that, you know”).

The idea of dodging had never occurred to the legless and slow-moving mushroom and slime. Amethyst squeaked several times (“Good point. We’ll do that next time.”).

Magic politely disagreed with his own squeaking (“But this way, you train more.”). The Feypets had their owner’s drive to obsessively level things up, so even one extra Whip counted (more than the well-being of a newbie).

Boris acknowledged the point by nodding. He smoothly carried his companions past the downed player, who was groaning and clutching his leg.

The trio came upon their opponent in the form of an orange King Slime, highly visible with its glow against the dark of twilight. All the newbies had successfully escaped from the area (or had turned into dead streaks of light and flown out of the area), so the boss monster was not actively attacking anything. Local slimes came out of their hiding places to gather admiringly around their huge cousin-monster.

If Amethyst had had a nose, she would have snorted at the celebrity worship. She squeaked derisively (whatever that sounds like).

Boris stopped a distance away to begin battle preparations before engaging the enemy. Magic hopped off to go hide in a patch of tall grass and provide support from a distance.

Copying a technique from Fey, Amethyst coated her bubble and Boris’ tusks with furyweed poison. After experiencing the poison herself, Fey would no longer use the painful toxin (unless provoked), but Amethyst had no such qualms (*evil*).

After rolling around on the grass to wipe off excess poison, Amethyst hopped back onto Boris’ back. She squeaked (“Ready.”)

Boris began a Charge attack. A property of the skill was that the boar continuously gained speed as long as he continued running in a straight line, so by the time they hit the King Slime, they were travelling ridiculously fast. Amethyst flattened herself against the boar’s back as they blasted through the side of the King Slime, tearing a giant hole in its membrane. (Innocent bystander slimes were also trampled to death.) As they travelled behind the boss, Amethyst shot out Whip to both damage the King Slime and aid their forward momentum in running away.

The King Slime gave a relatively low-pitched squeak of pain at both the injury and the poison diffusing through its cytoplasm, and counterattacked. The fight became a game of dodgebubble as Boris made skilful evasive maneuvers to avoid the boss monster’s oversized version of Whip. (Many more common slimes were trampled to death or splattered out of existence by their cousin-monster.) Amethyst pitched in by smashing the King Slime with her bubble whenever she could do so without upsetting Boris’ balance. Magic surrounded the King Slime with a cloud of slowing and paralyzing Spores, but it was so large that it did not feel the full status effects.

Things were working out well for the pets until Boris dodged in the wrong direction and was smashed by the King Slime’s bubble. The heavy sphere caught him under the ribs and threw him into the air for a short distance before he landed heavily in a groaning heap.

Amethyst squeaked in alarm as her mount was knocked out from under her. Seeing that Boris was unable to stand, she attacked before the King Slime could finish him off. She jumped up and engulfed the boss monster’s giant bubble, attempting to digest it alive.

The King Slime attempted to dislodge Amethyst by repeatedly slamming her into the ground. A normal slime would have exploded on the first impact, but Amethyst’s Double Membrane was strong enough to keep her intact, though not without pain. She grimly hung on through the battering, willing her digestive enzymes to work faster.

Seeing his oldest friend’s ordeal, Magic hopped out of hiding. He sent out every kind of Spore within his abilities, which somewhat weakened the King Slime’s attacks, but was not enough to defeat it.

In desperation, Magic combined his Drain and Spore abilities to create Drain Spore[iv]. A cloud of life-sapping particles settled all over the King Slime and went to work.

Between the furyweed poison, huge oozing gashes, and draining spores, the King Slime quickly weakened. Amethyst dropped to the ground, bubble digested, and speeded up the boss monster’s death by repeatedly snapping Whip out and riddling it with small holes.

Finally, the King Slime lost its structural integrity and collapsed into a puddle of goo.

(Pets don’t receive system notices, so the expected messages will not be displayed.)

Movement emerged from the remains. Throughout the draining process, Magic’s Drain Spores had been growing larger. They now resolved themselves into a troop of blue mushrooms about the size of a marble, tiny compared to Magic’s soccer ball size. They hopped off and quickly disappeared from sight in the tall grass. Magic watched them go without much interest (yeah, the parental instinct is absent in mushrooms).

He squeaked at Amethyst (“You okay?”).

If Amethyst had had blood vessels, she would be severely bruised. As it was, she simply wanted to stay still until she healed. She squeaked tiredly (“I’ll be fine. Go check on Boris.”).

Magic hopped over and squeaked at the boar (“You okay?”).

Boris grunted (“Think my leg’s broken.”). He had landed badly, folding his left hind leg at an unnatural angle, and was in no hurry to move.

With his comrades out of commission, it looked like it was up to Magic to collect the loot. Having neither limbs nor an pouch-like mouth to store items, he was particularly unsuited to the task, but did his best. He laboriously pushed coins (from the bystander slimes) around with small hops.

In the King Slime’s remains, Magic found and interesting object, a small gold crown the size of a finger ring. He pushed it over to Amethyst with a squeak (“Look at this.”).

Amethyst felt extremely drawn towards the object. Extending her bubble arm, she picked it up. The crown-ring was of such a size that she could just squeeze her bubble through. It slid down her whippy arm until it landed on her head, where she felt it fuse naturally with her membrane.

Magic squeaked (“Looks nice.”).

Amethyst squeaked (“Thanks.”).

Boss killed, skills improved, loot acquired, the pets settled in to wait for their owner’s arrival.

Footnotes:

[i] Gyrfalcons are the largest species of falcon, and have been used by nobility in falconry for centuries

[ii] This is a reference to the TV series Firefly, where the captain Malcolm Reynolds commanded a Firefly-class spaceship named Serenity

[iii] In wild boars, males have larger lower tusks that curve upwards and backwards, while females have smaller tusks that point downwards and outwards

[iv] This is the author’s fungus version of the Pokemon move Leech Seed