

## Tales from the Creature Keeper

### Survival Critters

## By Matthew Stone

Copyright 2014 Matthew Stone

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. If those words don't mean much to you though... well, you're in luck, because of all the books I've written and will be writing in the future, this is the one I probably care least about getting circulated through specific means. Granted, I would prefer if you downloaded it where it's officially available because the statistics from those views and downloads are very helpful to me, and I'm not sure I can officially say "Keep circulating the tapes" like Joel and the bots used to anyway, but consider this book a gift to everyone who comes across it. Why? Well, one of the reasons I write is because I want to encourage people to think and wonder about the world more than they already do, and this book is one where that goal is front and center, prioritized over everything else.

Table of Contents

The Preface

The Cast

The Story

The Epilogue

The Special Thanks

The Preface

This book is a side story to the greater novel, "Tales from the Creature Keeper". It takes place between episodes 2 and 3 and is a self-contained adventure that touches on many of the ideas and themes present in the parent novel. I designed it a lot like a video game demo, actually, making sure to pack a healthy amount of content into it so that not only will readers enjoy it by itself, but they might also be enticed into checking out the main story that the characters here come from.

Be warned: everything in here is a little weird. For one, none of the characters are human; instead they resemble desert lizards, small bears, and six-pointed stars. There's one character who is somewhat human, but she's practically an outcast from society because of it and likes to think of herself as a wild animal anyway. The world they inhabit is one where gene splicing is considered an art form, people are trying to push back nature and reestablish civilizations, and ancient remains, _our_ remains, are dug up and studied, including every game, video, and meme that ever circulated through the internet. Have you ever wondered what future civilizations might think of us or what sort of legacy we might leave behind after climate change and widespread corporate and political corruption kill us all off?

If you like this, there's more where it came from. Tales from the Creature Keeper is a novel in six parts, so check your favorite ebook vendors for all six episodes!

Episode 1 – Trapped in Town

Episode 2 – The Secrets of the Slaves

Episode 3 – Aliens Gnawed My Rationality

Episode 4 – The Situation Explodes

Episode 5 – The Diplomatic Machine

Episode 6 – Timber River Must Fall

The Cast

Zack Tyler

"Just when I think I don't have anything else to lose, something else happens. So why should I hold back on becoming a feral when that's clearly where life is forcing me anyway?"

**Tribe:** Purebred Heatfang

**Trade:** Bottom-Tier Gopher

**Temperament:** Forcedly Domesticated

**Online Tag:** Kill_It_With_Fire

**Leitmotif (Unofficial):** Super Battletoads – Dark Queen's Freighter

**Traits and Techniques:** Can expel highly combustible grease from fingers, toes, and mouth, or secrete it from skin, then ignite it. Controlling the contents and volume of the grease allows for all manner of fire arts from intense fireballs to slow-burning smolders for cooking and roasting. Also has a prosthetic tail that serves as an extendible poking utensil.

**Tale:** Sick of being stuck in a town in the middle of nowhere with seemingly no future prospects, he seeks to learn how to survive in the wilderness so he won't have to rely on the life support system that is civilization. Some desire to show up his highly industrialized home country may also be involved. Originally he planned to flee into the wild with a couple of slaves under his command, but having no idea where they are now, he's become forced to either stand on his own two feet or give up entirely.

Xylia Higgins

"The toxins in my barbs can kill most tribesfolk within minutes. But I won't use them if you're nice to me!"

**Tribe:** Purebred Nymph

**Trade:** Wilderness Survivalist, Hatter

**Temperament:** Lonely Feral

**Online Tag:** None

**Leitmotif (Unofficial):** Aquaria - Remains

**Traits and Techniques:** Body is human-like, but enhanced to live indefinitely in seas and oceans. Has irregular patches of scales on body and long fairy wings that are actually strong fins, allowing for high speed and maneuverability underwater. Hair contains chlorophyll to provide energy and oxygen supplements from sunlight. Lily in hair grows naturally. Barbs on wrists and ankles secrete a powerful toxin designed to paralyze the nervous system.

**Tale:** The extinct human race is regarded with some degree of scorn in the world, and because Nymphs aren't much more than aqueous humans, they tend to be a tribe that's shunned by default. Xylia has come to embrace this ostracism over time and used it to cultivate a sense of independence, though it's also left her with a bit of psychosis. She splits her living between hunting like a wild animal and crafting hats and accessories to sell.

Robin Unwin

"The main reason geniuses are so great and effective is because they are min-maxers. They're only geniuses in certain select areas, meaning they also have more dump stats than the average character, so I think I'd rather be a Mario."

**Tribe:** Purebred Grizzly

**Trade:** Student, Aspiring Astronaut, Unaccounted Factor

**Temperament:** Domestic Feral

**Online Tag:** Kidd_Keen

**Leitmotif (Unofficial):** Commander Keen Episode 4 - Oasis

**Traits and Techniques:** Possesses greater strength and endurance than most adult tribes, partially because of his young age and in spite of his small size. His thick natural fur is like a flexible full suit of armor and he has good ripping and shredding claws despite having not yet reached physical maturity. Has a keen curiosity about the world that has been cultivated and encouraged by both his parents, leading him to experiment with engineering machines and structures. Learning about digital archeology performed by the "data delvers" in his world has made him especially keen to research human history, culture, and technology.

**Tale:** The son of a spiritual leader and a seasoned traveler, Robin seems to have absorbed and recombined his parents' best traits. They instilled in him the desire to soak up knowledge like a sponge and he now carries more trivia and perspective than most adults despite, or perhaps because of, no formal schooling. Being a kid though means he also has just enough obliviousness to keep him from realizing when he should shut up. Since he's significantly far from the age where he'll know what he really wants to do with his abilities, he freely shares his likes and discoveries regardless of whether people can understand them and sparks wildly without care for what other people may think.

Penny Ramsbotham

"Uh... I'll just go with whatever he wants..."

**Tribe:** Purebred Skitterstar

**Trade:** Constructor, Plumber, Tunneler, Infiltrator (almost unintentionally)

**Temperament:** Quietly Domesticated

**Online Tag:** None

**Leimotif (Unofficial):** Freedom Planet – Relic Maze 1

**Traits and Techniques:** Carries six tough, stone-like ambulatory prongs on her back in a star shape, one to cover each limb: neck and head, tail, two arms, and two legs. Can curl up into a solid ball by turtling beneath her prongs or dig through solid material by stand the prongs up on her back in a drill-like configuration. Each prong can also be swung independently, allowing for multi-directional shovel swipes and spear jabs. Also has sharp eyelashes and natural protective covers over eyes, letting her scratch and dig through soft soil just by blinking rapidly. Fine claws and relatively light weight allow her to scale most vertical surfaces and ceilings with ease.

**Tale:** The Skitterstars and Halfquarries go way back with an alliance spanning generations, but Penny's parents viewed it as a shackle and warned her that she would never be seen as a complete person unless she lived with a Halfquarry as well. Their teachings backfired though; instead of gaining a desire to rebel against the system, she became steadily shier and introverted as the threat of incompleteness was pounded into her, culminating in her teaming up with the Arkwright brothers, who care for her like a cute, troubled little sister who really needs to narrow her big eyes in determination and grow a backbone someday.

The Story

Penny Ramsbotham didn't appreciate being shoved out the front door by her guardians, Robert and Charles Arkwright. For one, they were supposed to be her lifelong partners, not her parents telling her what she should get outside and do if she knew what was good for her. It was the first time she could ever recall being genuinely upset with them, in fact.

The Arkwright Brothers were even more upset over her though, again because they were practically being her parents. The Arkwrights were Halfquarries while Penny was a Skitterstar, and due to the two tribes' long reaching historical alliance, it was very common for a Skitterstar and a Halfquarry to join up when they came of age. The arrangement was like marriage for some, while for others it was more business-oriented. When Penny's turn came, however, she had chosen to ally with two Halfquarries simultaneously, "just to be on the safe side" as she had initially rationalized. So when Xylia Higgins, one of their neighbors, came to the Arkwrights' house one day and announced that she was forming a small party to venture into the wilderness for what was basically a camping trip, both Robert and Charles decided that Penny had been on the safe side for far too long.

On top of that, Xylia forbade her from bringing anything along, insisting that it would be "cheating" as far as her plans went.

The party somewhat ominously formed up at the north end of Timber River, the small town where they all lived. Penny felt somewhat wary of Xylia and as she sat waiting for the other campers to arrive, she experimentally flexed the stony prongs on her back. Skitterstars were quite indicatively named, as they carried solid six-pointed stars on their backs like turtles carry their shells, but the stars points were fully ambulatory and each one covered a limb: two arms, two legs, a tail and a thin neck with a bug-eyed head. They were a tribe built for digging by using their stars' points like a flurry of shovels, or by using their sharp eyelashes to sweep surfaces and claw through soft soil just by blinking rapidly.

Xylia herself was a Nymph, which was basically an aqueous human. She had patches of shimmering scales on her body, toxin barbs on her wrists, green hair with a lavender lily naturally growing out of it, and two dragonfly-like wings that were actually fins that made her especially agile underwater. Despite how much she prided herself on being feral, she also wore a blue and purple striped leotard, purple boots, and a red cap with a bee stitched on the front.

Their number three arrived just shy of noon. He was a Heatfang, which was basically a red desert lizard able to expel flames from special glands on his fingertips, toes, and even inside his mouth. He also had a metallic orange prosthetic tail, tan khaki shorts to cover up the scar tissue where it attached to him, and a fiery orange shirt to complete the ensemble. He marched up to Xylia as soon as their eyes met and, like Penny, seemed as if he was resigned to a fate that had been chosen for him.

"Zack!" Xylia shouted in greeting. She ran up and gave him a big hug.

The Heatfang named Zack Tyler seemed to act as if he was surrendering himself to a python. "Careful," he grunted. "Half these ribs may be broken by the time we get through with whatever it is you have planned this time."

"Oh, it won't be that bad," Xylia said, her cheerfulness practically beaming from her freckles. "Each of these adventures we've had has only made you tougher. You've been making measurable progress! Ok, maybe you'll never be a wilderness survival expert like me, but you should get close enough in time. And this time, I'm bringing some extra help along!" With that, she seized Zack's arm and practically dragged him back to Penny.

Zack took a good look at the Skitterstar and tried to guess what Xylia's plan was. "This isn't going to be like an escort mission in a video game, is it?"

"No, nothing as unholy as that," Xylia said. "Pretend she's our daughter or something, OK?"

Those were exactly the right words to get both Zack and Penny to realize that they still had a chance to turn around and run if they really wanted to. Penny didn't have the guts to though, while Zack almost did. He hesitated a moment, since Xylia's wilderness survival skills included being able to wrestle with creatures much bigger than him, and that moment was just long enough for the last party member to arrive.

It was Robin Unwin, a young Grizzly who was four years old, which translated to being around eight or nine, human-wise. His father, Brownie, had spent most of his adult life outdoors before settling in Timber River, while his mother, Dandelion, was the community's spiritual leader for all intents and purposes, and he had adopted both his parents' best qualities. Suffice to say, he looked especially eager to put his father's skills to the test as he approached.

He looked quite prepared in his own special way too. He always wore a pair of fanny packs slung over his hips like saddle bags, in which he carried all sorts of sweets and treats. He also had a harness over his burgundy overalls that let him carry his pogo scooter on his back. He looked a little overburdened, but because the Grizzlies were a tribe modeled after bears, Robin had plenty of natural muscle mass for carrying around whatever he darn well pleased most of the time.

Xylia did not seem pleased at how decked out he was though. "What's all that?" she demanded. "You think we're going out to have fun in the woods or something?"

"No," Robin said with a hard stare. "That's why I came so prepared." As exciting as the imminent adventure had seemed, most of the Timber River township was familiar with how seriously Xylia took her ability to live outside of civilization. That was why Robin didn't particularly care if she took his talking back even more seriously.

Zack, meanwhile, saw a chance to salvage a trip he was pretty sure he wouldn't like. "It's not like there's only one way to live in the wilderness, you know. Why don't we try being bands of adventurers this time, traveling from town to town?"

"I don't think my parents would let me stay out that long," Robin said.

"Zack," Xylia began immediately, "Come on. YOU'RE the one who asked me to teach you all about this stuff because you hate being chained to this small town in the middle of nowhere, so don't be such an invertebrate."

"I was just thinking that it might be better to ease into this, OK?"

"And Robin, get rid of your supplies. You're going to find out that you don't need any of them today."

"What, so should I detach my artificial tail too?"

"I WILL go that far if you're determined to be a difficult student, buster. Remember when you traveled the desert between here and the northern Heatfang Territory? You crossed it _three times_ , south, north, then south again, and _each time_ you thought you could get water from a cactus, and _each time_ it made you barf and gave you the trots because it was toxic! If you had paid any attention to me prior, you wouldn't have had to suffer like that!"

"It's due to alkaloids," Robin interrupted. "Cacti and other plants have use for stuff like nicotine and morphine, but animals generally don't." He started looking around somewhat anxiously. "Which way are we going? South along the river?"

Xylia frowned. "I suppose we'll have to. The river is at least a path we can follow so we don't get lost."

"Then how about you two have a last meal before we go? Penny and I can get one at my house and I can drop my stuff off, then we can all set out feeling ready."

"That's a great idea," Zack said, and he immediately took Xylia's hand. "Come on, I've seen you nearly poison yourself with raw foods too often anyway."

"Hey!" Xylia struggled a bit as she was dragged off toward the local tavern, The Bottomless Barrel, even though she also liked the idea of a proper meal before setting out. The only problem was that such luxuries weren't easy to get in the wild and she didn't like softening herself up too much.

Robin, meanwhile, watched the two creatures disappear inside the tavern and exhaled. "After all," he muttered, "even in Minecraft you get to start with a full food meter."

"What's Mine—" Penny began, but then cut herself off. Her voice always seemed to emanate from her since her mouth was in the center of her chest. "—oh, is that one of those relics from the human era or something?"

"Yeah, just one of many things the civilizations of old left behind for us to discover a millennia later. I've been using it to help me design a backyard hideaway and I'll probably need your help with all the digging."

"Really?"

"Yeah, but right now, I need you to dig me a different sort of hidey hole. Come on."

The two headed straight for Timber River's small harbor, which was dug out of the banks of the river to give boats a safe place to rest. The river itself was usually calm, so some smaller rowboats were tied up directly on its shore instead of in the harbor, but the river seemed to be trying to warn the marina owner of how unwise that was by jostling the boats and making louder than normal noises as its lazy waves clawed at the shore. The sand was constantly damp and the closer to the water it got, the better it could suck in visitors' feet like mud if one wasn't careful. It had a clean scent to it though, provided none of the local wildlife had recently taken a dumping nearby.

Robin found a dry spot where the sand gave way to earth and instructed Penny to dig a small burrow while he gathered leaves to carpet its floor. Once it was done, he stashed his pogo scooter and fanny packs inside it. "We'll start by leading Zack and Xylia south" he explained to Penny, "and when we've gone a decent ways down, you'll double back and retrieve my things from here. You're the quiet one, so no one will notice you're gone."

"Aren't you scared about getting in trouble?" Penny said.

"A little, but the 'camping' trip worries me a little more. If we're far enough along when you get back, Xylia won't feel like sending me back after a little civil disobedience."

Penny considered saying something as she gave the packs and the scooter a few nudges. She was certain that she couldn't carry them all at once, so she quietly decided to prioritize the packs of treats over the pogo scooter. No doubt the worst part about camping would be the meals they'd have to prepare with whatever they had on hand.

This decision was only reinforced when she and Robin returned to his house for a quick meal. His parents gave him a few extra sandwiches for the trip and encouraged him to hide them from Xylia as best as he could, for while she was nice enough and unquestionably competent in the wild, she also had a reputation for being a little bit psychotic depending on how far down south her life was. Fortunately she was also very skilled at crafting and selling hats to the point that the joy of successful business helped sand her rougher edges and made her faults easier to put up with whenever they appeared.

When the party reformed and headed south down the riverbank though, they quickly encountered difficulty. As they approached the spot where Robin's secret stash had been laid, they spied a small, tan, bristly creature that seemed to resemble a cairn terrier, mainly because that was what it had been at one point in its life. It had a rounded face though, making it like a comet of beige fur with arms and legs that dug furiously into the ground. Everyone froze when they saw it.

