Kyessy didn’t share well. She had two arrow-based abilities, and one of them made him a dive bomber who would also take damage for smashing into targets. The Flurry of Arrows ability wouldn’t allow him to split into a whole bunch of different ravens and dive bomb people, not that he wanted to. The other thing she had was grayed out; he couldn’t use it. He eventually figured out this was called One With The Wilds, and provided a whole host of passive benefits: tracking, survival, sneaking, accuracy, mana regeneration, stat bonuses, as long as she remained in the forests, wild plains areas, or mountains. Any time she entered a city, swamp, or apparently desert she lost all these. It did make her a powerful force, but he didn’t think any of that stuff was going to rub off on him.

He took a look at his character sheet and saw a whole host of green, boosted numbers.

SPECIAL attribute array: Corbin Dogherty, Raven Familiar

Level 5

XP until level 6: 1,836

Strength 6

Perception 11 (+2 ability bonus)

Endurance 5

Charm 3

Intelligence 9

Agility 10 (+2 ability bonus)

Luck 15

Skills: [tap here to view your skills]

*You have new skills!

HP: 45 (+15 ability bonus)

MP: 35/35*

His Agility and Perception were higher, he had Knowhow in a half dozen ranger-related skills, his HP was fifteen points higher, and MP had a little star by it that said he’d be getting back spent points at a 25% faster rate.

She wouldn’t, however, abide him sitting on her shoulder. He was forced to fly along nearby, or when he got tired, hop in the tall grass.

“We need to clear something up,” she started.

“Oh, I’m pretty clear on most of what’s going on. You don’t like me, you think I’m responsible for mucking up your whole adventuring party thing. You don’t play well with others, which tells me you probably really do have some horrible and tragic backstory, which, sorry about that, but hey, you do have the ability to just not treat people like garbage.”

She stopped and glared down at him, hands on hips. This would eventually lead to finger jabs in his direction. “Oh yes, I’m to blame. I’m the one who was careening toward splitting up a perfectly fine mercenary adventuring arrangement. No, no no no, no no, this was all you, you and your felinian sex pot. You convinced me to give my speed boost over to Hale just before they decided they all wanted your girlfriend’s fluffy tail, you put them onto the idea that ending up as a Familiar is some sort of horrible punishment, and you decided you weren’t going to side with them on that very nerfing issue! Don’t blame this on me; I didn’t give up all my principles just because I want to be a stak’n human.” She shuddered in revulsion. “Humans.”

“Are you finished?” he asked.

She threw her hands up. “And he wants the last word, too! Can’t believe I’m arguing with the most hideous bird I’ve ever seen.” She switched languages, which was a strange sensation. More guttural, with some bleating in there for good measure. “You’ve lost your mind, Kyessy. Lost the only people who would travel with you, lost your money and your ability cards, lost your mind. And there we are.”

They strode on roughly eastward for hours in silence. Absolutely forever. She stopped to end the life of the most hideous bird he’d ever seen in his life. The thing had, get this, four feathered wings, two heads, and tried spitting lightning at them. Kyessy immediately killed it, took the loot before he could even register what it was, and was ripping feathers out of it before he had much of a chance to react. Her skin really did change color, and was now the color of a bruise but in camouflage. Big purple and yellow blotches warred over her face. She stared at him and tore all its red brown feathers out in a huff.

“Where are we going?”

“Denspire.”

“The place whose army you helped to murder.”

“None of them remember that. We killed all the witnesses.”

She had a point.

“Why are we headed there?”

“Denspire’s got a lot more sorcerers and wizards than Fellwroth. More dark magic, but more magic overall. Someone will know what to do with you. Now shut up and let me be furious with you.”

They continued on, over a series of rolling plains and then lightly wooded hills, followed by more densely wooded hills. They found a rickety bridge over a small river, caught some bizarre looking sea creatures that certainly weren’t any fish he’d ever seen, and came to a spot where the Fens reached a bit too far north. The road swung around it, and a signboard sat on the ground in several pieces. It had had a big white skull on it, crossed over by two red slashes, before someone (or something) trampled it.

