Chapter 22: Dough-ing just fine

The party stood in front of the suddenly repaired world core like a gaggle of children waiting to be excused from dinner. The old man, the so-called ‘cultivator’, was gone. Nobody said a word. What words could be used to describe what they’d seen?

“That lad looked quite alright for someone your age, Mrs. Kim” said Young-Ja with a wry grin.

“Oh shut your trap. You’re barely two years younger than me.” Mrs Kim rested her stop sign on her shoulders, licking her lips thoughtfully. “But he did have quite a handsome face. If I were ten years younger…”

Victor took a deep breath, massaging his face, masking how he was sizing everyone up. Most people were staring at the young girl holding the various precious treasures in her hand, among them the manual, and the blood red stone that could bring exactly one person back to life. And that stone was a problem.

Everyone here had lost someone, or knew someone who could use something like that. Whether they were allies or not, who wouldn’t make a rash decision to seize an opportunity as grand as true revival? Gods, if he could bring the high magus back, maybe she could explain all the insanity of the last couple days.

Lataya was the first to make a rash decision. She pushed the fingernail-sized gem into her mouth and gulped. With a shiver and a sigh, the stone was gone.

“That tasted quite terrible.” Lataya gagged.

“Why are you gagging? Are you poisoned?” Rook got into a fighting stance, as if he was preparing to punch the illness out of the eleven year old princess.

Somehow, there was a collective sigh. No need to tear each other apart today.

One of the space catgirls walked up to Victor.

“Time to leave?”

“Yes please. I am this close to punching a wall, repeatedly.”

“Relatable. I punch walls too when I’m frustrated or bored. Sometimes, this frustrating red dot appears out of nowhere. I’ve been hunting it for months now. I think I’ve got it on the ropes.”

Victor stared at the ceiling for no particular reason. He definitely didn’t care that he, a kingsguard, was wearing a pink frilly dress for everyone to see, nor did he care that some old alleged world creator just waved away half of his life’s problems like they weren’t even worth considering.

What a great kingsguard I am.

A catgirl tail flicked back and forward in front of his face. “Sooo, how do we get out of here?”

“I haven’t the fucking faintest. The… maintenance hatch?”

The bickering of the HOA members stopped. Several eyes followed his gaze where it landed on a hatch in the ceiling far, far above. A sturdy ladder made of metal fell for hundreds and hundreds of feet until it hit the ground next to a small plaque, letters embossed into unaging metal. The plaque read: ‘Worldbuilding maintenance hatch. Rated for upwards of 10 tons. Remove on finishing this section, STEVE! Signed: Winston & Bingles’ Foundry Co. Planet making, crafting, relocating; metalworking, woodworking, star-harmonizing; shoeshining and tailoring services.’

“Guess we’re going up,” the space catgirl princess said.

“No,” Victor said. “No. Goddamit, I’ll say it thrice: No.”

“He is afraid of heights,” Rook noted. He turned to Victor with grinding sound of stone-on-stone. “Be not afraid. If you slip, I will shield the child from your falling body.”

Victor’s left eye twitched.

“Can you carry Tesla’s Core?” Lataya asked. “I… think we should repair them. Or give them a burial. They killed an outworlder, somewhat. They were a hero.”

Victor stiffened, then gave the girl a pat on the head. “Good thought, princess.”

The first step towards that was climbing up that huge-ass ladder. The order of their climb would be critical.

If anyone fell, Rook could catch them, which meant he needed to be at the bottom. The Space Catgirls looked like they wanted to start climbing right away, but there was a good chance they would start pawing at each other rather than at the next step of the ladder halfway through. They would need to be sandwiched by the HOA who, for all their faults, were at least reliable.

If the golem was at the bottom, Lataya above him, and then the HOA sandwiched the catgirls, that only left one place for Victor. The first place.

With shivering hands and several deep breaths, he grabbed the first rung.

What a great kingsguard indeed.

+++

The ladder was long, cold, and divided into uncountable sections of sub-ladders. Every time they reached the top of one half-mile ladder, they found a small protrusion of rock to rest on, and further back, another ladder. They went through their rations, then the Space Catgirl kibble, and when that ran out, they defaulted to eating the glowing mushrooms and hints of cavern moss to compliment the dry and stale staple of Myung-Sook’s noodles and Bok-Nam’s rice.

Weeks passed. Perhaps longer. Everyone’s arms were soft as noodles by the time Victor hit his head on a hatch and, in complete darkness, levered it open with herculean magical-girl-slash-kingsguard strength.