"What is Monster doing here?" Zack said tensely.

Xylia began looking ready to drop onto all fours and pounce with the barbs on her wrists. "Penny," she whispered, "run back to town and tell someone that we found Fred's most infamous escaped experiment."

Penny just hesitated though, and the creature called Monster finally plucked its head out of its dig. It had already torn open one of the fanny packs hidden inside and its face was plastered with chocolate and cream smudges that made its fur stick out everywhere. It might have looked funny had its fur not also begun crackling with electricity upon spying the four people that clearly wanted some of the delicious treasure it had just found.

It was all Robin could do to keep himself from whining. " _Why_ did Fred have to go and design such a thing?" he bemoaned. "I know creating new lifeforms is considered some kind of art form, but what was he thinking?"

"He was thinking of trying to create a creature that could generate powerful electric charges," Zack muttered. "Maybe he was trying to make a living battery in case of a blackout or something."

"Chocolate is poisonous to dogs, right?" Robin said. "Maybe he'll suddenly keel over so we can turn in the body?"

As Monster began to growl though, it seemed clear that Fred, the town's local genetic engineer, had accounted for that flaw in his designs. The sugar it had just finished devouring had made it agitated, and when Robin tried to carefully tread forward to save what was left of his sweets, it quickly turned into a hyper barking machine, with each bark being punctuated by a wild flash of lightning. The first one struck Robin in the foot and it surprised him so badly that he didn't even notice how it barely hurt him. It singed his fur and felt only somewhat worse than stubbing his toe, but the light and noise and the static field making all of his hair suddenly standing on end made up the difference in fear.

The commotion quickly attracted attention from the nearby town proper, of course, but Xylia knew better than to stand around and wait for containment and rescue. "Everyone in the water, _now!_ " she ordered.

"What?" Robin said. "You want me to flee from an electric creature into a substance that _readily conducts electricity?_ "

"Monster used to be a cairn terrier, right? And cairn terriers are like kids that never grow up, right?"

"But I can't swim!" Penny said, making the first loud noise she had made in months.

"Then I've got you!"

Once Xylia seized Penny and plunged into the river, Robin and Zack could only muster up enough sense to pursue her. They could both swim better than awkwardly at least while Xylia held Penny towards the surface as she practically flew beneath it. She was at the opposite shore in less than a minute, while Zack and Robin needed at least a few to catch up to her.

Fortunately for them, Xylia's intuition was right. Monster was not only like a kid that could never grow up, but also like a dog that thought it was a cat, so when everyone dived into the river, it fled the heavy splashes of water that leapt to shore, then trotted back and began to whine at everyone swimming away. It didn't dare touch the water itself; the damp shore was the most it could stand. Soon it began barking and crying at once, as if protesting how using the river to flee was not fair play. Then it was forced to flee itself when more people started closing in on its location. At least one of them had an insulated net prepared specifically for the encounter.

Xylia and her companions could barely make out the commotion from the opposite shore, though it didn't matter to her. Robin was the only one who tried to shake himself dry and Xylia was the only one who didn't mind the fine shower he sprayed everywhere. "Good work team," she said with a smile. "We survived our first feral encounter together. There's hope for all of you yet!"

The only thing Robin could take solace in though was how his sandwiches had been sealed tight in bags. They had become a bit crushed, but at least they weren't soggy. They were all he had left of his ambitions, so he guarded them carefully, making sure to keep them wrapped in his overalls and hidden from everyone as he undressed to try to dry himself.

Penny was in a bit of shock as she finished processing what had just happened. "I could have drowned. I could have drowned!" It was hard to tell if she was terrified or really thankful to be alive.

"You didn't though," Zack said. "Xylia may be a little crazy, but she knows how to keep herself and anyone with her alive at least."

"No, Skitterstars are too heavy to swim!" Penny insisted. "Our prongs on our backs are like stone, so we sink like stone too!"

"Then you need to spread your weight out more," Xylia said. "Can't you cup your prongs into a bowl or boat shape, then paddle with your limbs or something?"

"I..." Penny paused. "I... don't know. I've never thought of that before."

"Here, I'll shove you into the water and we'll try it right now."

"NO! No, please, don't do that."

"We're here for survival lessons, remember?"

"Xylia," Zack said with exasperation, "we already survived. Let's take it easy until we find the next beast that wants to hurt, murder, or eat us."

The Nymph fumed quietly. "Oh, OK, fine. I guess since we're so close to Elk Hill, we can climb the river banks and see what's in the bakery's dumpster or something."

Elk Hill was the town roughly across the river from Timber River. It was relatively small, yet significantly more developed; while the Timber River residents all had two-story buildings so they could live right above their shops, Elk Hill had a business district and a residential district, which made Mason Hornblower, the mayor of Timber River, consistently critical of how Elk Hill didn't take advantage of vertical space and was more spread out. People would occasionally point out to him that Elk Hill seemed to see more business and activity for it, though the real reason was that Mason deliberately restricted his town's size because he preferred running what amounted to a glorified outpost without walls. He had managed to secure more novelty for his settlement anyway, such that the two towns cross-promoted their best attractions fairly regularly.

One of Elk Hill's best novelties was the Cakery, which didn't deal solely in cakes but did strive to give all its fresh baked goods rich, cake-like textures. Not fluffy, airy, spongy textures, but dense, soft, creamy textures, and like most bakeries, they tended to discard whatever was more than a day old. They'd just pile it in bags and toss it in the dumpster. Had the Cakery been in Timber River, it's likely the owners would have distributed the leftover pastries to all their neighbors instead, but Elk Hill was developed enough that, for better or for worse, its sense of community was mainly cultivated in a specially built community center instead of in the houses and shops of whoever felt like hosting on a whim.

"It's such a waste," Robin lamented as the party stole around into the alleys of the business district. "It's like we're on a rescue mission." He was secretly hoping to attempt his candy stash trick again. Maybe he and Penny could carry off a bag of cookies and scones and hide it somewhere for retrieval after their camping trip was over.

"Xylia could use some treats more than any of us," Zack said casually.

"Hey, what do you mean by that?" Xylia said with suspicion.

"That you're as boney as a fish," the Heatfang bluntly clarified. "Are you aware that when you take off your leotard, everyone can see your ribcage beneath your scales? That's seriously creepy."

"Well I'm sorry, but that's just how us ferals tend to live. We only get one or two meals a day at most, so we don't get plump and plush like..." Xylia paused and seriously examined Zack's body. "Actually, take off your shirt."

"Fine." He did it without hesitation, showing off how tall, lanky, and beanpole he was beneath it. No one could see his ribcage though and Xylia muttered a quiet curse over not finding anything to nail him on in return. "It's because I actually cook all my food," he explained, "even when I catch it myself. Just because you can't shoot fire from your fingertips is no reason for you to not do the same. Sometimes you expend more energy digesting your food than you do ingesting it."

"Will you stop ragging on me about that? I'll have you know that regular consumption of raw foods helps build up tolerance to toxins and sickness, and—" Xylia lost her thought though when she regarded Robin next. "Hey, how come you aren't a plush teddy bear with all the sweets you consume?"

"Two reasons," answered the young Grizzly. "One, I never eat them all at once, only a little at a time over a long time. Two, my youthful metabolism demands the extra energy."

"'Metabolism'? What kind of word is that? Why don't you ever talk like a kid?"

"Well, bear cubs typically stay with their parents for three years, and I'm four, so technically I'm already an adult. Which is a lot more than I can say for some people." A subtle eyeroll suggested that Robin was deliberately avoiding naming names.

It was then that Penny returned to the group. At first everyone was surprised at how she snuck off without them noticing, then they were surprised at how worried she looked. "We've got competition at the dumpster," she reported.

Xylia's pointy ears pricked up. "Arlight, another chance for a lesson! Pay attention class; today we're going to learn how to compete for the right to consume a carcass!"

"You have an amazing knack for instilling dread into things," Robin muttered.

The party readied for scuffle as it advanced. There was a loud bang as they approached, which made everyone hesitate for only a moment. Then they arrived at the dumpster itself, which made everyone hesitate indefinitely.

Zack was the first to say it. "A bear. Why did it have to be a bear?"

They couldn't tell if it was a grizzly bear, an atlas bear, a blue bear, a Kodiak bear, or some sort of ursid hybrid, though judging by how it was sniffing through the pastries, Robin suspected that it was a cinnamon bear. It certainly had the size and might characteristic of its animal family, with shaggy fur that essentially worked as thick chainmail armor. It even appeared to have already put a dent in the dumpster as if it was just a soda can. It emitted gruff snorts as it rummaged until it finally noticed it had visitors and turned its sugary glaze-dotted muzzle upon Xylia and her students.

"Rule number one of competition for resources?" Xylia breathed. "The bear always wins."

"Seriously?" Zack said.

"Seriously. Bears are as close to invincible as wild animals get."

"Well then," Robin began as he took a step forward. The bear's attention immediately centered upon him and he tried to use that to his advantage. "Penny, get in there and tell us what's inside while we distract it."

"What?" The Skitterstar recoiled, horrified at the idea of being elected as a sacrifice.

"Are you using your empathy?" Xylia breathed to Robin. "Can you control it?"

"This is no time to use feral skills like empathy!" Zack hissed.

"It totally is! Robin is a Grizzly, a tribe modeled after bears! That means he has the ability to assert himself as an alpha among the general kind of animal he was made in the image of, like all tribes do!"

"That may be why it seems so interested in me," Robin muttered. "I would think myself to be a bit too small to be the leader of any animal pack though." He tried sidling away from the party, making sure the bear followed his motions and no one else's.

"I might be able to shotgun it with my flames," Zack practically insisted.

"What, and make it angry?" Xylia said. "I don't know about you, but I do not want to suddenly end up as prey today."

"Hey, the humans used to make use of weapons like that to fend off beasts all the time and they became the dominant species for it. They were actually pretty smart animals."

"Excuse me? Calling humans 'animals' is an insult to all good animals everywhere."

Some more rummaging came from the dumpster. No one had noticed Penny slip inside it while everyone was dealing with the bear, and her voice suddenly perked up. "Chocolate chip muffins, still fresh!" she announced.

"Jackpot," Robin said with a grin. Deciding that freed him up enough to make use of the sandwiches he still had tucked in his overalls, he took them out of their wrappings and gestured with them like they were batons. "Come on, big guy, step away from the dumpster. Why not try this healthy food instead and leave the delicious food to us?"

The bear sniffed at the offering, and that was when Robin's attempt at traditional hospitality combined with his natural empathy ability in an unexpected way. It ate the sandwiches in almost a single gulp, then made a content sound and nuzzled against the young Grizzly's cheek. Then it seized him by the scruff of the neck with its mouth and began to carry him off.

"OH SHOOT, IT'S A FEMALE!" Robin shouted as he was kidnapped. "Look, I don't know what happened to _your_ cubs, but I already have parents! Put me down!"

"That's it!" Zack exclaimed. The bear immediately got a good head start, so he took aim with one of his fingers and before anyone could stop him, he shot a stream of clear, pungent liquid from it. At first Xylia covered her mouth out of fear of suddenly seeing two bear creatures set ablaze, but then she clamped her hands over her face to guard against the powerful odor that came to mark the bear as it fled into the woods.

"It's really hard to want to chase something that smells that bad," Xylia croaked, "but that was sharp thinking."

"Well, we could not chase it and then explain to Robin's parents what happened to their son," Zack reasoned. "Course, then we'd have to face _two_ bears."

"Yeah, no thanks. Penny! Get out of there!" Xylia rushed to the dumpster intending to pull the Skitterstar out and carry her along for the chase, but there was no response. No voice, no motion amidst the garbage, nothing. It didn't take long for Xylia to put two and two together though as she gazed out in the direction the bear had fled. "Oh no she didn't..."

Zack blinked, then the realization hit him too. "Oh no. Did Penny decide to become a bear rider?"

In a matter of seconds, Xylia had torn off her purple boots and nearly disappeared into the woods on all fours. "Hurry before the trail gets cold!" she called.

"What was she thinking?" Zack growled to himself. "How did we not notice? It's like she has the ability to teleport!"

Thanks to the grease marking the bear and the pursuers' keen sense of smell, it wasn't hard to keep track of where it went. It seemed to circle around Elk Hill, giving it enough of a berth so that everyone could still see its buildings, then eventually broke off and headed straight north. Xylia tried to keep hot on the bear's heels, but not so much that she lost track of Zack, who not only was not used to running on all fours, but also kept generating more lighter fluid in his fingertips so he could smite the ground will small fireballs, leaving a trail that they would hopefully be able to follow back later.

The pursuit kept them winding all around the wilderness for a couple hours though. The bear seemed intent on keeping its newly adopted cub and tried several tricks to throw off everyone on its trail, which might have worked if not for the smelly grease on its rear end. It ended up having to rely on its sheer power to storm through the forest and the mighty sound of its footfalls was enough to keep Xylia and Zack a healthy distance away. The fresh grass gradually gave way to podzol as the sun began to wane in the evening and the smell of musky leaves gradually overpowered that of Zack's grease marker as it evaporated and faded away.

For his part, Robin did try to free himself by trying to figure out how he could use his empathy ability to persuade the bear to drop him, but he really had no idea how to wield it. He'd seen a handful of tribes control animals of their likeness before, but the methods seemed to vary. Some actually scuffled with the animals and fought for the alpha position, while others seemed to use the ability psychically, especially with animals where social hierarchies were a lot looser or even nonexistent. Robin thought that bears were more of the latter, but perhaps his empathy had backfired on him due to his youth. Perhaps because he was still a child, the mental suggestion he had ended up sending was, "I'm a lone bear cub who has walking and talking fake bears for parents instead of real bears. Please adopt me!"

The bear did stop to rest a couple times, but no one could figure out how to approach it went it did. It seemed to guard Robin well and Penny couldn't get herself to do anything other than hang onto the animal's back with all her limbs while she gripped a whole bag of pastries in her crown of prongs. Xylia seemed to be the only one with the patience of a predator. She unceasingly prowled nearby, looking for any window of opportunity to steal Robin back. Zack, meanwhile, just became more impatient and irritable.

"The lighter fluid's almost all gone back there," he muttered. "I'm not gonna feel like marking it again. We've wasted enough time as-is. We should make our move now."

"If it helps, think of this as practice for whenever we have kids," Xylia said.

Zack looked dumbfounded. "This entire situation makes a poor case for having kids!"

For a second, Xylia considered whether she might have said too much, but then decided that Zack needed to have more toughness beaten into him anyway. "Well, that's the natural life cycle, you know? We live together a lot as-is, and one important aspect of being an adult is knowing how to keep your offspring from being devoured alive."

"Or removed by a form of government," Zack snarked. "Robin is too unique anyway. Any kid we have would probably turn out as dumb as we are."

"Oh, stop that! We're both survivors from different ecosystems! That means our children would learn how to not take dreck or lies from anyone! The world needs more people like that, don't you think?"

"Whatever." Zack sounded very cold, though it was more because he was too focused on stealing around in the foliage and studying his environment to admit that Xylia may have had a point. "There's a cave ahead, just across a creek. I'm wondering if I could herd the bear into it. Then we'd have it cornered and we could get in, grab Robin and Penny, and then get out."

"How do you plan to do that?"

"All animals fear fire, don't they?"

"And I'm afraid of you burning this whole forest down with a few embers. Haven't you noticed how the ground is drier here?"

Zack looked down at the crunchy leaves around his feet. He was a little afraid to admit that that was why he had made his scorch mark trail sparser over time. He wasn't even sure where the last mark was anymore. But he finally said, "It's either that, or this chase goes on into the night. I'm taking a shot. Use the water from the creek to put out my fires or something."

He steadied his arm as if he was aiming a gun, then a thin spurt of flame shot from his fingertip, hitting the bear right where the grease marker had been, What was left of it quickly ignited and Robin could be heard shouting "ARE YOU CRAZY?" over the flames' roar. Zack wasn't, of course; he had tried his best to make his attack more flashy than harmful by having it erupt into a cloud of dazing heat upon impact instead of causing total immolation, but fire is still fire, no matter the form. The bear roared in surprise and pain, Penny squeaked in surprise and panic, and then the bear ran straight into the cave as planned without Zack having to scorch the ground to keep it from running somewhere else.