“Great,” he tried for some humor. “Look, skulls prohibited. No death then, I suppose, if we head this way.”

She stomped past the sign and into the swamp.

He flew to a nearby tree and watched her go. With the hooves, she certainly wasn’t built for soft and marshy ground.

“If you’re endangering yourself out of anger with me, or with yourself… please don’t.”

She snorted and carried on. Here at least the ground was still fairly firm, but the trees were rising out of the water on long roots like women holding flowing, long skirts up to keep out of the wet weather. Humps of earth teemed with grass, fallen and rotting trees, and mushrooms of a number of different obviously-poisonous varieties. The place stank, and that was pretty rich, since his raven senses apparently enjoyed rotting corpses as a source of nutrition. The late afternoon sunlight soon disappeared behind a wall of swampy vegetation.

“I’m sorry?” he tried, though he had no idea what for. Luckily she didn’t challenge that lame attempt to get her to turn back.

She carried on, sometimes getting down into knee deep water and mucking across to the next series of teensie islands. He tried to Survey, but luckily so far didn’t come up with any octopuses crossed with porcupines or anything. Her stubbornness was probably the only thing she had in common with Priscilla, who he now missed.

“Why. Are. You. Doing. This?”

She didn’t answer. He ran through a whole litany of cursing in his little bird brain, wondering just how long she was going to keep it up.

“Okay better question. Are we going this way because you’re hell bent on fulfilling your promise to return me to my real self?” Because while this seemed super ill-advised, if he had something to hope for he might be able to let it go. He didn’t particularly want to fly all the way back to her last spawn point, at that ruined tavern, or even wait for her in the middle of a monster-infested swamp.

“Going around takes the better part of a day and it’s full of highwaymen,” she told him. “We’ll save time, and money. Now shut up, this swamp is full of tenrills and fetterers on the best of days.”

Great. He had no idea what that meant except for a vague foreboding feeling that tenrills and fetterers were the least of their worries.

She kept on, navigating some places slowly, and quickly leaping out of the water another time. She didn’t shriek, but he felt the squeamish, horrified disgust in his brain, through their communication channel.

He’s just sighted a cottage on one of the larger islands when he saw it. He knew he was going to, but it had been almost two hours in this awful nightmare without a single creature and he was holding his mental breath that everything would be fine.

Nope.

He should’ve known from the utter silence that fell over the swamp. It had been alive with hoots, chirping, and some hideous sound that reminded him of cicadas but worse. The sort of thing cicadas might sound like if they were made of chalk and blackboards.

“Is that a tenrill or a fetterer?” he asked.

“What?” the edge of panic in her voice was just the slightest bit satisfying, but he squashed it.

“The glowing thing under the water to your right.”

“What glowing thing?” the panic ratcheted up a few notches.

“Oh… I have True Sight.” He concentrated on it, and Inspected.

You have inspected the monster:

Bog Blaskarand

Level 14 fungus

801/801 HP

These things exhale a variety of mushroom spores. You definitely don’t want to breathe while fighting one.

Good luck not breathing.

“Well it’s not a tenrill or a fetterer,” he said.

“Not… What is it?”

“Blaskarand. Apparently level 14, some kind of fungus. Does that mean anything–”

She had her bow out of its case and strung before he could finish the question. “Where is it?”

“It has over eight hundred hit points. Can we go around it?”

“Yes. Yes! We can go around it.” She sounded as though she’d already inhaled some fungal spores, or was beginning to trip on the good stuff.

“It’s… oh it’s on your right. Annnnd it’s coming up… Hold your breath.”

He did as well, threw on the old Unerring Aim, and as soon as its big satellite dish of a head emerged from the bog, he was blasting his way into it… and… through it? He came barreling up into the air and out of a yellowish cloud of particles. He looped around, did another one of those, and held his breath before slamming into it again.

And through it again.