And then there was light, and fresh air, and not all hope was yet lost.

The moment Victor climbed out, he let out a primal roar, and promptly began pummeling a tree. The pain and the sound of shattering bark mixed into a melange of the present, of what it felt like to be here, alive, well and truly away from most if not all outworldly troubles for just a brief moment.

Yet, with every punch, he noted something odd. Despite the ache in his every joint, his strength had increased, even though he had dropped his magical girl transformation days ago. Curious, he stepped back, and went through a few basic cuts with his sword.

Faster. Stronger. Only slightly, not enough to beat back an otherworlder, never. But maybe enough to punch one of the sparks of the problems they caused in the face and see it flinch.

Maybe it was the proximity to the worldcore that leant him an inch more power. Maybe it was all that climbing.

Either way, they were back on track to… what, reconquer and rebuild the kingdom? For a little bit of revenge? He definitely needed a shave first, and a map, and someone who can repair Tesla. It was as far as they knew the best weapon against the outworlders, but civilization seemed far, far away.

They were in some kind of forest near a road trodden into the dirt, but that description fit countless places within and without the kingdom.

We’ll figure it out. First step though, hunt and scavenge some proper food.

With a self-satisfied sigh, he scratched his stubble and turned to the party, which had all assembled a few steps away to watch him. The HOA was doing fine, though the catgirls looked ready for more than a tongue bath. His eyes flitted to Lataya — the climb must have been the hardest for her even if she could rest on the golem’s back for most of it — but found the little princess not at all exhausted.

“Oh great, he’s finally stopped swinging that sword around.” Catgirl Princess Lumi said with a flick of her white hair. “Me and mine will go and wash ourselves. I expect a campfire and a feast upon our return. And no peeking.”

“Peking? I could go for some Peking duck,” said Mrs. Kim. “Give it a roast. Crispy skin, orange sauce, and some fine sprigs of—”

“Bok choy?” Bok-Nam produced a pristine looking tupperware box, sealed with a sticker of some sort of white chubby cat with a pink bow. He broke the seal with equal parts reverence and glee as he beheld his fellow home owner association members’ eyes nearly popping out of their skulls. “My special box, for emergencies. Or for celebrating the overcoming of one. Honorable friends, it appears you all will be depending on my generosity today.”

“No use calling it generous when we all throw something in the pot.” Mrs. Kim brandished her stop sign with a malign grin. “I’ll get the duck. Young-Ja, Myung-Sook, Ahjumma Sun-Hi: Sauce, Tea, Cutlery.”

Victor shook his head. The HOA had the food in hand, the Space Catgirls had contributed in equal manner by not getting in the way, which just left Rook, Lataya, and himself.

He approached the young princess, who seemed enraptured by the manual that Old Fang had left her. It seemed thin as a washing board, yet when she flipped through it, new pages flickered to life and old ones disappeared into the bindings. An esoteric gift, but one people seemed to covet less than the blood gem.

For now, reading seemed as harmless a distraction as he could’ve wished for.

“That cultivation stuff interesting, princess?”

“Hm?” She blinked, only now recognizing that he trying and failing to read it over her shoulder. “Oh, yes. Very.”

“And you can understand what it says?” To Victor, the pages seemed scrawled with gibberish that morphed in place like wriggling worms.

“Well, yes, I suppose. All things have their place, as they all come from the one holy part, which becomes the nine great parts, which turns heavenly with the one added on top — I think that just means people like ten and nine and one a lot. The yin and yang things are like a man and a woman, but not really because it’s in everything, and not everything is just a man or woman, and not any person of one sex only has yin or yang, and there are other elements, five of them, which really are just their own mixtures of yin and yang, all of which make up everything in the world as all things came from one and will return to one, inevitably, because that’s how the world works. Or something like that.”

“Hm. Yes. I understand.” Victor understood precisely nothing. “So it’s a sort of religious text? Anything else interesting in there? I bet that paper can’t teach you the proper swordplay a princess might need in these times.”

She shook her head.

“I’m not at that chapter yet. I have to learn how to punch really hard while not really punching that hard at all first. Like so.” She turned to a rock and thrust out with a flat palm. “Hiyaaa!”

Her palm hit the rock. Nothing happened. Moderately embarrassed, she gathered her composure before returning to face him. “Well, I might need a tad more training. The manual said I need to exert myself utterly for ‘Four springs and summers’, which is an odd way of saying I need to use four years practicing—”

The rock exploded.