"We've got it now!" he shouted. "Robin, try to get free for once and save us some trouble, why don't you?"

"What makes you think this thing will let me?" he called back. "It's a momma bear! That means it's going to guard its young until—AAHHH! SPIDERS!"

"Don't be a wimp NOW, darnit!" Zack dashed straight inside the cave, his only thoughts being on ending the hassle he'd had to endure for the whole afternoon. Licks of flame danced at his fingertips as he found the bear with Robin in its mouth just in time to see it toss him away so it could snarl at something barring its path further in. The first thing Zack noticed about the something was that it had eight really hairy feet which stemmed from a body that had to have had at least as many feet in height to boot.

"AAHHH! SPIDERS!" Zack shouted.

Xylia quickly caught up behind him. "Awww, spiders?" she said mournfully. "Guess we're going to have to kill those poor, innocent things?"

"I REALLY hope you're being sarcastic, Xylia!" Robin screamed as he picked himself up.

The furry beast swept its many eyes around the room, then batted Zack out of the way with its thick legs. The bear proved a more menacing obstacle, so it darted to its side and gave it a quick bite, causing it to roar and stumble aside in a daze. Then it approached Xylia, the only one in the cave who hadn't yet indicated any desire to fight back, and decided that meant she was worth cocooning and carrying off to eat later.

"Ok they aren'tpoorinnocentthingsanymoreHELP!" Xylia shrieked as she was showered with silk. Slashing at it with her barbed wrists just caused them to get gummed up and the threads were too strong to just tear through.

Zack hesitated only a moment before leaping in, just long enough to form a haphazard plan. "Someone get me a big stick!" he said, then he charged. He slung a couple fireballs at the spider to get it to recoil, but it was really intent on getting a meal and just tried to bat him away as if he was no more than another teensy insect. His fire didn't bother it too much; it singed its hair away, sure, and made it a bit agitated, but its exoskeleton armored it against serious damage. Zack couldn't get in close enough to deliver some lashes with his prosthetic tail and the heat he threw at it wasn't enough to stop it from cocooning Xylia all the way and then picking her up with its jaws to deliver a liquidizing bite.

In that instant though, Zack became incredibly thankful that he was a Purebred Heatfang instead of a hybrid. In times past he had felt jealous of other Heatfangs that resembled dragons because one of their parents had been a winged tribe like a Terrafoe or Cloudskipper, or what about those Sparkler Heatfangs who could eat raw iron and minerals and use them to produce lustrous flares and fireworks instead of plain flamethrowers and fireballs? But he didn't have any hybridized skills like that. He was a purebred, meaning that his ability to create and control flame was undiluted by the blood of other tribes. Any other Heatfang might have had only power instead of control and just set the cocoon completely aflame, taking out both the spider and its meal, but Zack instead aimed at the bottom of the cocoon and fired a fierce yet precise heat jet, cleanly cutting open a long incision until Xylia finally emerged and tumbled onto the cave floor.

"Xylia!" Zack shouted. "Are you OK? Did it bite you?"

"Penny!" called Robin from some dark corner of the cave. "Robin used Baton Pass!"

"Got it!" Penny said. "Zack, stick incoming!" It was awkward in her small hands and she had to hurl it like a javelin due to its size, but Zack seized it as it clattered by his feet and he was just in time as the spider decided that it would have to eat him first if it wanted a chance to eat Xylia. It started spitting silk to bind him, but Zack was able to get a good chunk of it wrapped around his new stick while burning away whatever got on him with just a casual flick of embers from his free hand. By the time the spider had determined that its usual tactics weren't working, Zack had collected enough silk to ignite the whole wad.

Suddenly the spider found itself towering over an enraged Heatfang wielding a small sun on a stick. Then it found itself being bludgeoned by the burning mace. It didn't scream though. Spiders don't have much in the way of nervous systems and their hides, being made of hairy bone instead of sensitive skin, make them fairly numb. It reacted like a robot instead; it seemed to determine that it had encountered an unexpected problem and was beginning to take damage in important sectors of its body, so its best course of action was to retreat further back into the cave.

Zack managed a chuckle even as his arms began to ache from his frenzied attack. "It felt that!" he announced victoriously. "And now we can actually see in this darn place!" Casting his new light around, he could see Robin and the bear seemingly no worse for wear. The bear in particular seemed to be merely annoyed at the spider bite it had gotten. Penny was close by too and staring off into the furthest reaches of the cave. She was developing a strong urge to explore, being a cave creature herself.

Xylia managed to pull herself up, seemingly more asphyxiated by the cocoon than anything else. She had no bites on her, so she was able to recover quickly, enough that she found the vigor to suddenly seize Zack's torch and stampede further into the cave with it. "It's spider meat for dinner, boys!" she shrieked.

"HEY!" Zack screamed. "Xylia, you're just going to get us all killed that way!"

"It's called _hunting_!" she called back. "That's how life works in the wild! You kill or be killed! Eat or be eaten—OH NO THERE'S THREE OF THEM!"

Zack, Robin, and Penny were all stunned. Sure enough, the glow in the back of the cave revealed that the first spider had recruited two friends, leaving Zack and everyone else wondering if they should turn pale in terror or groan at Xylia's recklessness.

At least she didn't need to be rescued. She was a pretty fast runner, the cave was narrow enough that the predators on her tail could only pursue her single file, and it helped that the intense heat of the torch's head caused it to sear away in short order and topple off of its handle. It took a moment for the three spiders to study the intense ball of flame that rolled toward them and determine how much of a threat it was and how they might best avoid it. Ultimately they just stepped over it.

That gave everyone enough time to regroup and scramble to the cave's mouth, where they found it barred by the presence of a _fourth_ spider. It was colored black and blue, as opposed to the cave spiders which were gray and brown, and it had spindly legs while the cave spiders had large, monstrous ones. Not that anyone had noticed much though; all spiders feel the same when one's size makes one not much more than a tender morsel.

"Well, we're dead," Zack surmised as he readied another burst of flame. "I'm sorry I ever thought life in the wilderness might be glamorous."

"I'm ashamed I was ever attracted to a wimp like you," Xylia muttered.

"Can't we run under it?" Robin said. It sounded like he was asking himself; the spider's legs looked plenty more agile than that of its cave cousins and they seemed to end in skewers, which begged him to question how desperate he was.

Penny didn't say anything; she was too busy scratching at the rocky floor, looking for a good spot to drill in with the prongs on her back and hide.

The blue spider regarded the small snacks before it and indeed seemed to skitter about menacingly, but that was just because it was trying to figure out how to get around them without agitating them too much. It finally recoiled and hopped over them. Eat them? Like they were a full course meal together. The real feast was the brown spiders emerging from the back of the cave. A few steps in, the blue spider even found a bear that shared its point of view. The two animals quickly joined ranks; the spindly blue spider began wrestling with the cave spiders while the bear set about trying to demolish them with its paws and jaws.

Xylia was the first to realize what was happening. "Oh! That one must be a... what's it called? A huntsman spider? They don't make webs and they don't bite anything other than other spiders because that's what they prey on!"

"Finally a lucky break," Zack said in relief. "Let's get out of here."

Robin was seemingly mesmerized by the cave battle. Sure, he wanted to go, but... the thought of it made him feel a little tight inside. "Guys," he said uneasily, "I... we have to help the bear somehow. She's... I don't know... I felt like she _needed_ me for something. Like she brought me here for a reason."

"Oh you can't be serious," Zack muttered.

Xylia was intrigued though. "Really? Did she communicate that to you because you're both bears?"

"I... don't know," Robin said in frustration. "I don't know how this empathy skill works at all. At first I thought she was an abductor, and maybe she was at first, but then I thought I sensed she was sad? Like maybe something happened to her original cubs here?"

Zack turned and regarded the cave battle with his own brand of frustration. "Unless you have a plan that won't get us all killed, I'm chalking this up to Stockholm Syndrome."

"I think I do, actually. The cave spiders can't all fight at once. They're trapped in a line, so only one can really fight at a time, and we're relatively small compared to them, so we can run under their legs and start attacking them from behind. I bet all four of us can kill a giant spider easily, then the bear and huntsman spider will help us surround and destroy the last one!"

Zack just sighed in exasperation. "I have heard the word 'spider' too many times today to be on board with this plan."

"Oh you absolute—!" Xylia fumed. "What are you, prey!? That's how people think when they're on the bottom of the food chain! C'mon Robin, Penny, we'll take these things on ourselves!"

Penny was nowhere to be found again though, at least until Zack noticed that she was already skittering into combat. All eyes followed his, then Robin and Xylia took off after her, and for a second, Zack wondered if Penny was actually the acting party leader ushering everyone into action because she was so small, quiet, and vulnerable, everyone seemed to want to protect her. Including Zack himself. Besides, he liked being left behind even less than being in a tough fight.

Maneuvering past the bear proved to be the toughest part as everyone tried to assemble into pincer attack formation. It seemed out for revenge the way it clamped its jaws around one of the foremost spider's legs and tore it right off, and all the flailing and thrashing that involved meant that anyone passing by the bear ran the risk of getting crushed under its weight in one of several creative ways. With agility and a bit of luck though, everyone made it past the bear and under the agitated arachnids and as soon as they came out the rear, Zack and Xylia pounced simultaneously before the rear spider could turn itself around. The former used his fierce flames to land repeated blows on the body then struck the weakened spots with his whip-like tail, while the latter worked on slashing legs apart at the joints with her toxic barbed wrists.

"Don't use any poison if you expect us to eat these things later!" Robin said.

Xylia paused. "Oops. Sorry. Guess I'll have to eat this one all by myself then!"

Robin and Penny only had enough room to be on standby, which made them feel half useless and half thankful that they didn't need to get any deeper in the grim situation. Zack and Xylia took the rear spider down without much trouble apart from trying to quickly sever the limbs Xylia poisoned before they made the rest of its body inedible, and then they got to watch it flail around with stumps leaking pale yellow blood, which was excessively creepy. It was so creepy, in fact, that Robin finally shouted, "Out of the way!", seized Penny, and hurled her like a giant shuriken, striking what was left of the spider right between its eyes.

The six-pointed Skitterstar made sure to dig her stony prongs in deep upon impact and the dying spider peered up at its slayers with all of its big, sad eyes, as if it was trying to say, "ERROR... ERROR... CRITICAL_DAMAGE... SYSTEM_SHUTDOWN..." Its remaining limbs wriggled for a few seconds as they slowly lost power and the whole creature went still.

The front spider fell to its predators not long after, with the blue spider going so far as to flip it over with its jaws, slam it against the cave floor, and deliver a lethal bite. With it curled up and still, taking down the middle spider became mostly a formality. Penny abandoned the fray at that point so she wouldn't get caught up in it while Robin found his way to the bear's side, figuring his mere presence could help soothe whatever fatigue she was feeling. Ultimately she wasn't needed much though, nor were Zack and Xylia. Another flip, slam, and bite later, the huntsman spider had made its second kill.

There was a tense, quiet moment as everyone listened to make sure that nothing else was going to crawl up from the depths of the cave. When nothing showed up, everyone finally collapsed and sprawled out on the cave floor. The bear seemed unsteady on its feet but refused to rest, instead opting to sniff around the cave for something while the giant huntsman spider tucked into a victory feast.

"Why do bad things like this happen to good people?" Zack panted.

"Because people don't become good... until after they've learned how to deal with... bad things," Robin breathed. "Duh. Actually... on that note, would you rather be felled by a cave beaver, blown up by a creeper, or eaten by a wumpus? It certainly looked like we were doomed to the latter... for a while."

"Honestly," Xylia said, "I'd rather be eaten by a wumpus, whatever that is, because it would be less wasteful and it would probably deserve the reward anyway if it managed to beat me."

"REAL nice conversation topic after what we just went through," Zack muttered. "Ow... my fingers ache. I think I used up nearly all of my lighter fluid. I'll need rest and food to produce more..."

"How are giant spiders even able to exist?" Penny said. "Bugs are supposed to be smaller than I am..."

"It's the excess oxygen in the atmosphere," Robin explained. "Bugs don't have the best built lungs, so the contents of the atmosphere play a large part in limiting their size. When the humans went extinct, their machines, factories, and other things that pumped out carbon dioxide ended up largely abandoned and plant life gradually took over everything the tribes didn't preserve. Those plants have been spreading and turning all those old pollutants into oxygen for almost a thousand years now, making it possible for all kinds of new creatures to live healthfully, even giant bugs."

"Wow." Penny took another moment to breathe and relax, then pushed herself back to her feet with her stony prongs. "I bet everyone feels like muffins now. I think I left them by the cave entrance before things really started getting hairy."

"I think we all deserve muffins at the very least," Robin agreed. He was the next climb to his feet and brush himself off. "I better find that bear and see if she's OK. I hope she didn't get bitten too badly."

The bear seemed to wait for Robin before it ventured further into the cave, past the decapitated torch head that still sat and burned. The dancing light it cast on the walls was mesmerizing until the cave turned to try to hide from it and Robin's nose wrinkled under the presence of mildew and rot. The cave floor became rough, sandy, and even crunchy in spots due to discarded scraps that were no doubt once parts of previous victims. There were a number of thick spider webs suspended in the way too, and merely poking one with his finger threatened to glue Robin in place and made him pine for a knife. His father had a passion for knife smithing because he had been a traveler before settling down and a strong knife is the most valuable tool one can have in the wilderness. Since Xylia hadn't even allowed him to bring that though, he was forced to scrounge around on the cave floor until he found a flat rock with a decent edge that could cut through the webbing so the bear could follow him further in.

The torch light seemed to finish fading out exactly where the webbing ended, which made searching for surprises difficult, not to mention treasure. With the various scraps strewn about from previous victims, Robin was hoping that he would find something of value among it all. There was something that seemed like a crystalline case tangled up in one of the webs that looked enticing at first, and when he got closer, he found there were several such cases, all round and pod like. Then he looked up, backed away, and found that the cases were actually the segments of a long abdomen that was part of a giant dragonfly's exoskeleton, the insides having long been sucked out and licked clean, leaving only a husk.

Robin shuddered and tried to focus on being disappointed rather than freaked out. Surely someone who had died nearby had to have been armed with, say, a pocket knife with all kinds of folding tools that he could salvage? A machete for hacking through all kinds of lush, green hells? A wind dagger that can actually cut wind? Maybe a butterfly knife still wrapped in a cocoon with its former owner?

On that thought, the bear seemed attracted to a couple cocoons just out of the light's reach. It nudged them with its muzzle and gently pawed at them, which puzzled Robin for a moment. What was so special about them? They seemed even smaller than he was.

That observation prodded at his mind for a moment, and then it hit him. He bolted straight for the cocoons and used his sharp rock to roughly cut one open. He got a rough incision started, then tore it open with his hands, and sure enough, there was a bear cub inside, completely motionless. The other cocoon was the same, and once it was ripped open into a makeshift cradle, he hefted both of them up with each arm and went running back. "GUYS!" he yelled. "We need medicine right now!"

Xylia, Zack, and Penny had decided that the spider battle had left them too tired to do anymore traveling and had begun to set up camp for the night just inside the cave's maw. Zack had begun arranging stones into a ring around various sticks, bark scraps, and ratty webbing that they had all gathered and was preparing to light it all when Robin returned. Soon everyone was crowded around the cubs while the mama bear sat and watched them, no doubt hoping that she hadn't ended up too late.

There was a tense silence as Xylia, the one with the most wilderness experience, poked the cubs gently in spots and pressed her pointy ears to their chests. "This one is dead," she said at last. "It's almost all stiff. We must have been only minutes late or something. This other one is very weak and may not make it to morning."

Robin was trying not to worry too much, but seemed to be slowly failing. "Antivenom," he mused as he looked back toward the dead cave spiders. "You can make antivenom by injecting someone with poison, then extracting blood after the body makes antibodies to fight the poison. It works like a vaccination against disease."

"No," Zack said firmly. "You're not going to experiment on yourself or anyone else."

