“Little spiky gremlins?” Cedric repeats as if he can’t seem to grasp the image of alien aberrations in his head. “Can you describe further?”

  “Bone-white skin, red spikes are protruding from every part of their body… ow, seems painful. They’re leaving a trail of blood behind.”

  Lenny slides off Cedric’s shoulder.

  “We should be ready for a confrontation.”

  “From what you described, they need help. And also, I’ve traveled through the mountains many times, we have never been attacked. Maybe they’re harmless?”

  Lenny nods in agreement, “I will go find a stealthy place to watch them from.”

  As he leaves, he considers the idea of defeating a horde of Otherworld creatures. This will be his trophy in combat, and the rest of the party will no longer treat him as an unnecessary background character. After all, he’s also a protagonist.

  But he’s not Cenvin. Logic comes before emotion. First, keep watch. Then, if they are friendly, attempt to communicate. If they are not pleasant, then he will kill them. Sounds like a plan.

  He leaps into a wagon and goes prone, leaving only his head visible to spectate cautiously. The gremlins hop and skip and jump over to Cedric, standing in wait for their arrival.

  “Hello! Human!” One of the gremlins says.

  Lenny notices a spike protruding from where one of its eyes should have been. There are also droplets of blood falling from the barbs.

  Cedric taps his feet impatiently and doesn’t respond.

  Oh yeah, Lenny remembers. Cedric isn’t Gifted.

  He hurdles out of the wagon and dashes to the gremlins, drawing his scimitar. He aims Rikki at the nearest one and roars as majestically as possible: “Name yourself and do not resist!”

  “ARE THEY HERE?” Cedric jumps and panics.

  “Someone who can also see us! Rejoice!” the gremlins cry. “We are Beakimps, honey badger! Proud species of the Otherworld! But are you also Otherworld, honey badger?”

  “Just a dwarf with a backstory,” Lenny scoffs.

  The Beakimps jump about, their spikes ripping their skin and spilling fresh blood onto the rocks, but they don’t notice. Lenny shivers, and Rikki shivers in his hand.

  “D-Don’t make sudden movements, little monsters!”

  “We aren’t monsters, unlike other species!” The one-eyed Beakimp exclaims. “My name is Sieko, a friend of your friend, the nice lady Shyn!”

  “Shyn?” He repeats, bewildered.

  “Shyn told us humans would come through here in a few months, so we’ve been lying in wait amongst these rocks! We lived off a delightful fruit tree not far from here. She told us you are very nice people and should be treated with the utmost respect!”

  When we last met, it did not end well… What is she planning? I need to learn more from these things!

  “You’re right, our goal is to find Shyn. Can you tell us anything useful?”

  “Well, she left us months ago for Seashine City. We didn’t want her to go, so we ventured out here to catch up. The townspeople were quite rude. They pretended not to see us.”

  Lenny conjures Goodberry with clenched claws, “So you’ve been waiting here? For us? How did you eat?”

  “We have been patiently waiting!” Sieko excruciatingly waves his arms around, the spikes splitting open some new gashes. “We took fruits from the only tree around. It ranked of sugar!

  “I see. Have some of these,” he tosses each Beakimp a Goodberry.

  “Oh! You are a kind, thoughtful, and generous human! Are you a druid?”

  “Lenny, Lenny the honey badger druid.”

  Sieko tilts his head in curiosity. “Your blood smells Dwarvish!”

  “Well, um, my backstory…”

  Meanwhile, Cenvin and Durand escape a collapsing cave. They crumble onto the ground, gasping for fresh mountainous air and staring blankly at each other. They had just seen their life flash by their eyes.

  “I’m never going in another puzzle room that Diem designed, ever again,” Cenvin grumbles. “I didn’t even get any loot.”

  Durand draws his knife and begins sharpening it. Cenvin looks at his work disapprovingly.

  “Why didn’t you grab a chest or something before we ran?”

  “Could’ave used your Pocket Dimension.”

  “Did you forget I can’t use my ability?”

  “Don’t crap to me. With the amount of times you’ve used Assert’s Tuner, you can utilize your ability repercussions.”