Victor and Lataya were still standing there in the dust cloud, speechless, when Rook came running over and stomped the rock into the ground.

“Bad rock, bad rock.”

All Victor could do was stare at the astonished twig of a girl inspecting her own palm.

The cultivator was right. She is a prodigee.

She had an instruction manual. She had talent, and now that they were far away from any immediate troubles, she had the time to learn as well. Maybe, given enough time, she would rival an outworlder in power. Much as he hated putting so much pressure on her, the kingdom needed someone who could meet the outworlder threat with an open palm and closed fist. Queen Lataya, protector of the realms — it had a certain ring to it.

But though he knew he should have felt proud, Victor couldn’t help but ask what use he was now.

+++

After entrusting Lataya to the two ton golem, Victor excused himself, walking a moderate distance into the forest to relieve himself. Currently, he was busy stepping and sidestepping, hacking, stabbing, slashing until he worked up a good sweat.

A little bit faster, a little bit stronger. So what? I’m still only a kingsguard. ‘Only’. Ridiculous.

Up, down, up, down, lunge, swipe, backstep.

What do I bring to the table besides turning everyone into frilly magical girls? What’s so great about me that I get to live where someone like Lana died? Like Big Bennet, or Thorsen, or Fider?

He made for the mother of all lunges, nearly tripped, then caught himself on a powdery incline of dirt where he slid down all the way to the riverbank, still holding his stance and balance.

“I’m not even that great with a sword either,” he muttered to no one in particular.

“I think you looked pretty neat.” Victor jumped at the sound of a stranger’s voice, searching around for them with the tip of his sword. “Down here.”

Swimming a couple feet away in the lake, there was a kid lying in a boat, or rather, something that looked like a kid. It was a rainbow-colored slime in the shape of a thinly orphan boy. The slime was colored in greens and blues and yellows, with an orange-red streak that ran across his shoulder like a sash. He looked like a sentient candy mass.

He offered a lazy wave. “Gumbum’s the name. Pleasure. G’day. Et cetera. Please don’t stab me with your sword, it won’t do much.”

“Best way to fight a slime is with salt,” Victor said, nonetheless pointing his blade at the boy’s chin. He stretched out his hand with the purple rune on his palm. “Are you an outworlder?”

The boy laughed. “I wish. Or I guess not, they’re all pricks. I met one before, a real nice girl in Backton. She wanted to become a baker — innocent enough, right?”

He snorted. “Well, turns out she was looking to make the best soul food. And guess what one of the ingredients for that is.”

There was a moment of silence.

Really? Turning souls into food?

Fucking Outworlders.

Slowly, Victor lowered his sword and sat down in the dirt. “I’m sorry, boy. For what they did to you.”

“Hey, don’t be. I’m not sure if I even was a boy before, or a slime, or if I’m some sort of candy mass homunculus she was saving to decorate another misbegotten masterpiece. Pretty terrifying, but without a malleable body like this I couldn’t have slipped away.” The boy kicked his feet lazily, rocking the boat. “Now I just gotta figure out what to do with my life. And how to get off the boat. I’m a bit water soluble, you see.”

Victor sat there and thought for a while before responding.

“I’m with a group of odd people. If there’s any place you want to go, you can accompany us on the way if you’d like. You’d fit right in. How about you get out of that boat for the time being?”

Victor offered the candy boy a hand. The boy’s eyes flickered, his body lifting ever so slightly. But as he did, the boat tilted, and he jerked back to safety again.

“Don’t worry about me. Wouldn’t want to get in anyone’s way.”

“The hell you are, boy. Hold tight.”

Water sloshed around Victors calves, then thighs, then covered his hip as he waded into the lake. With an iron grip forged by climbing ladders for weeks, he grabbed the cockleshell and raised it above his head. Then he carried it, grunting under the strain and the effort while the boy called Gumbum let fly a slew of curses as colorful as his own gelatinous body.

They stopped briefly in a clearing where Lataya was busy practicing her newest cultivation moves. As they watched, she punched a tree, visibly leaving a hand-shaped dent in the bark.

“Woah,” said Gumbum.

“Yeah. Woah.” No eleven year old was supposed to be able to punch a hole in a tree. No eleven year old should have to learn how to do that. He wanted to protest, but the girl was smart. She knew what was necessary, and dedicated herself to it utterly.

But that didn’t mean she had to do it without experiencing a proper childhood.

“Remember how old you are, boy?”

“Twelve I think.” He squinted. “The orphan memories are definitely not the most reliable.”

Victor nodded.