"We can make a warm fire though and I can see what plants and herbs are around," Xylia offered. "But it's a shame we have nothing we can use to boil them into a soup or tea."

"There was a big dead dragonfly back there," Robin said quickly. "Could you use sections of its exoskeleton to make bowls and dishes?"

"Really? That would probably work great. We could probably even make armor plating in case something else comes along to eat us."

Zack sighed as he slung a small fireball into the tinder. "I'll get it then. Xylia, you should hunt and gather any medicine or food you can find out there. We should also trying to find bedding material unless we want to freeze overnight on this cold, hard floor."

"I'll go with you," Penny said. "I bet we can salvage a lot of the webbing back there. Just let me climb up the walls and cut it down."

That left Robin to become the homemaker as everyone else split to gather everything usable they could find. For a moment, he had been tempted to ask why anyone needed to hunt when they already had a mound of spider meat, but one discerning look at it in all its creepy glory made that feel like a stupid question. Actually, between that and everything else that had happened, he wasn't sure how much he wanted any food, even a chocolate chip muffin. He was even glad he had given all his sandwiches to the mother bear when they first met. Sweeping the cave floor, carpeting it with grass and leaves, and nestling the surviving cub closer to the fire was about all he felt like doing.

The creek outside was too shallow to have any fish, but Xylia's diligence eventually got her a rabbit, which she figured she would skin and prepare for the bear cub. The spider meat would be good and healthy enough for everyone else and she figured extracting it from the corpses shouldn't be too different from shelling a crab. She managed to find some wild basil and raspberries and also some other plants that seemed like they might be a variety of mint, but she wasn't an herbalist. Her knowledge of medicinal plants didn't reach much farther beyond brewing oak leaves and dandelion roots into teas and soups. She also gathered some Queen Anne's lace, a kind of white yarrow flower, for soothing the cub's spider bite wound. At first she collected everything in her red cap for easily carrying it back, but the rabbit ultimately had to go to her other free hand and she ending up gathering so many wildflowers that she started stuffing them into her leotard while reserving her cap for berries and other fragile things. By the time she returned to the cave, she looked like an exotic scarecrow.

Zack and Penny retrieved the rounded parts of the dragonfly exoskeleton and Robin immediately started boiling water in them. He set aside a couple bowls of it to cool for drinking, then left one on the fire so Xylia could add her herbs to it. Harvesting the spider silk proved to be a little on the side of impractical though because a lot of it was still fresh and sticky. Not only did Zack have to rescue Penny from it several times, but he ended up burning away even more of it in the process. In the end, they were able to gather enough to make beds for everyone, but everything they couldn't gather ended up reduced to a smoldering mess. By that point, Zack's fire slinging abilities were definitely all used up.

As everyone else prepared dinner, Robin worked on pitching a tent inside the cave for himself, the bear cub, and Penny as well. He didn't know as much about wilderness survival as Xylia, but he at least knew, among other bits of practical trivia, that cold was one of the greatest dangers, so by building an insulating shelter inside a cold hard shelter, the three of them would be able to share heat and conserve energy. He found several sturdy sticks outside before the sun finished setting and made a frame with them, then carefully draped some of the adhesive silk over them so he could plaster leaves and grass all over it on the outside.

The project helped distract him from whatever bitter-smelling potion Xylia was mixing over the fire and making him miss his pack of sweets. That was another thing he knew a lot about; he not only enjoyed candies and baked goods, but he knew a lot about what went into making them and how they could be made into more than comfort food. He really wished he had the ingredients for hot chocolate on him because warm, sweet liquids give a body energy for producing heat. Even some trail mix would have been good for stimulating the metabolism, and he was certain that a decent amount of raw brown sugar would make whatever Xylia was preparing palatable. Even though the sickly cub seemed to muster the strength to lap some of it up, Robin remained doubtful of Xylia's culinary mastery, especially since she had a fondness for raw foods. Ultimately he decided to help by taking his sharp rock and dicing up the wild basil, berries, and other plants to make sure their flavor would get mixed in well, and when the time came to cook the spider meat, Robin used the soup as a garnish. Sure enough, the party concluded that spider meat was pretty flavorless when eaten plain.

The cub was too weak to chew anything, so the rabbit was given to the mother bear, everyone shared the chocolate chip muffins at last, and then the time came to tuck in for the night. Zack and Xylia took special care in making sure that Robin, Penny, and the cub were all snuggly nestled together as if they were their own children, then the two of them slumped down next to the fire to relax and listen for gentle snores coming from the tent.

First they got a sleepy mumbling from Robin though. "What was she doing all the way in Elk Hill...?" he said with a yawn. "We've gotta be miles away from there by now..."

"Maybe she had given up and set off to move on with her life," Penny offered. "Then she found you and that gave her hope again..."

Zack stared into the fire. "Or maybe, hopefully, we're a lot closer to Elk Hill than we realize. I don't know how good the trail I made is, but I could swear that mother bear gave us the runaround instead of fleeing in a relatively straight path."

"If she did," Xylia said, "I'm at least glad that she was more scared of us than we were of her. We really could have gotten mauled back there."

At first Zack seemed to be in grim agreement, but... gradually he began to feel fairly good about where he was. He was lost in the wilderness, far away from all his cares. It wasn't glamorous at all, but it was a big relief compared to the grocery store grunt work he'd been used to doing back in Timber River. They had all done well together too; everyone was alive and relatively unhurt and they had managed to make a whole shelter all on their own. It was a very empowering realization, and it eventually drew forth a chuckle. "We're even taking care of injured animals right now," he noted to himself. "Just like the ancient humans used to, in fact."

That got Xylia to wrinkle her nose in distaste. "Actually they pretty much only cared about dogs and cats, and the cats often snuck out and drove other species extinct when no one was watching."

Zack frowned. _Oh no, you're not gonna take the wind from my sails now,_ he thought, _not when I've only just now gotten a chance to spread them._ He really wanted to challenge her directly, but, lacking the knowledge to do so, he had to settle for sighing with mild disappointment. "You're always kinda cynical about this," he said.

"It's factual, not cynical," Xylia stated.

"Well the humans survived for thousands of years before the tribes wiped them out. They must have done _something_ right in order to last that long."

"I... dunno," Xylia sounded a little like she wanted to relent for his sake, but was still too stubborn on the subject. "OK, I don't know much about ancient history, but I bet even the best of them looked to each other once in a while and asked, 'Why aren't we dead yet? How is it that we're still here?'"

"What instincts do you think they had? I mean, they did seem animal-like in their own way, but with the added ability to override their instincts. It made them seem greater than the sum of their parts."

"Actually I'm pretty sure that they weren't in tune with their instincts enough, somehow."

"They were very in tune with their copulation instincts at least," Robin said from inside the tent. "That helped contribute to the planet becoming overpopulated so fast."

" _What?_ " For a moment, Zack felt as if Robin was his own kid who had just said his first swear word in public. "You... you are _way_ too young to know something like that," he asserted.

"Hey, I told you before," Robin said bluntly, "I'm four years old. That means I'm technically already an adult."

Zack pondered arguing, but slumped back and shook his head instead. "Kids are usually subjected to more censorship than that, maybe because adults are afraid they might get called out by them otherwise."

"He may just be synching with the cub's pain," Xylia said. "Let him be a real bear for now and he'll become a kid again after this ends one way or the other. As for me... I'm going to curl up with my new best friend." With that, she skipped off to scale one of the legs of the giant huntsman spider. It didn't seem to mind at all the way she scrunched up on its abdomen like a puppy before dozing off.

Zack watched her for a moment and silently debated how much he actually liked the company he was stuck with. He wasn't sure how he and Xylia first got together as he walked backwards through his mind. Sure, it had something to do with her saving him in the wilderness, but that didn't explain how she seemed to latch onto him. It was as if she thought she could domesticate him by threatening to slash his face off. And what would cause a child to emerge as fresh as Robin? His mom was supposed to be a spiritual leader with a personal relationship with the world's creator and everything, so why didn't Robin absorb more of that? Then again, she was also known to be something of a mad scientist, what with how she also claimed that her creator could unlock the secrets of the universe to her. Meanwhile, Robin's father had always seemed a little detached, though always nice and insightful whenever one sat down with him. Having been a traveler before settling down with his wife, wanderlust seemed to tug on him, which probably helped explain why he wasn't around often enough to curb Robin's video game enthusiasm or suggest to him that there are other role models besides that Captain Keen or something character.

Perhaps he should talk to Mr. Unwin about his travels, Zack thought. It could be inspirational, and he'd probably have a lot of ideas and advice that Xylia had never picked up in her feral background. Yes, that seemed like a sound idea. Furthermore, it was a concrete plan, which was exactly enough to get Zack to stroll to the mouth of the cave with newfound confidence. He'd never known exactly what to do with his life, but out in the wilderness, things really did seem to be clicking. He could do it. He could learn to return to the wild and then no one would ever be able to control his life again. His present adventure was proof of that. He held one hand aloft and discovered that he could still spout flame from his fingertips despite how tired he had been earlier. He must have become stronger. He was on the road to never being defenseless or helpless again!

Zack took a deep breath of the fresh night air and paused, listening for predators. He felt like he could take any down, but when he actually started paying attention to the world around him, he was surprised to get hit with a cacophony of frogs and crickets chirping all around him. It was such a drone that he must have unconsciously filtered it out at first. He tried to listen through and beyond it, but the noise drowned out everything, so he quickly gave up and bent down to splash his face with the cool creek water.

It wasn't just cool though. It was icy, making him sputter and stagger back into the cave to warm up again. Then when he lay down on his bedding, he found that the noises of the night had left him with an annoying ringing in his ears. "It's always something," he muttered as he curled up. It must have taken a half hour for the ringing to finally stop.

Morning soon came and everyone just continued to sleep for as long as they darn well pleased, except for the huntsman spider. It was the first to stir and grow bored, so it got up to peek around outside and see if it could catch a deer for itself or something. It didn't consider Xylia to be delicious or friendly enough to be worth fastening to its abdomen with silk, so she became the second to awaken after she tumbled off and hit the stone cold cave floor.

Fortunately she landed on her side instead of her head and was more surprised and dazed than upset. After a moment to finish adjusting to what had happened, she picked herself up and, not wanting to disturb anyone else, decided to venture further into the cave where the morning sun wouldn't force her tired eyes to adjust. She also had her curiosity begging her to ignore the mundane fresh scents outside and brave the unique musky odor deeper within instead.

Finding the spider lair wasn't hard at all. Thankfully, it still seemed to be empty when she approached the first thick webs, or rather what remained of what Zack had burnt to ash the night before. There was really nothing left to speak of, so she stepped through the soot, wishing she hadn't left her boots behind in Elk Hill as she did so, until the floor began to dip and then suddenly drop off. She caught herself before she could take a spill though and dropped down to the ground, trying to feel, listen, and look for any clue as to what laid ahead.

The cave breathed faintly and offered nothing; no hisses or footsteps of predators and no babble of underground streams. There was no smell other than that of age and nothing to feel apart from the cold, hard, stone floor and a bit of rust.

Wait... rust? Xylia groped around some more and found the rust formed into a pole going down. Not far away from it was another pole, also going down parallel to the first, and the two poles seemed to intersect with a third rusty pole further down... forming the rung of a ladder?

_Someone's been here before_ , Xylia realized. _How long has it been since any intelligent creature last used this?_

A couple hours later, Xylia, Zack, Robin, and Penny were all studying the site of the ladder together, following some leftovers for breakfast and a decision that they'd go back and make exoskeleton armor from the dragonfly husk if they ran into anything hairy enough to require it. The cub Robin had been watching had made it through the night and he was especially eager to look for something, anything, that might help it make it through the next night and, hopefully, many thousands of nights after that.

With all the webbing burned away, they had no material for torches, so Zack went and used periodic spurts of flame from his fingertips to illuminate the area. That allowed everyone to see the metal ladder reaching down, but it wasn't enough to see where it ended. Penny ended up going first down it since she was the most comfortable in subterranean environments, followed by Zack, Xylia, and Robin.

"Now I'm actually hoping we'll encounter more spiders down here," Zack muttered as he descended. "Then we might find material for another torch."

"Would you set a whole spider on fire for me, dear?" Xylia said. "It would be so romantic."

"We've already seen how their exoskeletons make them pretty fireproof."

"Oh, I'm sure there are ways to work around that."

"Careful everyone," Penny said. "The floor is right here, only a few more steps down for you. Zack, can we have another light?"

Once Zack was on solid ground again, he lit up the area with another brief jet of flame. In accordance with his usual luck though, a cluster of spider eyes ended up staring back at him.

Everyone iced over in shock. Could they fight it off? Their new space was lightless, even with Zack supplementing for that weakness, and seemed to be somewhat cramped. Actually, it seemed small enough that a giant spider shouldn't have been able to get down into it in the first place. What species were they facing this time, and would anyone ever find their remains if they didn't make it?

After a tense moment, everyone then began to wonder why they weren't being attacked. Zack put out a pilot light from his fingertip and waved it around, eventually revealing that the bug-eyed face greeting them belonged to a body that was about as hollow as the dragonfly one they had salvaged before.

"I am _so_ thankful that these things aren't above eating their own," Zack breathed at last. "Looks like we've got torch material here too. Not as fresh as what we found last night, but it still looks very usable."

"Everyone gets a light then!" Xylia announced as she leapt down the last few rungs. "We can use the tips of this thing's legs as handles."

"Grab one extra," Robin said. "We may be able to make a spool of rope with the drier threads."

"It looks like there's all kinds of extra stuff here too," Penny said. "Here's a cloth backpack... with all kinds of holes in it... oh, here's a leather one that's worn much better! And this skull beside it looks pretty... human, actually..."

"It's probably a nymph's skull," Xylia said. "Which means if there's some kind of colony up ahead... we may not be welcome there... unless I can prove to them that I deserve to be in their tribe, even if the rest of you don't."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Zack deadpanned.

"Besides," Xylia added, "I'm the only one here who can breathe underwater. I better take point; if we find a colony and it's at least partially flooded, that will confirm what natives we're dealing with."

"If we have to rescue their princess from a giant fish god, I'm staying right here," Robin said.

It took a good chunk of time for everyone to make the torches, light the torches, use them to help gather ropes and sift through the assorted remains of the tunnel's victims, then make new torches when the first ones burned out during their search. There was a decent amount of gear to be found amongst the mess, but anything with zippers had them in rusted, snagged, and unusable states, while anything with buttons could still be made to open and shut properly. Zack found a decent two-strap backpack, but Penny couldn't find any gear small enough for her, while Xylia had to be pressured into taking so much as a satchel along. She preferred being lithe and agile like an animal and hated carrying a heavy load, especially if it was a backpack that restricted the movement of the long fins just below her shoulder blades. Robin, in contrast, geared up as much as he could. He found a belt of small pockets that let him move his legs a lot more than his twin fanny packs ever did, a vest that was a little large on him but provided larger storage pockets, and a single-strap backpack that tied shut at the top. Then he went around collecting various knives and blades like how most kids collect seashells on the beach. Suddenly he couldn't wait to get home, show them all to his father, and see which ones could be polished up or salvaged to make better knives. Everyone else was alternately anxious to get moving along or glad to momentarily delay the next encounter with whatever native beasts might be lurking ahead, eager to gnaw off their limbs.

No such creatures appeared though. There was no sight or sound of life at all as the party picked its way down the tunnel. It was a steady plod down through a snake-like passage that seemed to be at least semi-natural. Sections where it branched off were barricaded by stone brick walls, leaving only one way down with occasional stairs carved out of the floor to help people keep their footing as the temperature slowly dropped enough for the floors and walls to gather slick condensation. Occasionally they found long dead torches on the walls, dampening their hopes of finding anything reasonably intelligent and reasonably alive. They didn't light well either, leaving their own torches as the best option.

Finally they discovered a light fixture in the ceiling, also long dead, but its wires ran a short distance before disappearing entirely, along with the walls. Suddenly there were no more surfaces for the torch flames to dance on and the darkness eagerly swallowed up their luminance. The only thing they could readily see was the floor, which suddenly changed from natural smooth stone to a street made of many smaller smooth stones.

Robin bent down to run a hand over it. "Huh, cobblestone. Nothing says that someone's been here like good old fashioned cobblestone."