You’ve succeeded at another Serendipity check. Critical Strike! You’ve dealt 64 damage to the Bog Blaskarand!

He flapped up again. Oh, it was really brittle, being made out of mushroom stuff. Bits of it crumbled off from where he’d punched his entire body through. Well, here went round three.

You’ve succeeded at another Serendipity check. Critical Strike! You’ve dealt 67 damage to the Bog Blaskarand!

He wondered what the devil was going on. Was Kyessy really absorbing whatever damage he was dealing to himself?

As he looped around for another pass, an entire salvo of arrows peppered the main body of this ten… twelve… fourteen foot tall bipedal mushroom.

Make that sixteen.

“Get clear!” he shouted through their connection. “I can deal with this.”

He blasted down through the top of its big old mushroom head, and saw that he’d been crumbling bits off the big saucer shape at the top, with the frills below it, and peppering the place with mushroom spores.

More of it continued to appear out of the waist high swamp water.

Oh… oh boy. It wasn’t bipedal. It was more of a fungus centipede. It had another two big stumpy legs, which were just covered with various different mushrooms in red, purple, some of those jelly-like bloody-topped ones, and some sickly yellow green ones. It was still coming out of the swamp.

He pulled in a tight circle, spent another 3 MP on Unerring Aim and crushed right where the cap met the rest of its gross rubbery body. He ignored the prompt, except for the number: 71 damage this time.

Two of its many arms came around and swiped at him, but Serendipity was with him again, and either gave him extra Agility or sucked the monster’s Agility away, because one of its appendages got caught in some vines. The other one swished by in the air and slammed down into the mucky muck.

He dove through it again, and blasted one of its arms clean off. Rubbery shroom chunks went flying, with a few stuck to his beak. Another 69 damage.

The thing leaned toward where Kyessy was scrambling away, and breathed a haze of yellowish mist out in her direction.

“Deep breath!” he screamed, pulled around, and crashed through it again.

She actually scrambled a little too hastily, because she went right under the water and out of view entirely.

“Kyessy!” he shouted, and punched through another of its arms. If he weren’t so freaked out for his companion he might have enjoyed the idea of using himself as a skewer to make some Blaskarand kebabs. Another few quick Unerring Aims and the thing groaned a bit from the inside, froze for a second, then toppled over. It exploded out into a massive cloud of white, brown, yellow and green spores.

You have defeated the Bog Baskarand!

You gain 570 xp

Error! You can’t carry any loot items. They have fallen onto the corpse.

“Stay down there!” he told her.

“There’s a tenrill down here!” she thought back at him, her mental tone thick with revulsion. “I hate tenrills!”

Oh. Great.

He ended up getting a bunch of spores up his birdy nostrils diving toward where she was, and flapping around like a lunatic trying to get the spores out of the place where she’d been.

She surged to the surface, wrestling what looked like a nine inch thick feathered serpent with several stumpy, clawed legs. The feathers were patterned like a snake too, in black, brown and green diamond shapes with tiny bits of white dotted here and there. Its mouth was clamped on one of her forearms, while those little legs tried to get at her legs and midsection. The rest of its body was wrapped around her other forearm and trying to outlast her so it could disembowel her.

Well, it had worked before. He activated Unerring Aim and dove right through the thing’s wriggling body.

Serendipity is with you! Critical Strike! You have dealt 39 damage to the green tenrill, and taken 10 damage.

Apparently he hadn’t gone all the way through.

“Ow!”

Thankfully, Kyessy was able to handle the remaining HP the tenrill had, and hadn’t inhaled any of the vast number of spores the Baskarand had given off on death. Unfortunately, he’d contracted blackspore lung. He couldn’t do much more than tell her telepathically that it was draining away his Endurance point by point, and he’d soon be dead.

Her reddish face and yellowish eyes stared down at him, frowning, and the understanding came to him: she’d done this on purpose. She knew the swamp was dangerous, knew he couldn’t handle very much damage, and as soon as he was dead she could link back up with her companions. This had been her plan all along.

Her face, and the rest of the world, went black.