“Bend so much as a hair on her head and you’ll be feeding the gulls,” he whispered to the boy.

“Huh?”

“Lataya! I’ve found another interesting character! Say hello, he’s friendly.”

The girl blinked. Approached cautiously. “Are you made of candy?”

“I’m… not sure what this is, but all I know is that I taste good.” He bit off his inedex finger at the knuckle and slurped it up like a worm. The mass visibly dissolved inside his chest. Moments later, the finger regrew. “And I regrow stuff if I eat food. Pretty neat, right?”

“Ewww!” Lataya said with a smile blooming on her face. She offered her hand to be kissed as her tutors no doubt taught her. “Princess Lataya. A pleasure.”

“Up top!” The boy smacked her hand and shook it before blanching. “Wait-wait, did you say princess!? Also, ow, your hand is hard.”

Shocked, scandalized, and surprised, Lataya giggled in a way Victor hadn’t heard in a long, long time.

Within moments, the two were chattering happily away.

+++

In the evening, they ate a pair of geese Mrs. Kim had caught by using her stop sign as a makeshift javelin, plus a side of greens, rice, and foraged mushrooms braised in the fowl’s own fat. Rook kept watch while everyone slept. The Space Catgirls returned deep into the night, wet, giggling, and loudly demanding food and drink.

The very next day, Victor found one of them, the catgirl princess’ maid sitting on a tree, staring into the distance with a scowl.

“We got problems?” he shouted.

She leapt down from branch to branch with ease. “Maybe. See that stormfront coming towards us in the distance? That’s not a storm. It’s a wildfire, a big one. You could probably see it from orbit, that’s how big it is, and it’s moving fast.”

Were there any villages nearby? Anybody else they needed to help? “How fast is it?”

“Unnaturally so. Like someone’s fanning the flames. Could be the wind. Could be—”

Something fell from the sky with a splat. Victor and the maid stared at the oddly flat, pancake shaped bird. They could only recognize it as a bird by the shape of its wings, and by the nut-colored beady eye sadly drooping from its frame. Otherwise, the thing looked like a mixture of the grotesque man-faced cats and dogs Victor had seen on some of the royal paintings made by artists of lesser talent.

“A dove,” the maid scoffed. “That surprised me.”

It was also smoldering slightly, its tail singed to coals while its front half looked awfully putty-like. On closer inspection, its eye was a real, brown nut.

Victor trailed a finger through the splotch and after a cursory sniff, licked it. It was sweet beyond measure, filled with little chunky bits that popped into a sour aftertaste. “Dough. These are doughves.”

“That’s what I said. They’re pretty ugly doves too.”

She didn’t get it. Every hair on the back of Victor’s neck was standing straight as pine needles. A doughve. A forest fire. A baker.

“We need to move,” he said. “Gather the others, strap Tesla’s core to Rook’s back, and get us down that road before—”

Before something like a flying woman in an apron and a chef’s hat could ambush them from the sky, dammit. The maid hissed as she and Victor looked up at just that. The woman looked middle-aged, with a gray streak poorly hidden beneath a surface layer of month-old hair dye on her frizzy head. By any definition, she looked the part of a normal baker, with her white dress splattered with dough and cream. Whisks, rolling pins, and more floated around her while she wrung her hands, looking about nervously with those glowing golden eyes.

“It is not ugly. It just needed a bit more time in the oven.” Somewhere nearby, an ethereal chorus laughed. “Shut up! I’m trying to bake.”

“Get Lataya,” Victor mouthed to the catgirl maid.

The maid tried to sneak off, but in that moment an oversized box fell out of orbit, hitting the ground and dousing the immediate area in a cloud of flour. The hacking and coughing of the catgirl was intercut by the flying woman’s exclamations.

“Shit! No, I needed that! Oh darnit, I’m just trying to bake,” the flying baker muttered. “Just need to get that sugary fix. Oh, why can’t there be ready-made cookie and cream in this place? Gotta make everything myself, even though I’m no good as a cook, but we’ll break that bread when we make it, haha.”

There was hooting and hollering and a raucous applause coming from exactly nowhere and everywhere all at once. There was no doubt in Victor’s mind that this was another outworlder, and not the common kind either. The kind that warped reality around them just by merely existing.

A dreamer.

Suddenly her eyes latched straight onto Victor and the maid slowly inching their way backwards.

“Where are you going? Mama Mia’s cooking show is about to begin, and you can’t have a show without an audience, no siree! Oh, but I’m short a few gingerbread men. Would you people mind volunteering yourselves as ingredients?”