"You mean the electric light in the tunnel didn't say the same thing?" Zack said.

"It didn't give me flashbacks to UHC games, no."

"I kinda want to split up here," Xylia mused. "I can't hear or smell _anything_ nearby that might be hostile. In fact, this whole place seems to have been dead for some time."

"I can see just fine," Penny said. "This looks like... not just a large cave, but a gaping ravine. Actually it may be an entire ravine city. I can make out doorways and balconies scattered all over the walls."

"Is there a power station somewhere?" Robin said. "If there are more lights like the one we saw, we may be turn them all on again."

"Hang on, let's go over here. Follow the left wall; don't leave it or you'll get lost."

"I hope we can find a working power station fast," Zack said. "I think the torches are starting to fade."

"It would be a sad thing for our adventures to end here," Robin murmured.

Everyone felt their way through as Penny instructed and soon they encountered a rough wooden door frame with its accompanying door lying on the edge of the street. They stepped inside and found themselves in a large room full of tables and chairs, half of which were overturned, broken, or both. A bar with rusty brass off to the side confirmed that the place was some sort of abandoned tavern, and being right next to the passage back to the surface, it seemed the perfect place to establish an explorer's outpost.

Penny took her leave to set out into the underground city in search of anything of importance while everyone else took all the broken furniture, cleared away a space for it in the middle of the room far away from anything else flammable, and used their torches to start a larger fire. The flagstone floor did a decent job at conducting the heat once it got going so they didn't have to stand too close to it to get warmth with their light.

Once they had all had a moment to rest, they went off to explore the kitchen since it had been a while since breakfast. Their torches seemed to have just enough life left in them to thoroughly search the area, allowing them to turn up all sorts of dishes, cookware, and supplies like cooking spray and aluminum foil, but nothing edible by itself. Without Penny around, Robin was the only one who could get into the smallest crannies to figure out what kind of kitchen it was, which gave them all a better kind of idea of what kind of settlement they had stumbled upon.

"This stove here is electric, not gas," Robin said. "The people here must have been reasonably advanced to have a power grid that reached beyond the streets and into businesses and homes. And if I follow these lines here, we should find... yes, the circuit breaker box!...which is locked."

"Let me see that," Zack said. He picked his way among the sinks and storage racks until he found Robin next to a big gray metal box bolted to the wall. The young Grizzly got to hold both their torches while Zack aimed a finger at the box's lock and tried to concentrate a small but potent jet of flame to cut through it.

"Is that really a good idea?" Robin said anxiously.

"Keep that light study and it shouldn't be too much harder than cutting a live nymph from a thick cocoon."

Xylia didn't comment. She was a little afraid to admit that she was a little out of her element where they were anyway. She barely knew what a stove was, and at first she didn't care until she realized they were still in a wilderness survival situation, which she should be on top of at all times. But then again, wasn't the fire they had going good enough? A stove was just a machine to channel fire, wasn't it?

While Zack and Robin were trying to gently yet forcefully pry the circuit breaker open, Xylia searched the fridges and pantries. Sadly they were all empty, though not ransacked; it looked like everything had been removed from them with care and there were no messes or other indications of panic or urgency. Frustrated, she then took to prowling along the floor. She at least knew that domesticated tribes loved to hoard and store food like foxes and squirrels, so that meant there may have been a cache hidden somewhere in the room.

Sure enough, she found something that seemed a little odd in the floor. As she examined it, Zack finally got the circuit breaker open and he and Robin began experimenting with flipping its switches in conjunction with a light switch on the wall. It didn't take long for them to conclude that they weren't going to get anywhere though. "The whole thing is dead," Robin muttered in frustration. "If this city's power supply is dead too, we'll just be out of luck and might as well head back to the surface."

"Hey guys," Xylia said, "one of the floor tiles here seems loose. Help me move it aside."

"A lot of the floor tiles are loose here," Zack said. "This is an old, run down place, after all."

Xylia huffed and decided to just slide her fingernails under the slab and lift it herself. It wasn't just a single piece of flagstone she displaced either, but several sections cemented together into a lid, which she pushed aside with a clatter. "Fine then. Everything in this hidden cache is mine."

"Cache?" Robin repeated. "You mean... oh, of course! A cellar! This is a cave system, so a cellar dug into the floor would provide all natural refrigeration! Let me see that!"

He shoved his torch into Zack's hands and scampered over. He was much more easily able to reach the cellar than Xylia, but when he slide and swung down into it, he discovered, to his disappointment, that it was only about five times as large as he was. "What the heck?" he said. "This really is a cache, not a cellar."

"Does that mean there's nothing down there?" Xylia said.

"Actually there's a few sacks of potatoes here. Still fresh too, as near as I can tell. I'm really surprised though; you'd think a tavern would have a proper cellar that takes up an entire lower level or something."

"Maybe this city had trouble with raids from subterranean tribes and has caches of emergency supplies scattered all over the place?"

"That makes me wonder why this whole darn place is abandoned in the first place."

If there was a proper cellar in the tavern, the torches didn't have enough life left to help them find it, so they found a forgotten box of butter in one of the fridges instead, grabbed a roll of aluminum foil, then went back, wrapped the potatoes in the foil and nestled them around the edges of the fire. Penny returned around when they finished baking and they filled themselves up with warmth and starch together. It was the first time Robin had tried a baked potato and he was surprised at how bland it was without adding butter to it. He didn't think it compared much to the crispness of freshly prepared French fries either, though he ate it all anyway.

Everyone tried not to stare at Penny too much since she ate by holding her potatoes up to her tummy, the place where her mouth was, but everyone ultimately ended up watching her anyway when it came time to ask what she had found on her expedition. It was a convenient excuse to make regarding her anatomy less awkward.

"It's all abandoned," she reported. "But it doesn't look very ransacked at all. It's as if everyone suddenly packed up and left in a hurry. I've seen signs of struggles here and there, but they seem to suggest that whatever attacked this place was fought off, only for everyone to decide to move away before things got worse."

"And since we haven't seen anything hostile here," Xylia reasoned, "the people, or what they had in their possession, must be the whole reason the attacks happened in the first place."

"This is a pretty nice city," Zack mused. "Or at least, I imagine it looks that way when the streets aren't pitch black. I'm surprised no one else has moved in here and re-established it."

"Yeah," Penny agreed. "I can just imagine Skitterstars, Halfquarries, and Quaaklaws keeping this place busy, but they wouldn't have been driven out easily at all, or at all period. Maybe this place used to just be a really homely hideaway where certain people could live nicely but never be found?"

"An isolation camp?" Zack seemed incredulous. "From whom? How does that make sense? I mean, sure this place seems to do a good job at being one given where it is..."

"Location, location, location," Robin said. "Maybe it used to be a mining colony that regularly sent ores and jewels back up to the surface?"

"Were the giant spiders the reason the people fled?" Xylia asked. "They might have seen the people as very tasty."

"They might have been one of the reasons in the end," Penny said. "There was no leftover webbing in the streets or anywhere though, so if they were around even back then, they were probably an inconvenience at best and not enough to drive off a whole settlement."

Robin stared down at his meal for a moment. "You know what I'm wondering now... is why these potatoes are still fresh enough to eat. Potatoes only last up to a few months in storage like that, so whoever used to live here must have left not that long ago."

"Or maybe they were stashed there by explorers who came before us?" Xylia offered. "Maybe explorers who meant to come back but never did? That cache in the kitchen would be better explained if they dug it out themselves."

"Out of solid stone?" Zack said. "I think it's more likely that the potatoes were specifically engineered to last a long time. Genetic engineering is widespread and considered an art form, so potatoes with an indefinite shelf life don't sound too far-fetched."

"These don't taste funny to you at all, do they?" Robin insisted. "I can't tell; the butter I put in mine might be covering up any bad flavor."

Penny paused, having just finished her second potato. "Why are you wondering this now after we've all had several...?"

"I think we all put butter in ours," Zack said. "Even Xylia. So we couldn't tell you."

Xylia didn't comment. Instead she wanted to keep marching with the original topic. "If we were to set out into the streets," she continued, "where should we go first?"

"I did see one light source down the road and around the bend," Penny said. "It seemed to be locked up behind a door and there was no sight or sound of any people nearby it. I guess that would be the best place to start."

So it was, simply because light was the one commodity everyone wanted more of. They got to make good use of the rope they had gathered; holding hands on the way there didn't work without a lot of stumbling due to the size differences among the party, so Penny held onto the rope spool as the party leader while everyone else formed a train in back and let themselves be guided through the black chasm. Zack was still interested in conserving energy in their unknown location, so he didn't make any fires until he caught the first glimmer of their destination. Only then did he finally make a pilot light bright enough for everyone to drop the rope and rush over.

There was indeed a faint glow coming from behind a thick wooden door with a heavy iron lock. It looked downright immovable, seeming to suggest some sort of treasure hoard laid behind it, but the door also had a viewing window at the top, suggesting that it belonged to a home or office.

"If someone once lived here," Xylia surmised, "they really didn't want their neighbors breaking in and dragging them out into the streets by their ankles."

"Maybe this was once a law office?" Zack guessed.

"Oh come on, that joke is too easy to make," Robin said. "Don't be so lazy. Put some effort into it."

Zack studied the lock for a moment. "I think I can do that, though not with humor. I don't think I can burn through that lock, but..."

"What do you mean? You opened that circuit breaker box like it was a can of custard."

"Because it wasn't reinforced to keep people from violently tearing it open. This though... hang on, give me some space..." Zack knelt down, felt the area around the lock, then finally placed a fingertip right above it and expelled a piercing flame jet. When he saw a faint red glow from the door's window, he knew he had burned all the way through, and from there it took about a whole minute for him to cut the solid lock out of the door itself. Once he was done and he swung the door open, the lock dropped to the ground with a dull thunk and the scent of barbeque ash. It just missed Zack's foot as he was shaking out his hand. "That always leaves a bit of a sting in my fingertips if I do it for too long," he said.

Inside there was a waiting room area with lots of simple wooden chairs, a couple stacks of dusty books, a basket of toys for children, and a reception window from which the light emanated a little more strongly. The party followed the glow all the way to the rear of the offices where it finally lay behind one more door with a much larger window in it. Through it they could see there was indeed a series of large light bulbs in the ceiling nurturing what looked like a healthy chunk of thick jungle. All manner of plants, flowers, and even some fruits could be seen and some of them reached for the pane as if they longed to be released from their prison.

" _How?_ " was the first word to come out of Robin's mouth. "We need to get in there. This is an amazing find."

Zack looked doubtful as he studied the door though. "If I burned through this like I did the last one, I'd probably set everything inside it on fire." He really just wanted to conserve his energy though as the door was all metal and would have taken a good amount of lighter fluid to cut through, even if it was hollow.

Fortunately there was enough light coming through its window that everyone was able to search the room. Xylia found some keys inside a desk drawer, and sure enough, they worked on the door, allowing everyone to step inside the tropical terrarium.

Xylia felt right at home immediately. "I just wanna move in here," she said with a giggle. "It feels perfect! I've always wanted to live in a jungle!"

Zack felt impressed, but not so much in awe. "This place kinda reminds me of the Wildberry Clinic back in Timber River, only Strawberry buys medicinal herbs and extracts from Genevieve's underground farm south of town instead of growing her own. What's keeping these lights on though?"

"You're the tallest, Zack," said Robin. "You can actually reach them and find out."

Even with his fingers being at least somewhat naturally heat-retardant, Zach reached for the bulbs cautiously. He felt no warmth though as his hand drew nearer, and finally closing it around the bright bulb left him further confused. "It's not hot at all. What are these? Mutant firefly butts or something?" He rubbed the bulb experimentally. "No... this is definitely plastic, so unless it's a jar housing light-making creatures..."

"All full-spectrum too since the plants seem to love it," Robin noted. "Maybe it's a jar full of water and bleach? I've heard something that simple can refract sunlight so it seems to amplify it and shine it everywhere."

"That would explain why this is still on when there's no power. But then where would the sunlight be coming from? Are these screwed into a tunnel of mirrors that leads back to the surface or something?"

Xylia wrinkled her brow at the lighting system. "If that's true, then these should turn off when the sun goes down. It should be afternoon now, so they may start fading in several hours."

"I've noticed the ground is kinda warm too," Penny said. "Like it's insulated below. Someone put a lot of effort into this small greenhouse."

"There's even an orange tree here," Robin said. "Hey Zack, you better have the first one. They look ripe and everything!"

"Me?" Zack said.

"What, you don't like oranges?"

"No, I like orange flavor at least. I've just never had the real thing before."

"Try it out now. It should give you health and energy and we need to keep our igniter well-fueled, right?"

Zack accepted it, but it took him a moment to figure out how to peel away the skin and extract the slices inside, and then he got a shock when he actually put one in his mouth. He liked it just fine, but "fruit" didn't seem an accurate term for what he chewed and swallowed. "Flavor grenade" seemed much more suitable.

After spending a long while taking in the terrarium's environment, as well as various tasty-looking fruit and nuts, they shut the door and locked it, put the keys back where they found them, and returned to the street. "That was neat," Zack said, "but it wasn't a power station. That's what we really need to find. Where do you think one would be located around here?"

"If this place was prone to attack or something," Robin thought, "then probably not on the ground level. How high does this chasm go?"

"Let's find out." With each passing minute that had not brought sudden attack, Zack felt a little more liberal about using his powers. Finding a new food supply helped too, so he made another pilot light on his fingertips and flashed it around, getting a good view of his immediate area. There were doors placed regularly along the walls and most of them had an adjacent window, but everything looked pretty plain and non-descript, leading everyone to wonder how decorated and lively the city might have been before everyone fled.

Dissatisfied, Zack backed up into the middle of the street, aimed up, and spewed a billowy flamethrower, casting crimson light everywhere. For a brief moment, everyone got a glimpse of many balconies, bridges, and overhangs high above, stretched taut like highwire in some spots and jumbled into amateur knots in others. There seemed to be elaborate carvings in the wood and stone used to make them, though they couldn't clearly tell from where they were, and the idea of climbing up to learn more about what acrobats built the chasm's network of tightropes and trapeze sets didn't sit well with anyone.

That is, until they noticed a particular oddity. Stretched out at the very top of the cliffs was a great tree limb, and on the end of that limb was a humongous bird's nest. Together they raised more questions than anything the party had yet encountered, so Penny was finally elected to scale the chasm with her spool of rope. She didn't do it all at once though; that would have been suicidal for her and her companions. Instead she worked her way up slowly, level by level, stopping every time she found a good spot to anchor her rope so everyone else could climb up. Zack went first every time so he could be a tinderbox for everyone else, but it was still a harrowing experience in the thick blackness. Even when they could see where they were going, the creaks and groans of the wood beneath their feet made everyone wonder if they might suddenly find a weak spot in the bridges and balconies only after someone disappeared through it.

But caution and luck eventually saw them emerging at the top level of the chasm city, right next to the great tree branch. A quick flash of light around there revealed a smooth, level stone floor, dusty benches positioned to provide a sweeping view of the entire chasm, a small area by the wall blocked off by chain link fence that reached from floor to ceiling, and a sign on the fencing that read, "CAUTION: HIGH VOLTAGE".

"About time we found this!" Robin said. He was the first to scamper over and discover that the door in the fence had been left unlocked. The same wasn't so for the heavy steel door set into the stone wall just inside though. It looked like it was the most reinforced door in the entire city, which made sense for one of the place's most important systems, but still made for one final, daunting obstacle after everyone had come so far.

"I'll handle it," Zack said without hesitation. He was a little concerned about using up too much firepower on one obstacle, but decided he could muscle through it since it would probably be the last physical roadblock he'd have to face that day. All he had to do was study the door for a moment to make sure that, unlike the last one he burned through, its lock was the weakest part, then he aimed a finger in between the door and its frame and blew through the lock like a blowtorch. It took over a whole minute of sustained flame and once he was done his finger felt like it was threatening to blister, but the door did easily swing open once he finished and the lock crumbled, melted, and oozed out of its socket.