  “The Tuner doesn’t work. My theory was that my inability to store stuff in my pocket dimension related to something about greed, so I made greed 0% concerning asceticism, which is now 100%. Doesn’t work!”

  “Think outside the box, knucklehead. Asceticism means you reject mundane things, so how will it help you store anything you like forever?”

  “Fine, I’ll tune it back,” he draws the Tuner and puts it to his temple.

  Before activation, Durand snatches it and hurls it down the rocky slopes. It clatters and breaks on a boulder.

  “NOO! WHY???” He screams furiously.

  “You’re addicted to that thing and it’s hurting you. Let’s keep looking for food.”

  “I’ll go a thousand years hungry than being around you any longer! I’m going back. Goodbye.”

  Durand watches him go down, his head finally disappearing from view after a few seconds. He stands, adjusts his cloak, and continues climbing the mountain. He saw a cave up there, maybe it had something.

  “Assert is going to be mad I broke her stuff,” Durand sighs.

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  Back at the caravan, Lenny and Beakimps sit on the rocky ground, huddled together in a tight, friendly circle. Cedric, who was left out, leaves Lenny to his own devices and enters a conversation with Kryler nearby. Sieko is creepily enthusiastic to have Lenny learn everything about their kind.

  “So you don’t have a full grasp of Common? Is that why you Beakimps communicate in such a literal way? We humans call this ‘sarcasm’ normally.’”

  “We love how you are so friendly with us!”

  “Exactly what I meant.”

  They burst down laughing joyfully like innocent children. A dark figure looms over Lenny.

  “GET BACK!”

  The honey badger is pulled over by Cenvin, who draws Shimmerim and frantically stabs at one of the Beakimps. The attack lands, and the Beakimp stumbles back, a fountain of blood gushing from its chest. The rest stares in shock.

  “What are you doing, Cenvin?” Lenny blankly murmurs.

  “You weren’t there to see it!”

  “To see what?”

  “They put Brett in a coma,” Cenvin grinds out painfully. “These pale, spiky abominations. These guys seem a bit smaller than what I remembered. Must be the babies.”

  “Idiotic, bloodthirsty monster! He’s mistook us for Shapers! RUNN!” Sieko cries. The Beakimps dash away from him.

  Cenvin pegs a Beakimp with a well-aimed shot from his crossbow, “You’re leaving obvious trails of blood behind, you can’t hide!”

  Tearfully caterwauling, Lenny slams him to the ground and puts Rikki against his neck. He ruthlessly strikes him with the pommel and breathes heavily against his face. Cenvin’s nostrils tingle at the proximity of fur.

  “They are friends!”

  “They are not! No Otherworld creature will ever be a friend!”

  “Nyri! Sinner! It is possible to befriend them!”

  “They were never our allies!”

  Cenvin shoves Lenny off and penetrates his leg with Shimmerim, drawing a howl of pain. Lenny retaliates by slashing him with Rikki, which results in some bloodshed.

  “Looks like we’re doing this,” Cenvin haggardly announces. Lips curling at the excitement, he readies for Lenny’s next attack.

  Do I Wild Shape? A familiar shiver runs down Lenny’s back. No, no. I can beat him without using that. I’ll use my ability if I have to, but not now.

  Concentrating, he holds out Rikki as his Druidic Focus and casts a Wall of Fire between him and Cenvin. A searing noise, some painful whoops, and thin lines of smoke spawn from the other side.

  “Damn your spells! Take this!”

  A crossbow bolt pierces through the wall and buries itself in Lenny’s shoulder. The Wall of Fire evaporates, but Cenvin is nowhere to be found.

  Tap, tap.

  “Behind you.”

  Lenny whirls around, but Shimmerim has already been thrust into him. Running around a wagon, Cenvin had successfully landed a Sneak Attack. Shifting his concentration to his ability, Lenny conjures three orbs of Glowing light, sending them flying after Cenvin. The projectiles easily home in on the rogue, and they denotate in a blinding flash of hot light.

  Cenvin collapses and sits against a wagon, hands raised, Shimmerim thrown to the side.

  “I surrender! If you want to be backstabbed by these Beakimps, it’s your choice!”

  Lenny looks into the distance; the Beakimps are nowhere to be seen. The two that Cenvin killed are now a pile of evaporating dust.

