[b]Stormy Forest[/b]

After Piper had apologized and dried off the fur blanket, she excused herself to go sit outside and calm her burning face. She’d run out of things to say, and wanted some time to think about what had happened. She sat atop a large rock, watching the flood of “water” creep across the clearings below. She could tell where it had flooded by the strange, multicolored tree-tops.

She’d managed to find some(more or less) allies soon after being separated from Chumi, but she still missed him. It was like missing half of herself.

Theresa was nice, and seemed genuinely kind and caring, but she wasn’t Chumi. It was very clear from the dragon’s response that he felt just as much animosity towards her as she did towards him, which, all things considered, was fairly typical of dragons. Probably humanoid ones too. Not only that, but he’d apparently also killed one of the hell-monsters that attacked them last night. Scary. Hopefully she wouldn’t have to deal with him forever if she wanted to be with Theresa. 

She wondered, for a moment, just where she was. She had no idea where she’d been taken by her underground waterslide, but her map would. More or less, anyway. The map had measures built in to ensure that the positions of objects on it were correctly placed, no matter what the user saw. This was to prevent things like optical illusions or sleeping in a carriage from turning it into a piece of abstract art. 

She pulled the map out. The rain which would have hit it shied away in a manner that suggested an invisible dome over the map. When unrolled, the map quickly got to work filling out a section on the map a few inches east from where it had marked the place they had made camp. A few inches, unfortunately, actually meant a very long way, since the map was large enough to show off the entirety of the continent in magically-possible detail. It would take her weeks to reach where she’d been, and she doubted Chumi could survive for that long without her cooking. That meant that she’d have to use one of the emergency methods to bring him over.

She sighed, and reached into Hatty. She pulled out a glimmering green orb, ready for usage. She didn’t want to use this, as it was an expensive spell, but it looked like there was no other option. Teleportation is powerful, but it’s one of the few varieties of magic that will always shatter an orb on use. That meant there was no easy recharge, and a new raw orb, which is very expensive if you weren’t an explorer who’d stumbled upon the motherlode of them, would be required to make another. Worth it, though, in cases like these.

Piper stood, and shook the orb. It made a quiet, tinkling sound, and immediately shattered, the pieces breaking up into little more than glittering green dust. Behind her, a much, much louder thunder-bell sound reverberated, and she turned to see Chumi. She nearly ran forward to hug him, but stopped when she saw his condition. 

Chumi was also in his bedclothes, but they were in even worse condition than hers. He might as well not have been wearing a shirt at all, given how much of it was destroyed. He looked utterly exhausted, and had many small cuts across his arms. She was suddenly glad she’d gotten away the way she had.

Chumi sat down on the ground almost immediately, letting out a long sigh. 

“Thank you. I thought I was going to be lost in there forever,” he said, finally. 

“Lost? What? What happened?” Piper asked.

“I used the recall orb, but that wasn’t enough to throw them off. I grabbed a couple of the orbs we’d left back at the mine, and ran off into the woods. I hoped to get away, but they found me, somehow. I still can’t figure out how,” he explained. They found him? How was he not dead?

“Um, if they found you, how are you still alive?” she questioned, hoping that he wasn’t a zombie now. Zombies were gross.

“That’s the thing, they didn’t want to eat me, they didn’t even want to kill me. They just wanted to... Touch me or something,” he said, removing his left boot. 

“Here’s where they hit me,” he said, pointing to an absolutely [i]disgusting[/i] sore on his ankle. 

“They had, well, I’m not sure, but some sort of tentacle hair or something. It was dark and hard to see. When they caught up with me, one of them whipped my ankle and left this mark. After that, they stopped chasing me and just left. Didn’t stop me from running, though,” he finished. 

“You should... Probably get to sleep or something. I’ll explain what happened on my side once you’ve rested and don’t look like a werewolf the morning after a full moon,” Piper said, “I met a couple of travelers, they found a little cave for shelter,”

“Speaking of,” Chumi said, as they walked towards the cave, “I eventually wound up back at the camp, but I couldn’t find you there. I packed up our stuff and went to look, and got lost,” 


“Oh [i]good,[/i] I thought I was going to be stuck without another change of clothes until we made our way back,” Piper said, relieved. 

“Ah, we’re here” she said, looking inside. Theresa was asleep on her newly-dried bed, and Ben was sleeping curled up like, well, a dragon. It didn’t look healthy. Or comfortable, for that matter. Still, she wasn’t a dragon. Chumi looked over her shoulder. 

“An Azygos Dragon? Seriously, you made friends with an Azygos Dragon?” he said, nearly a whisper. 

“I wouldn’t call him a friend, really,” she replied.

“This is perfect, though! Azydras are some of the best laborers in the world. He’d be perfect for the orb facility,” he said.

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” she said, “I’m pretty sure he’s either exiled or free, and he tried to steal my wand earlier,”

“He tried to steal your wand? I’m surprised he’s still alive,” Chumi remarked.

“He’s a dragon, Chumi. I can’t slay a dragon on my own. Besides, he sort of saved me, even though he tried to steal my wand,” 

“Anyway,” she said, before he could reply, “There’s some space in there. Go ahead and set out your blankets and get some rest, I’ll sleep outside,”

“Okay. Goodnight, Piper,” he said, as she dried him off. 

“Goodnight, Chumi,” she said, walking back to that rock she found earlier. She rarely told anyone, but she much preferred sleeping under a stormy sky when she could. The various permanent enhancements made to her body by her master made the rain feel like an endless warm shower in a bathtub. She usually didn’t, though, because it tended to bring about some awkward questions as to why that girl was sleeping sopping wet in the rain while there was a perfectly good tent or inn nearby. Charity, no matter how well-intentioned, tended to be terribly embarrassing. 

Piper slowly drifted off under the wonderful smell, sound, and feel of the rain blanketing her.