Its odor of smoldering steel was actually kind of a welcome change compared to the musk outside and inside that everyone had been starting to unconsciously blot out. It wafted away as everyone marched down a short hallway with a few office rooms branching from it, which ended in an elaborate control room filled with computer desktops and control consoles, all arranged symmetrically. There was one more door at the end, but it was ignored in favor of all the buttons and keys already spread out in the room.

"So how do we get this thing running?" Robin asked as he scanned all the blank computer monitors. How he wished one would just suddenly spring to life and provide him all the instructions.

"Isn't there a big lever you have to throw somewhere?" Zack said.

"It can't be that simple," Robin thought. "I mean, this is a complex and potentially dangerous electrical dynamo with many different parts to it, right?"

"Yeah, but it's a dynamo for a relatively small city and I don't think it runs on something as delicate as nuclear power."

That got a rather nonplussed expression from Robin. "Is there any such thing as a power source that isn't delicate in some way?"

Xylia then emerged from the one more door that no one had thought to try. "Hey guys?" she said. "There's a big activation lever in here. Lemme give it a try."

She shut the door and before anyone could thank or stop her, there was a dull *ka-CHUNK!* and a hum as the whole power station came to life. The lights flickered on, the control consoles blinked as they were roused one by one, and the room began to warm up. None of the computers turned on though; they had to each be individually started. Fortunately they were all desktop models so their towers and power buttons were located beneath the office furniture they occupied.

Xylia seemed pretty pleased with herself as she returned to the control room. "I guess this place really was prone to attack if the residents needed a way to quickly turn the city's power on and off like that."

Penny seemed a little dourer though when she reappeared from the main entrance. "That didn't do it," she reported. "All the lights outside are still off."

Zack slapped his arms loudly against his sides. "Oh come on! Are we doomed to be cave dwellers here?"

"Keep your shorts on, Miles O'Keeffe," Robin said. "Maybe one of these computers has a console for the city's power grid."

"And how would you know how to operate something like that?"

Robin thought for a moment, then said, "The history of software has shown a trend towards interfaces becoming simpler and self-explanatory as they're improved so absolute idiots can operate them, like the average joes who must have had to come here to work dreary day jobs while the real electricians were always getting their hands dirty elsewhere. I figure I'm at least a slightly smarter idiot than any of them were. If I accidentally trip the self-destruct sequence though, I apologize in advance."

Since Robin was the only one with any significant computer experience, he went to work searching the workstations while Zack and Xylia were left to wonder if the power station actually came with a self-destruct function. The young Grizzly browsed through menus and sub-menus, opened up windows, used built-in search tools, and skimmed through any documentation that seemed relevant. He also, however, gradually became bored when all he ever seemed to locate were performance records, station monitoring programs, and lists of warning tickets. That led him to begin searching for other things on the computers, such as a folder he uncovered that was full of video files and another that had a lot of ebooks, all seemingly unrelated to life at a power station. When he double-clicked to open them though, they just showed him windows full of static.

"That can't be right," he mused. "Why would these files be corrupted when everything else works normally? Must be some form of DRM instead."

"What's that?" Zack asked.

"Oh, DRM is short for Digital Restrictions Management and probably the easiest form of permissions-slash-encryption to break, no matter what form it appears in. There's a very simple reason for that too; cryptography is the science of getting something from party A to party B without party C intercepting it, but DRM is about getting something from party A to party B without party B intercepting before they're allowed to."

Zack rubbed his forehead. "Party B to party B...? I can almost feel my brain grinding to a halt as it tries to figure out how that makes sense."

"Yeah, it was a fundamentally flawed system since parties B and C were the same."

"Funny," Xylia mused. "Given what I know about humans, they probably had a lot of embarrassing stuff they wanted to lock up, so I'm not surprised they used DRM on everything, and I'm even less surprised that it never worked."

"If it's so easy to break," Zack said, "why did people keep trying to use it?"

"Maybe for the same reason people lock their doors at night," Robin speculated. "They want to feel safe. Or rather, the businesses that used it wanted to feel safe, which is interesting because I think when you dig further into history, you find that DRM reached its peak in popularity during times when businesses start showing the same desperation that people show when there's little food or water. While it was ostensibly a tool to keep strangers and burglars at bay, it was instead used as a means to claw at and step on others in order to get ahead. Exceptions to that rule were exceedingly rare. Have you heard about Valve's Steam, which was so friendly that it was like a generous uncle you were always happy to see even if he smelled kinda funny? There's also an old game I've read about called Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon which was booby trapped by humans so fiendishly clever, you couldn't help but admire them."

Xylia frowned. "I'm not familiar with any of this data delver stuff. It's like you digital archeologists occupy a completely separate world at times."

"Heh, well we do specialize in exploring worlds that existed before ours... although I'm really not a data delver. Not sure I want to be a dedicated one either..." Robin tapped at the desk as he gazed at his screen. "I could strip the DRM from these if only I had some basic delving tools, like a PC of any sort, then we could see what kind of culture used to be cultivated here. I've always wanted to make my own tablet computer and strap it to my wrist on the off chance I find myself in an adventure like this."

"Uh... you're on a PC," Zack said. "Right now."

Robin blinked. "Oh... yeah, of course. I knew—I mean, can this thing access an internet, any internet, so I can download the tools I need?"

"How many internets are there?"

"No one knows yet. There was originally one, but it went through several revisions as dubious people sought complete control over it. They never succeeded because it was such a skittish target, and in the end, the humans left us with a vast, digital labyrinth full of treasure. Their public domain is a sight to behold. You know what the public domain is, right?"

"I think I could guess based on the name alone, but I haven't studied it."

"Ah. Well, the public domain is a concept in the science of anthropology, the study of humanity. Basically it's the accumulated studies and perspectives of a people. Everything enters the public domain immediately upon creation, creating a vast pool of wisdom that an entire people, or even multiple peoples like the tribes, can draw from to advance their sciences and arts. Buuuuut..." Robin's seemed to wrestle with the computer mouse a bit, then sighed in exasperation. "...this computer has no internet connection hardware at all, it seems... which is strange because the ancient humans connected darn near everything to the internet even when it didn't make sense to do so. That means this city may have been founded _after_ humanity's mass extinction."

Deciding that she cared even less about digital wilderness than she did about real life wilderness, Xylia finally squeezed closer. "Robin, I think there's a cub still waiting for you at our first camp?"

That got the Grizzly to go pale. With a cry of "SHOOT!" he stampeded his way through the rest of the computers. He stopped carefully scanning documentation and started urgently feeling his way through windows and folder structures, just hoping that his relatively amateur knowledge might be enough to do the job. There was a lot of frenzied mouse movement too, culminating in him opening up the chamber where its ball was and scratching ancient hair and dust out of it.

Within a few desperate minutes though, he managed to find a power grid control program discarded in his computer's recycling bin folder, suggesting that whoever originally shut down the city had wanted it to stay that way. One series of restorations and a little more finagling later, there was a hum as the chasm outside finally started to illuminate, making the whole city searchable at last.

Robin then threw himself back in his chair with a heavy sigh. "I'm gonna head back down to that medical center with the terrarium. I can't believe I almost forgot what I really came here for. You guys do what you want in the meantime."

"I'm still amazed you were able to do that all yourself," Zack said with a smile.

"You probably could have done it too if you really wanted. Smart people don't know the solution to everything right off the bat. Instead they know how to adapt and scrounge up solutions to everything. Anyway, I'm out. Don't die!"

With that, Robin raced off to find anything that would keep death from occurring back at the cave mouth. Zack, Xylia, and Penny considered following to keep an eye on him, but there didn't seem to be any danger whatsoever to protect him from. They did, however, decide to go outside and gather into the huge bird's nest so they could watch him run into the clinic, then run out back to the entrance tunnel after he seemed to have found what he needed. The vantage point gave them an even better view of the entire ravine city than the benches did, letting them finally appreciate all the wood browns and stone grays on all the railings, lampposts, doorways, windowsills, and signs designating addresses and business names. It actually looked very nice for a ghost town.

Zack slumped back in the nest, absent-mindedly reached for a soft brown feather, and started running it through his fingers. He didn't seem notice how it was longer than his forearm, whereas Xylia noticed immediately, and a glance around revealed many such feathers blanketed around the edge of the nest and folded directly into it. "What kind of bird used to live here?" she wondered aloud.

That got Zack to notice what he was actually holding. He started to think about it, and his conclusions only seemed to raise more questions. "What kind of _underground_ bird used to live here?" he thought aloud.

Xylia shook her head. "Actually, nevermind. Someone must have gathered these feathers from elsewhere and used them to decorate this nest."

"Are you saying that someone deliberately build this public space fifty feet in the air without any railings or other safety measures to prevent inevitable accidents? Why would a city do that?"

"I don't know, but maybe the city officials once asked themselves that too. Far crazier places exist in the world, you know."

"Hey," Penny said quietly, "have any of you heard of the Guardianwings?"

"The lost tribe?" Zack said. "Sure I... actually the reason I've heard of them is because the Guardianwings technically aren't lost. They're just extremely rare, probably because they were the only tribe to steadfastly ally with humans way back when, and they ended up largely ostracized for it..."

He trailed off. Everyone went silent for a moment as if their brains were synchronizing with the same thoughts, then they turned and started staring out over the city in a new light. Suddenly its location seemed to make perfect sense.

"Guys," Xylia said at length, "have we stumbled upon what used to be a _human_ colony...? Like, a post-tribal conquest human colony?"

Suffice to say, everyone soon began running around with the fever of discovery. The city proved to be an elaborate labyrinth with hundreds of houses dug into the walls and even a few erected on poles or in towers where the chasm was especially wide. There was an upper class district simultaneously literal and figurative; the ground sloped up as the chasm withered away into a corner that had been deliberately expanded into a round chamber to create enough space for the front lawns of luxurious marble mansions embedded in the cave walls. The lawns were long dead, sadly; no life support systems had been left for them like what had been inside the clinic's terrarium, but the husks of what plant life used to be there helped everyone fill in the stagnant soil with the power of imagination. There were no slums to be found anywhere either; it seemed every member of the long departed populace had a homely space to call their own. Perhaps they had to since everyone seemed to have once lived in a constant state of at least mild danger.

More amazing, there wasn't just one chasm. The first one they found got stabbed clean through the middle by a second, which also impaled a third, which shook hands with a fourth, which trailed off into surely others that no one had inclination to explore lest they got well and truly lost. Between the three of them covering separate ground, Zack, Xylia and Penny found six chasms total as well as a section that became prohibitively hot with what seemed to be sealed off lava pockets. It made the whole place seem like a bunch of old tears in the planet's skin that had been scarred over, and if a geothermal station had been plugged into its molten blood, that probably would have explained why it had been possible to restore the city's electricity at all.

There was so much mystery to investigate and urban wilderness to explore, but they sadly didn't get to see all that much of it. After a couple hours of disorganized, impulsive sightseeing and investigating, Zack and Penny began to feel their energy flagging. For Zack it was especially frustrating because he had just located what seemed to have been the city hall, and it not only had a computer terminal left behind but it seemed to still be hooked up to a greater internet as well. That was about when he felt the first dull pangs in his gut. He tried to ignore them, wanting badly to see how accurate Robin's philosophy about being a techie was, but by the time he finished feeling his way around the computer's operating system and gained access to a search engine, he found himself inputting "symptoms stomach cramps cold sweat" into it.

The first result he got talked about symptoms of heart attacks, which scared Zack quite effectively and got his pulse racing, but after sitting there in terror long enough to realize that he was not, in fact, keeling over and out of his chair, he decided that couldn't be what he was suffering from. The common cold was the next suggestion, but in Zack's experience, that was often preceded by a sort of inexplicable sensation of a thick lump in the throat, which he hadn't experienced. Likewise for influenza, which he remembered coming with a vague sensation of needed to swallow something wanting to leap out the throat, and a sensation he wasn't having at all. Other lovely items on the list included appendicitis, malaria, mononucleosis, pneumonia, meningitis, and urinary tract infection.

He browsed search results until he was pretty sure he wasn't going to die and also thoroughly frustrated that his ailments were occurring right then and there in the midst of a tremendous archeological discovery. He finally turned off the monitor, but not the computer itself, and limped out into the streets, hoping that maybe he could find a nearby house containing a nice porcelain bathtub with a round rim that he could just throw himself over and use like an ice pack on his gut.

"Xylia!" he managed to shout as he leaned against the city hall's walls. "Penny! Where are you two?" To his disappointment, his voice didn't ricochet much at all due to all the wood and other soft materials incorporated into the city's construction.

He did get a response though. "Zack?" came Robin's voice. "Are you alright...?"

He sounded a fair distance away, probably back at the entrance tunnel, Zack figured, so he began his march there. When he arrived, he loudly grumbled, "No, I'm not alright. I feel like... ow... like someone is crumpling up my insides before throwing them in a trash bag..."

"Kinda like me then," Robin groaned. "I'm kinda... really... bad right now..."

Penny and Xylia soon arrived too. The latter seemed perfectly fine, enough to be concerned about why her survival party was suddenly falling apart. "What's going on?" she began. "Is the cub OK, Robin?"

"The cub is fine," Robin croaked. "Got some good food and medicine... which I seem to need now..."

"No food, please," Penny whined. "The thought of it makes me ill..." She was braced on all fours and still looked like she was trying to keep from pitching over.

"What's gotten into all of you?" Xylia demanded. "Why are you all getting sick now, and all at once?"

"I don't _know_ ," Zack spat out. "I don't like this either, you know! It could be flu, a cold or other disease, food poisoning, cardiac arrest, an infection of some kind; don't wild animals carry lots of strange diseases? And we've been around enough of them by now, haven't we, as part of this little wilderness survival adventure, huh? Maybe we all suddenly got contact-free rabies!"

At the very least, Zack's small tirade made Robin chuckle despite himself. Then he thought about it a little. Then he began to look grim. "Wait... food poisoning...? Maybe like... potato poisoning?"

Everyone went silent. The realization sunk in like a stone in thick mud, and with mere glances, everyone agreed that they had solved the mystery. No one was happy about it, of course, especially Xylia, who had the most energy to spend on being exasperated. She even tugged her cap down over her eyes. "Seriously? This had to happen now, of all times? Really?"

Robin just clutched himself around where his intestinal tract was. "Let's just say... I now think this city's people... left more than a few... months ago..."

Zack moaned and gradually assumed the same position. "...so much for an indefinite shelf life..."

"...I want to barf out my rear end..." Penny said faintly.

"I _wish_ I could," Zack growled, "but it's refusing to get to the point where it wants to come out..."

Xylia threw up her hands. "UGH. You all are lightweights! I'm not feeling anything at all!"

"You should be able to brew a potato to make a Potion of Saturation..." Robin muttered in mock-deliriousness. "Or maybe... brew a poisonous potato to _kill me right now_..."

Fortunately, everyone somehow made it back to the clinic they had discovered earlier before there were any horrific accidents, but Xylia was more or less stuck caring for her companions for the next couple days. It was definitely two days, in fact, since she found that the lights in the terrarium did fade according to the sun's position. She even ran back to the cave's mouth in order to make sure. The mother bear and her cub were gone by then, presumably having been healed enough thanks to Robin's efforts, but the huntsman spider seemed to have taken up residence in the cave, which suited Xylia just fine.

There wasn't much for Zack, Robin, and Penny to do but occupy makeshift beds from old quilts and blankets they found, talk about what each had discovered and done in the absence of others, and wish they could have curbed their ailments by not stuffing themselves with so many potatoes. The main reason they had was because the dandelion stew and spider meat the night before had been just so bland and odd, if not necessarily bad, and they all lamented their suffering just for wanting some normal food.

The only real benefit to the incident was that Xylia got the opportunity to brush up on her knowledge of herbal healing by reading some of the books and records that had been left behind in the clinic. All the pills and medications remaining in the closets and pantries were long past their expiration dates, leaving the plants in the terrarium as the only thing she could actually use, although she did also find a mini fridge containing emergency supplies of anti-venom and other serums that still seemed to be good. It was tucked away similar to how the potatoes had been, so the natural coolness of the cave and the medicines' meticulous packaging kept them from spoiling in the event of a power failure. They had also been slightly jostled around in the fridge, leading Xylia to assume Robin must have found it first. _What a pity that nothing in it is of use to him anymore_ , she lamented.