  Cluttered behind a large boulder, Sieko anxiously speaks with his fellow Beakimps. Offended by Cenvin’s actions, the majority of them have decided to be enemies with the caravan. They begin formulating plans to sabotage the journey. Being the final reluctant one, Sieko remembers a conversation he had with Shyn:

  “Friends? We Beakimps are all merrily friends with each other.”

  “That must be quite nice.”

  “You are friendless?”

  “Yeah. My previous friends did what is known as… a ‘betrayal.’”

  “‘Betrayal?’”

  “Think of it as if you had asked your friend to remove some blood on you, and they refused.”

  “Your friends must have been cursed calamities!”

  Shyn sighs, “If only I could be alone without them.”

  So this is what she meant, Sieko considers. “Beakimps– I have an idea!”

  Durand caught up to the caravan for the next few days. He had survived in the wild using Goodberry, and he reported that he didn’t find any Otherworld life, save for a few mold spots here and there.

  “If you can use Goodberry to sustain yourself, then why can’t you and Lenny use it to feed the caravan, instead of rationing dried fruits and meat?” Cenvin asks.

  Lenny answers.

  “Each of us has four level-one spell slots. One cast of Goodberry creates ten berries for ten creatures. This means we are capable of feeding eighty creatures. With around thirty humans in the caravan and about forty-five horses, we can just barely meet all the requirements. However, we also need to reserve spell slots for emergencies, especially now that Assert is not around anymore. Does that make sense?”

  “And also a spellcaster’s gripe, they like to save spell slots, like how you save your precious potions in a video game,” Durand adds.

  “I see, sorry for asking,” Cenvin nods. “Cedric! Are we at the tree yet?”

  “Should be there in a few minutes!” He calls back from the tip of the caravan. “I see the edge of the clearing! We’re here-”

  He cuts off abruptly.

  The party rushes towards the front to find Cedric, jaw dropped, staring at a circular clearing with a massive, freshly-cut stump situated in the center.

  “Th-the tree is gone,” Cedric whispers with fright. “Someone cut it down.”

  “Must be those damned spiky gremlins, I told you they were up to no good,” Cenvin angrily grits his teeth.

  Lenny shoots him a silent look that says: You antagonized them in the first place.

  Grim-faced, Cedric shoves past the party, “Excuse me, I must announce this to the caravan and create a plan.”

  Durand and Lenny sit and lean against the stump, passive-aggressively peering at Cenvin, whose expression is unreadable.

  “Oh yeah, yesterday I found a chunk of this thing,” Durand casually calls to Cenvin.

  He holds out his hand, grasping a piece of blue-hued metal. No doubt, it’s a piece of Starmetal.

  “Based on our previous interactions with this thing and how Starmetal Valley uses it, I think it’s safe to say it’s pretty useful. I think Diem mentioned how on top of being durable, it also augments abilities.”

  “And what do you want me to do with it? Eat it?” Cenvin comments.

  “Store it in your pocket dimension, see if that helps your coma.”

  “Very well,” Cenvin snatches it and opens a small dimensional crack. He drops the Starmetal through it and closes the rift. “Happy?”

  Before any response, Cedric returns with Grebs and Kryler at his side.

  “My friends, we have rations for three more days, which is not enough to serve us for the rest of the journey. Any ideas?”

  “Me and Lenny can use Goodberry to help out, but I’m not sure if that will be enough,” Durand remarks.

  “Of course, there’s also the way that I had proposed,” Cenvin adds.

  “Which is?”

  “We build a boat and sail to Seashine City. Fastest way there.”

  Cedric quickly considers this and briefly discusses it with Grebs and Kryler before turning back to announce his conclusion.

  “We can build a boat, I have done it once before– Cenvin?”

  He had fallen into a coma.

  Coma, coma, comas… when will Cenvin fix his condition? The answer might lie in his Worldview, or something else…

  In the meantime, please check out this updated death count, for no reason whatsoever!

  Since the one-shot where the death count was last updated, a squad of Starmetal Valley Orions was attacked, and the settlement was exterminated by mysterious tendrils, dragging along a few merchants. Oh, and we must remember the two Beakimps Cenvin killed.

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  Thanks for reading thus far!