Though the food poisoning stuck to its victims pretty well, everyone was mostly over it by the second day. The sweating and dry heaves had finally stopped and the cramping was more bothersome than crippling, allowing appetite to return, and Xylia had been preparing to treat everyone to roast hares she had caught herself, enhanced with spices from the terrarium. Everyone had rekindled the fire in the tavern and was waiting for the rabbits to become just a bit more baked, but that was when unexpected voices greeted them.

"ZACK?!" came the first one. It was chirpy yet also scratchy, like it was stuck in adolescence. "ROBIN? PENNY? XYLIA?" it echoed from the entrance tunnel. "Come on, where are you?!"

"If you got dead," came a second voice, "could you at least release despairing groans as your corpses deflate?" It was lowered pitched with a derisive edge.

"Ugh, Ly, don't be so morbid!" said the first.

"There's probably nothing left of them," came a third voice that sounded like a young boy. "That spider guarding the cave entrance probably got them."

"You think? I mean, we passed some giant spider corpses on the way in, so there may be bits and pieces of them left somewhere."

"Those were full course meals, not chicken nuggets." Then there was a loud sniffing. "Ember, Ly, do either of you smell smoked rabbit...?"

There was a pause. "I can smell smoke, yeah," said the first voice. "But I'm more of an herbivore. You know meat better than I do."

Zack frowned. He somewhat recognized the voices, but not enough to place names to them, but that didn't matter if they thought they were going to muscle in on a feast. He ended up being the first to the door, where he yelled back, "HEY! We haven't had any decent food in a couple days, so you're not getting any!"

That was how the two parties joined up at the tavern and the quartet of survivors encountered a trio of hunters. The first, Emberlynn Wentzell, was a Purebred Cloudskipper, meaning she looked like a large bird standing upright. She was covered all over with blue feathers except for on her orange, reptilian legs, and her face, which had white feathers instead. She had a scruffy look about her, with large wings folded onto her back and smaller wings jutting from the elbows on her two arms. Lysandra Fairfax, the second of them, was a purple bird with a scrunchie tying up a tuft of feathers on the back of her head. She was a Purebred Spearbeak, which roughly meant that she looked like a crane with the bulk of an ostrich, making her the designated pack mule of the group. She even had a pair of saddlebags slung over her back. Riding on her back was Dennis Flood, a Purebred Flexibulk who looked somewhat like a small octopus person with a butt-shaped head and four arms.

"The Hunters' House in Timber River sent us," Ember explained, "because you all have been missing for longer than you should have. The Unwins were worrying about their missing son, the Arkwright brothers were wondering if their architectural assistant got eaten by a random mutation or an escaped experiment, and the Hallam brothers wanted their grocer and shelf stocker back." She glanced to Robin, Penny, and Zack in turn. "So we took the job."

"It didn't offer much payment," Dennis added, "but Timber River seems to be becoming where we find most of our jobs lately, so it would be a shame if something were to happen to it, however minor."

"Yeah, yeah," Zack muttered. "Customer loyalty and all that." He was probably the only one with minimal desire to go home and he and his fellow missing persons passed meek glances between each other.

Fortunately for them, Xylia quickly elected herself as the one to issue an official statement. "It was kinda beyond our control," she said frankly. "We found some evil potatoes that attacked everyone but me like parasites."

"Oh really?" Ember glanced around the room, finding the offending bag of earthen apples not far from the fire pit. "Oh, you mean these? They don't look so bad." She even unhesitantly plucked one out and pecked into it with her beak.

"No, don't!" Zack barked. "They'll just make you feel like your intestines are grinding themselves into powder!"

"Hey, I'll have you know that I eat funny stuff on the ground all the time," Ember replied. She took a few more pecks out of the raw potato, then started to fully chomp into it. "Behshides, fwywing ish wheelly enahjee inthenshiv," she mumbled with her mouth full.

For a second, Xylia felt like Ember was a lady after her own heart, but then she began to wonder if, having tasted baked potato with butter at last, she would ever be able to go back to the raw kind. She had to though, if not right away, she swore to herself. This trip hadn't been meant to weaken her.

"Fortunately the trail was easy to pick up," Ly said as she smirked at her partner's eating habits. "There were reports in Elk Hill about a small group of people being harassed by a wild bear on the outskirts, and from there we just had to follow the trail of scorch marks you left as you tried to fight it off. In fact, because of that bear, Zack, the Hallam brothers wanted you to know that since one was involved, they may consider this a paid vacation, depending."

"We also found these purple boots," Dennis said. "I'm guessing they belong to the only one here wearing purple... well, purple clothes, anyway." He pulled them out from behind his back where he had been hanging onto them with his surplus arms and chucked them to Xylia, who quickly put them on again.

Ly regarded Xylia critically though, even disapprovingly. "Why do you wear any clothing in the first place?" she said. "You're that Nymph who pushes a vendor cart around Timber River and prides herself on her feralness, right? Seems you don't take it far enough."

Xylia just gave Ly a look mixed with bewilderment and suspicion. "Because even wild tribesfolk like you and me have to venture into civilization sometimes and a good outfit can disarm potential predators by itself. Wild animals do that all the time with their fur and scale patterns. It's not like you need much anyway; boots for protection and traction when moving upright, something on the body to conserve heat, and an accessory or two to personalize you." She tugged on her boot rims, on her leotard straps like they were suspenders, and motioned to her red cap and ornate aqua-colored armband as she gave her list.

"Hey, yhoo guysh whant shome off dheese?" Ember attempted to ask. She had quickly chewed through her first potato, discarded its skin, and was reaching for another.

"Eh, no thanks," Ly said with a grimace. "I'm still kind of full from that big blue spider we found."

Xylia and her party blinked at that. Then Xylia started to turn a fierce red and her party slowly backed away from her. "What?" she said, her shock just starting to surface.

"Yeah, it was sort of a shiny and hairy blue at the same time," Ly reminisced, "and a real pain to put down. It darted and jumped all over the place. Didn't have much meat causes its legs were so spindly, but—"

"You killed him?!" Xylia continued. "You killed and ate Archibald?!"

"Archibald?" Ly said in bewilderment. "I dunno; it didn't have a name tag—"

"THE GIANT BLUE SPIDER THAT SAVED OUR LIVES!" Xylia screeched. "I WAS GOING TO NAME IT ARCHIBALD!"

"Archibald the Arachnid?" There was a tense moment as Ly regarded the nymph with heaving shoulders before her, then, after carefully thinking about her situation, she seemed to deliberately go through with one of her unwisest decisions ever when she quipped, "Glad I put it out of its misery when I did..."

That was the signal for Dennis to abandon Ly's back and take her saddlebags with him. He was barely able to roll away and escape before Xylia released a war scream and lunged at Ly with her wrists' toxic barbs extended. Ly barely even flinched in response though and in fact had an easy beginning in the scuffle since Xylia seemed interested in trying to slash at her head, perhaps to make it puff up with her poison. Ly's head was a small target though on a very agile neck, and she soon demonstrated why her tribe was known as the Spearbeaks when she jabbed at Xylia's barbs with her long pointed beak, tearing a couple small chunks from them as she seized them and flung the Nymph clear over her back.

Any humans might have tried to stop the fight as it played out, but the tribes, being based on animals of all kinds, more or less universally accepted roughhousing as part of who they were, so as Ly and Xylia tried to trade blows, their companions assembled to watch them at what they hoped would be just out of range of any flying furniture.

"Don't kill her, OK?" Zack called from the sidelines. "These guys came to save us!" He gave a frustrated sigh and leaned back on the bar's counter. "So you really destroyed that giant spider?"

"Let's just say," Dennis said grimly, "that I'm not stupid enough to share everything I learned about the texture, flavor, and nutritional value of its meat right now."

Robin sighed. "Poor spider. It actually helped save our lives."

"Sorry about that," Ember said regrettably after finishing her second potato. "In all fairness, it did try to attack us when we discovered the cave and were trying to get a better look at the camp site you left behind."

"I'm just glad I brought those boots back," Dennis said with a shiver. "With the barbs on her ankles covered up, there's less of a chance that psycho nymph will poison Cousin Ly that way."

"I daresay they're pretty evenly matched in physical ability and feral psychosis," Ember deadpanned.

"I heard that!" Ly shouted.

"Then listen to me when I say you're a monstrous feral who should be put down!" Xylia raged.

"Look you little mouse, stop trying to compliment me!" Ly shot back. "Flattery will get you nowhere!"

The battle proceeded fiercely, but also briefly, serving mainly to let the two combatants' anger flash like a firecracker and then fizzle out. Xylia felt like she was fighting for noble vengeance, while Ly simply wanted to egg her on and see how powerful of a wild animal she really was, but their match only lasted a few minutes or so, and both brawlers got in as many blows on each other, mostly throws. Ly got all of hers just by biting and tossing with her beak, while Xylia managed to grab hold of Ly's bushier feathers several times and even managed to seize her by the beak when she tried to run her through with it once. Xylia didn't get to land any slashes on her though, or if she did, they just grazed through her feathery coat and didn't reach any skin. Either way, her face showed her irritation every time she missed. Ly was plenty annoyed as well when Xylia proved too quick to land any kicks on, since they were her most forceful attacks.

Maybe it would have gone on longer if Ember hadn't finally decided to interrupt it. "HEY!" she snapped. "Ly, there might be more food here we can take back with us to make up for the low pay of the job! We won't be able to carry any of it back if you use up all your energy right here!"

"Yeah, we actually haven't explored this tavern that much yet," Zack added. "There's gotta be a cellar we can find now that the lights are on."

For a moment, Ly and Xylia stood there tense and huffing at each other, psyching themselves up for a second round and using glances to only barely acknowledge that anyone else in the room wanted to stop. Ember ultimately had to march up, grab her partner by the wing, and lead her away. "Come on, you and I both know that there are more important things than this."

Zack did similar, though he gently took Xylia's hand instead and said, "Here, I picked up your cap when you dropped it."

Only after Ly was led off though did the Nymph finally relax enough to take it and give Zack a hug. "Thanks, sweetie," she said tiredly, letting her arms just drape over his shoulders. She had a few deep breaths to recover her stamina before pushing herself back to her feet.

That was when she noticed Penny was missing again. And Robin. And they seemed to have stolen Dennis away too. She gave the tavern a visual sweep, then ran to the doorway and saw the three of them disappearing down the street.

Zack took it casually though. "Come on, let's help the huntresses loot this place," he said, "then we'll pick up the kids, OK? They'll probably want the extra potatoes in the kitchen at least since Ember seems to have your iron stomach."

That suited Robin just fine, since he wasn't quite ready to go home. The fight in the tavern made him realize that it might yet be a few more minutes before everyone was ready to pack up and leave, so he made a mad dash to city hall to find that internet capable computer Zack had told him about when they were all lying around and half expecting to evolve into mutant potatoes. He took Penny along since she looked uncomfortable over the bar room brawl and Dennis pursued both of them because they were mission objectives he couldn't afford to lose track of.

It took a bit of searching, but Robin finally found the building he was looking for and a secretarial desk with a computer wasn't far in. He was a little surprised to find it still on though, but didn't think much of it until he turned on the monitor and found an instant messaging window open with a strange bit of correspondence.

**Bright Batbrain:** Well well well, new IP on the grid, eh?

**Bright Batbrain:** ...hello?

**Bright Batbrain:** OK, I should probably give you fair warning just in case you're a noob or something.

**Bright Batbrain:** You've connected to a private ISP maintained by the Delvers' Guild, and seeing new people pop up on it without us knowing is mighty suspicious.

**Bright Batbrain:** If you're AFK or something, I won't do anything other than sit at this IM program I've already injected into your system. But I would like you to explain yourself within a week.

**Bright Batbrain:** If, on the other hand, you're a computer that managed to turn on by itself under mysterious circumstances, look forward to the data delvers visiting you and performing a thorough archeological dig to try to uncover what those circumstances were.

**Bright Batbrain:** That's another reason I won't hack into you much from here. Best to keep history preserved until it can be properly analyzed, you know?

**Bright Batbrain:** Sorry this IM program is so simple that it doesn't even have dates or time stamps on its messages. I'll let you know when your time is up, K?

Robin started to sweat. "What did Zack DO to this computer?! Why did he leave it on?! He should have known better!"

Penny canted her head. "What's wrong? I mean, it's not like this place belongs to us."

"It COULD though, and we didn't get to explore all of it because we were sick! That's just not fair!" He scrambled through the computer's control panel and checked the connection, but to his dismay discovered that Zack had simply connected to the only point the computer could find available. There seemed to be nothing he could do but go into the computer's internet settings and see if there was something, anything that could be done to mask the computer from the greater internet. A static IP address? Setting a new username and password? Increasing the privacy and security parameters? It seemed like something or everything at once should have done it.

Robin only had to try changing a couple settings though before he realized he was just flailing senselessly. The next few messages that came through only confirmed it.

**Bright Batbrain:** Come on, dude, you should know better than that. You really think you can block someone like me out?

**Bright Batbrain:** Time has been shortened from one week to one hour. If this is a deliberate intrusion, it's all the more important that we deal with you right away.

**Bright Batbrain:** Besides, I can clearly see from here that you have no idea what you're doing in the first place. Maybe we can offer tech support and become friends. It's up to you.

"There's nothing I can do," Robin moaned as he slumped back in his seat. "I'd have to search for and download specific tools, and not only do I have no idea what those tools would be, but it's clear this guy is monitoring everything I do."

Dennis made a thoughtful noise as he tried to follow the crisis as best as he could. "I don't know much about computers," he admitted, "but sometimes negotiations work after combat fails."

Robin looked dourly at the screen. "Guess I have no choice." The IM window gave him a chance to input a user name, so he did, then took a moment to try to recall as many other usernames from back home as he could. Only after that did he try talking with the mysterious person that was looming over him with his mere online presence.

**Kidd Keen:** Sorry. We're a new delving troupe and were hoping to lay claim to this place so we can study it.

**Bright Batbrain:** I'll say you're new. Maybe too much so. Who's with you? I don't know Kidd Keen from any branch of the guild.

**Bright Batbrain:** The name turns up 0 search results too. Mighty suspicious...

**Kidd Keen:** Well, Kill It With Fire turned on this computer first and connected it to the only access point available so we could get some tools.

**Bright Batbrain:** What kind of data delver doesn't bring any tools with him?

**Kidd Keen:** We DID bring tools, just not a couple specific programs we needed.

**Bright Batbrain:** For what? This machine looks pretty ordinary from my end.

**Kidd Keen:** Do you have to be so nosy?

**Bright Batbrain:** Considering you're connected to the ISP I own and maintain? Yes.

**Bright Batbrain:** I think you better tell me who else is with you.

"Oh great, we got the big cheese here," Robin muttered. "If only we'd gotten someone lower on the hierarchy..." He started drumming his fingers on the desk.

"I could go for some cheese myself right about now," Dennis said.

"Sheesh, we're quite a motley crew here, aren't we? Actually..." Robin looked up at the screen again and mustered determination. "That's it: let's become a crew officially. We'll all become data delvers today! What are your internet usernames?"

"I'm not even sure I know what those are," Dennis said.

"Well then we'll make some up! What are you best known for? Make a name based on that."

"Eh... well, I'm the meat expert. I've got a keen sense of taste and can detect toxins in food better than most people. I travel with Cousin Ly pretty much all the time too."

"Why is she your cousin? You two don't look anything alike."

"It's a long story. All I'll say is that it involved an eating contest... sort of..."

Robin took a good long look at Dennis, especially his semi-octopus-like shape, then decided, "Ok, you'll be Luncher Octopuld."

"What, really? That sounds too fancy."

"Oh, fine, what do you want instead?"

"How about just Little League or something? I mean... sheesh, why are you pulling me into this in the first place? I don't really care that much."

"Well, I gotta work with what I have, that's all there is to it. How about you, Penny? Pick a name, any name."

"Um..." It was times like this that Penny was thankful that Skitterstars didn't have cheeks that could blush, because if they did, she suspected she would be turning bright as a lamp just from being put on the spot. "Well... I guess I'm kinda quiet... and people tend to tell me not to be so quiet..."

"Like a mouse?" Robin surmised. "I've noticed you're really good at sneaking into places you shouldn't be too."

"I don't mean to!" Penny said defensively. "It's just... it's kinda what happens... you know?"

"Oh I do. But I hope you actually don't change in that way." So saying, Robin returned to his keyboard.

**Kidd Keen:** Yipe. So I'm talking to the big cheese or something?

**Bright Batbrain:** Indeed. Behold, the power of cheese.

**Kidd Keen:** Ah, so you're a Marvel vs. Capcom 2 fan as well, huh?

**Bright Batbrain:** I meant refined, aged cheese, not squeezy nacho cheese.

**Kidd Keen:** Hey, that's a classic game. Even if it's a bit unbalanced, it's still quite an artifact. It was supposed to be a compliment.

**Bright Batbrain:** Well, at least you seem to be knowledgeable about SOMETHING at last...

**Bright Batbrain:** So you can sound cute. Good. Can you actually answer my question now?

**Kidd Keen:** The other two delvers with me are Little Lygue and The Squeak.

**Bright Batbrain:** Cripes, even your usernames make you sound like you're just waiting for someone to step on you...

**Bright Batbrain:** I've got no information on them either. How do I know you're not just making those names up? How do I know you're really a data delver?

"He's got you cornered," Dennis noted.

Robin leaned back. "There may be one more name I can summon for leverage, but... it would be like pushing a big red button marked 'Do Not Push'. Not sure I want to do it..."

"Who is it?"

"A data delver back in Timber River. A... very significant one, I'm pretty sure. But if he sees my name associated with his... I could get in a lot of trouble."

"What kind of trouble? You mean reporting the incident to your parents?"

"If I'm lucky. I think it would actually involve being pranked in the middle of the night when I'm asleep, and it would be a prank that everyone in Timber River would be talking about for months."

Penny gave Robin a look of disbelief. "But... your parents are Grizzlies, right? I mean, they're the strongest, most powerful, most intimidating tribe on the planet. You're all bears, and like Xylia said, 'bears are as close to invincible as wild animals get', so do you think anyone would really want to risk upsetting the parents of one?"

"I can testify that Xylia knew what she was talking about," Dennis concurred.

Robin stared at the screen. He seemed to seriously consider whether he wanted the safety and comfort of home more than the chance to claim and explore an entire abandoned city. Ultimately though, he exhaled and stretched his fingers. "Well then... YOLO swagger it is."

Dennis frowned. "Ok, I may not know much about data delver culture, but I've seen enough people during my jobs and travels to know that YOLO is just 'Carpe Diem' for idiots."

Robin winced at that, but a faint hint of admiration emerged on his face too. "See, this is why I pulled you into this adventure. You have potential lurking inside you."

For Dennis, the compliment felt like something he shouldn't allow to make him complacent, but he didn't mind furthering the chatter. "I've also learned some things here and there since Ember isn't feral like me and Cousin Ly," he added, "and we visit her hometown pretty regularly. She's kinda lazy and we tend to get stuck waiting around town while she prepares for jobs we accept."

**Kidd Keen:** Well, that's all the people here. Automatic Grammatizator said we should do this without him this time, so I hesitate to bring him up.

**Bright Batbrain:** ...

**Bright Batbrain:** Automatic Grammatizator?

**Bright Batbrain:** Why would he take in a bunch of leaf green noobs like you?

**Kidd Keen:** That's what we were wondering when he did so.

**Kidd Keen:** But hey, we were all noobs once, right?

**Bright Batbrain:** I mean, come on, you pretty obviously don't even have any basic tools with you. If you were real delvers, you'd have plugged in a flash drive or something by now.

**Kidd Keen:** I told you we were going to download some... and maybe goof off with some Freedom Planet too.

**Bright Batbrain:** Well... at least you've got good taste.

**Kidd Keen:** Yeah. Automatic Grammatizator said to just think of this site as a Relic Maze, only there will be computers at the end of the stage instead of a Kingdom Stone or a mutant mantis.

**Bright Batbrain:** That's definitely something he would say...

**Kidd Keen:** If you won't let us claim this spot for a delve, will you at least give it to Automatic Grammatizator then?

**Bright Batbrain:** I'll definitely be asking him about this funny business at least.

**Kidd Keen:** Thanks.

**Bright Batbrain:** Just keep in mind that instead of getting off the hook, you may end up being hung from a different one.

**Kidd Keen:** ...eep.

**Bright Batbrain:** Oh, if you end up going more than just 'eep', this stay of execution will have been totally worth it.

**Kidd Keen:** Couldn't you be a little friendlier?

**Bright Batbrain:** Maybe... but friendship is something you have to earn. Keep working on that.

**Kidd Keen:** Ok mister.

**Kidd Keen:** We'll be shutting off this computer soon so we can be on our way.

**Bright Batbrain:** Good luck young delvers, if that is indeed what you are. Otherwise, die in a fire.

Robin exhaled. "THANK YOU Mom for being a gelotologist. I'd be lost without your teachings on how to laugh at yourself and be chill."

"What's a gelotologist?" asked Dennis.

"Well, gelotology is the study of humor physiology. It's an obscure science because most people don't consider it to be serious enough, even though, you know, _laughter is as essential to life as eating and drinking is._ Seriously, try going through a whole day without a single joke or chuckle. You can't."

Dennis squinted at the Grizzly. "Humor is so relative and finicky though. Is humor science even real science?"

That caused Robin to abandon his feelings of relief right away. "Oh, don't start being ignorant with me now," he scolded. "If it exists in the world and we can observe it and figure out how it works, then it's science, plain and simple."

For a moment, Dennis was tempted to press the subject just to deliberately get himself kicked out of Robin's new delving group, but he decided it wasn't worth it. Most likely the group would go nowhere and fizzle out anyway, he figured. His real job involved marching toward the entrance of city hall and shouting out into the streets, "EMBER! LY! Are you two done yet?! The livestock I'm watching here is kinda restless!"

"We're coming!" Ember called back. "Got several sacks of potatoes from the tavern, so you two can cut my share of the bounty this time if you want!"

"Did you find any cheese?"

"Actually yeah, there were quite a few wheels of it in a wine cellar we found! Do you want some?"

"As much as we can carry!"

"I'm not taking anymore!" Ly shouted. "You've overloaded me as is! Come up with your own solutions!"

"As much as _I_ can carry then!" Dennis called. "Everyone still with you?!"

"Just Xylia!" Ember said. "Zack went back to the power station! Since he can make his own light, he's going to turn off all the lights when we set out! You better get over here fast to claim your plunder, cheese head!"

"On my way!" Dennis swiveled around to race back inside to collect Robin and Penny, but nearly ran into them instead. They had been behind him the whole time, listening to his conversation.

Robin folded his arms and scratched his chin with one claw. "You know... we might be able to use some of those cheese wheels to make a cart that we can push dozens of wheels back in."

The way Dennis regarded Robin right then, it was as if the Grizzly had found the keys to his heart. "Really? I mean, it can't be that simple..."

"Maybe not. We can fiddle around with it though, and with some experimentation, finagling, and science, we can probably rig something up that at least won't fall apart until we get back home. I think we can use the bar room rails for axels, for instance."

Dennis turned the idea over in his mind, trying not to appear too excited. "If you can make that work, you may be keen kid after all," he murmured, as if skepticism was as fashionable as a business suit.

"I hope so. If I really was, maybe this trip wouldn't have gotten hijacked by a bear in the first place."

"I wonder," Penny mused, "if Zack and Xylia have thought the same thing every time they've looked at you during this trip..."

The Epilogue

The adventures of the four survivors and three hunters don't end here! Episodes 1 and 2 of Tales from the Creature Keeper explain what led up to them having a wilderness survival trip, while episodes 3-6 continue to follow how they learn and (hopefully) grow. Zack in particular has quite a journey ahead of him, as you will see when you read episode 1!

Find it here: <https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/364160>

It was probably just as well though. Chris and Pooky watched the pit for a long moment, until finally, after Razz and Jerry were out of earshot, Chris heaved with a great breath, pushed himself up, and drifted back to his chair. "Well... this is another fine mess you've gotten me into."

After making a deposit at the mini fridge, Pooky looked skeptically at Chris. "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?"

"That blue fuzzy guy was a Whiptail, wasn't he?"

Pooky scratched behind his ears. "What difference does it make?"

Chris sighed. "Come on, you mean you don't know what a Whiptail is?"

"A jittery little fellow who needs to loosen up with a few all-nighters?"

"I mean _besides_ that."

"Hey, I wouldn't get him drunk, I promise! Scout's honor! We could go visit Andrea at the Dessert Mirage instead a—"

"POOKY," Chris said severely.

"What? What did I say this time? I didn't mean anything by it, really!"

Chris released a grunt. "Look, for the love of whatever god may be watching us up in heaven and shaking his head hopelessly, didn't you find that whole situation a bit odd?"

"Well, yeah. The poor little blue guy was far too quiet."

"And _why_ was he too quiet?"

"I dunno."

Chris sighed, then went silent for a moment in thought before he tried again. "Ok... where is Zack?"

"Beats me. But he'll probably be along in a little while, like Razz said."

"And when he does, he's going to be upset."

"Huh? Why?"

Chris squeezed his eyes shut, just for a second. "Pooky, think! Why was Razz with Zack during the whole... what was it, four months he was here?"

"Almost four months, yeah, before they disappeared nearly a week ago. Their room is still ready on the second floor, by the way. He was his servant, right?"

"You're close."

Pooky grinned. "Alright! Close is better than not being there at all!"

Chris decided to just spit it out. "Pooky, Razz was a _slave_ to Zack."

The Grizzly immediately calmed down. "Oh yeah..."

"Doesn't it look like he's trying to run away from Zack?"

Pooky shrugged. "I can't say I blame him."

The Vanisher sighed and looked down to the floor. "Ok, Pooky, listen. The Heatfangs that live to the north, beyond the mountains, in the desert, have another race enslaved to them: the Whiptails."

"Now that's just not cool," the Grizzly interrupted.

"But it's a fact. Honestly, I'm amazed you've never heard of this before."

"I have, but I probably didn't pay attention, you know? When you're conversing with friends, you don't talk about the stuff that has nothing to do with you, right?"

"But it has _everything_ to do with us now. Don't you see?"

Pooky wandered over to a wall and leaned against it casually, with his arms folded. "Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm not that much of an idiot. So what does this mean for us, professor?"

"Look, the Heatfangs are very possessive of their slaves. It's not so much Razz as the Whiptail."

"His name is Jerry." Pooky interrupted.

"Right, Jerry, ok. Whatever his name is, if word gets out that he's here, or anywhere else, we're going to face severe consequences."

"From who?" Pooky said nonchalantly. "The Heatfangs are so far up north, what do they care about a little town like us?" He grinned again. "I bet they don't even know about the perfume incident."

Chris snorted. "My nostrils still burn from that."

"Didn't the cream from Miss Burd help at all?"

"Yeah but—oh, forget that." The Vanisher tightened his face. "Don't assume that the greater the distance, the safer we are. Word has a way of traveling around these parts. And we do occasionally get Heatfangs visiting the town."

"So we'll hide him," Pooky said. He paused a moment, and added, "Them. However many there are."

Chris just stared at Pooky.

"Come on, we can do it!" the Grizzly insisted. "I mean, we have the secret passages underground, right? They can use those! We could set up a nice little room for them down there too! Just contact Robert and Charles and Penny and ask them to get to work! They need to fix the door to the secret passage anyway, right?"

Chris glanced back to the pit. Then he looked to Pooky. He said nothing for a long moment, though his mind was anything but quiet. It buzzed like a frenzied beehive. "Pooky, Robert hates Rolledes. He'll never agree to it."

"Then don't tell him. Tell him we're... oh..." Pooky drifted off for a second, then snapped his fingers, which was technically impossible since his fingers were so thick. It sounded like two leather pillows colliding instead of a clean snap. "Tell him we want to build a suite for Halfquarries like him! I bet that would get him to make it a masterpiece too!"

Chris was still silent... until he shook his head. "How do I let you talk me into these things..."

Pooky grinned. "It's cause you're a great sport."

"Or I don't have a spine," Chris sighed.

"Sure you do!"

"I don't know..."

"Oh come on! What about the time Angelo snapped it in—"

Chris's black eyes suddenly cut Pooky off as they narrowed and stabbed into him like daggers.

The Grizzly suddenly dropped his smile, even going to far as to clasp both hands over his face and physically rub it out with his paws. "Oh, right. Sorry."

Chris's next sigh was more dejected. "There's still something I'm wondering about though. I'd like to ask those two a couple things." Then his tail swished lazily and swung up to deposit its swollen bandage into his lap. He examined it critically, then placed his other hand over it and began to administer a slow rub. "You know... I am supposed to see Fred for a checkup in a couple days anyway. Think I should go now?"

"Mmmm... don't make it look like you're heading them off at the pass though," Pooky advised. "Those dudes aren't our enemies. They need help, not trouble."

Chris drummed his fingers on his swollen bandage for a moment. "Ok." He tucked his tail behind his robe and headed for the door. "I'd best do it now before I have any second thoughts. Mind the inn and make sure the guests are happy."

"You got it, boss," the Grizzly grinned once again.

"And if Zack shows up, show him to his room and don't say a thing about Razz or Jerry. I'll decide if and when we ever share that information with him."

The Special Thanks

Jason Holmes

Pocketmoney Packs

Lois Kennedy

Lorne Kennedy

Bill Chisham

Donna McMillen

Wylie Walthall

Greggy Poo

Paisley Chicken

Robotnik Is Sexy

Blu Kirbita

Jimmie Montaigne

Firehawke

Sezui

Seon

Omgfloofy

And the rest of the Sanctuary Crew

Rewire

Murky

Piastol

Orta

Mirabelle the Kirschwasser

Shaun Sans Pants

Ginkan SK

Lex

Ryu Bateson

Wild Dog

LeChuck

Mortimer McMire

Xardion

Ash

Reliant

Dremarian

The Guy

And all my old MUSHing pals

AND YOU!

Do you like what I do? You can connect with me at...

**Smashwords:** <https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/TheCreatureKeeper>

This one should be pretty obvious and self-explanatory.

**Twitter:** <https://twitter.com/CK20XX>

Most of my thoughts come out in short spurts and end up here. You usually won't find that much about my personal life since I tend to only speak up when I think I have something unique or important to say, but I may make you snerk.

**Facebook:**  https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Creature-Keeper/169105399840012

Since this is what everyone is in to nowadays, I was obligated to join up at some point. Facebook is not my favorite site at all, but my page should be a reliable source of updates for the literature and sculpture I produce.

**Planet Minecraft:** <http://www.planetminecraft.com/member/ck20xx/>

A fantastic site... whenever it's up, at least. Prior to this book, the biggest project I had ever attempted was a resource pack called Megacraft Classic, and the stress and rewards from that helped prepare me for more ambitious things. I plan to post builds of the town of Timber River here, so keep your eyes open.

**DeviantArt:** <http://ck20xx.deviantart.com/>

My preferred medium is pipecleaners, though creating action figures from them can be time consuming since I can be very particular about the details. You should be able to find everyone listed in the cast there.

**My Personal Blog:** <http://creaturekeeper.sanctuarycrew.com/>

This is currently the repository for my filk songs, as well as rants about what's actually wrong with Pokemon and Sonic the Hedgehog. But ignore those and instead enjoy my translations of songs like I Can't Beat Air Man, Brave New World, and In Your Footsteps.

**Sanctuary Crew Homepage:** <http://sanctuarycrew.com/>

But enough about me. A guy can't ever hope to get far in life if he doesn't have friends, right? Well, mine congregate here. Most of us enjoy livestreaming; you can watch RetroNutcase feed his obsession over the latest shiny thing, Char drive the Kerbals to extinction, Firehawke practice his mastery of Castlevania and other classics, and Floofy share the world of Falcom with relative Ys. Myself, my interest in gaming stands on four pillars: Commander Keen was the first game I ever played, Sonic 3 and Knuckles was the game I memorized down to a science, Saturn Bomberman was the sole reason I held onto my Sega Saturn as long as I did, and Megaman Legends was the killer app that coaxed me into trading my Saturn for a Playstation. I also tend to enjoy livestreaming Minecraft minigames with the rest of the crew.

