Divinity Rescue Corps
65- Regain the Chill

It seemed like the whole world got a bit warmer once the god had reconstituted from the offerings made by both the Marshins and the people on my team. The sun seemed a bit brighter and more cheerful. The cutting breeze died down a little. All seemed well.

All seemed better when we got an achievement.

Achievement: Pray to the Gods

You have conducted an offering to a god, in order to bring it back from the brink of spiritual and magical collapse. Though your work is not done, you have succeeded in the first step: reverence.

Reward: +1 Resistance to the Gods

*Resistance to the Gods is considered a skill and may be advanced as skills. This aids primarily in Durability checks to resist the influence of the gods over you, though other Attributes may be called for.

“Holy—” Regina started, but Tara once more clamped a hand over her mouth.

“Quit that! When things are literally holy, you can’t just blaspheme all over the place, okay?” Her brow furrowed. “Are you… licking my fingers?”

Regina had a mischievous look on her face.

“That is so gross,” Tara muttered, and held her hand out in front of her. “You’re so gross. I wish you were wearing clothes so I could wipe my hand on your shirt or your dress. Gross gross gross!”

Tara left in search of a way to purge the feeling from her hand, while the team and I celebrated… quietly.

“What do we do next?” Trent asked.

“Well, it still has a magical ailment,” I said.

“Luckily we have our resident expert Healer,” Cinzy said, and looped an arm around my shoulders. This put her in close, close contact with me. Her boob against my arm, her hip on mine.

“I’m not an expert by any means… Tara and Larelle know that. But we were successful in the end with the God of Footfalls.”

“That’s what I like to hear!” Cinzy said, and seemed to realize all eyes were on her, and that she was naked, I was naked, and she was touching me… more than a little bit. She moved away in a hurry. “Okay! I’ll tell the council and the natives that we’re moving into that cure-making stage you talked about, and hopefully it won’t be several days, and even if it is, big fracking deal, and then we’ll all be wearing clothes again. Whoooo!” She threw her hands up and did a really nice dance as she headed out of the building, even twirling a few times. And boy did she lock eyes with me right before moving out of sight.

***

I stared at my mother for a time. Her face twitched with impatience.

“What?”

“I know you’re going to ask,” I said.

“Ugh, get on with it,” she said, and threw a donut hole at me. I caught and stuffed it in my mouth. I then theatrically chomped on it again and again, mouth big and opened wide, just so I could show her what was happening to her projectile with every gnashing of teeth.

My mom’s expression fell serious. “You’re not allowed to tell us any of this, are you?”

“You’re jumping to the end,” I told her. “You’re going to want to hear all about Glumpdumpkin and Saxwhacket.”

“And Cunt Hustle?”

“Um, I think you mean Flunt-on-the-Rustle,” I said, in mock affront, tinged with some very real disgust. “Jeesh, Mom, you can’t say that word to your own son. As Tara would say, gross.”

“What kind of trouble are you going to get us into, Christopher?” she wondered aloud. “Are they going to come in here with guns and badges and mind wipe all of us? Is poor little Brayden mixed up in all this?” She sat up and gave me a glower I didn’t much like. “You had better not have endangered my only grandson’s life, Christopher Matthew Fletcher.”

Oof, the dreaded middle name. Although I could tell she was joking, sort of, there was a very real concern that men in black suits were going to show up and disappear the whole family, no matter what age. Whether that meant a government facility somewhere or a bath in acid to turn them all into sludge, where they’d be kept in a hazardous waste barrel forever, she didn’t know. Either one of those outcomes was totally unacceptable and avoidable, if only I kept my trap shut.

“Everything will be fine, mother. The good news is that nobody who talks about this will sound even remotely believable. The only reason you believe me is because I have so many details. I doubt you were recording everything, so there’s no way you’d reproduce the whole story in full. They’d claim you were spewing fiction, or were schizophrenic. Either way you could be laughed off by the news media. Maybe somebody would believe you on a message board online somewhere.”

She frowned, but didn’t protest. I was right, but she didn’t like knowing secrets that would get her disappeared and brainwashed at best. She was safe, though she wasn’t entirely convinced.

“After all, you don’t know where the portal is.”

“It’s not in the Arctic Circle?” she asked.

“What’s not in the Arctic Circle?” Sarah called from the front door. “Hey! I brought McBreakfast. I figure you didn’t have the opportunity to eat much deep fried processed food in nudity world.” She held up several brown sacks with the delicious aromas of butter, oil, McEnglish Muffins and meat wafting out.

I didn’t think she would be back to hear more story so soon after last night, but here she was. Brayden came groggily through the door trailing a filthy stuffed animal, and walked directly into my hug.

“Hey little dude.”

After a break for breakfast, helping Brayden do some biking, climbing, swinging, and ball catching, we drove out to an apple orchard for apple picking, a hay ride, apple cider and donuts, and caramel apples. Brayden was predictably super excited for the caramel, less excited for the peanuts, and uninterested in eating the gigantic apple once he’d gotten all the sticky caramel off the outside. I laughed at the state of my nephew and let Sarah chase me around the parking lot while my father wheeled my mother slowly behind us in her wheelchair.

Afterwards, Brayden immediately fell asleep, despite predictions that he wouldn’t sleep until he was thirty-five. I stuck my tongue out at Sarah.

“All right fine, how long did it take?” my mother asked.

“How long did what take?” my father asked.

“The cure to restore the nudity god!” she retorted. “Keep up!” When he raised his hands in defeat, she barked at him again to focus on the road.

“Well?” Sarah demanded.

“It took weeks.”

***

The God of Footfalls wasn’t as far gone as this new god. Me not knowing its name was the first bad part. I had to level up my Identify skill first, because simply concentrating on the glowing figure inside the clothing just flat didn’t work. Failure only really gave you the good xp the first time; more trying after that was just the definition of insanity.

“The UI says it’s going to be Nigh Impossible,” I grumbled.

The whole team was assembled around me, except for Drat and Chrysta, who was presently on Guardian duty. Sometimes people weren’t very careful. Other times they might just trip and fall, and get a face full of divinity. Deadly, deadly divinity.

They all sat around the laboratory building, still naked and still not pleased with the situation. Trent and Alan had the worst of this, though Isabelle was the most self-conscious of the ladies. Larelle was the least, proudly thrusting her enormous breasts out and standing with feet confidently shoulder width apart. Although Larelle possessed far more hair than any human on her head, she possessed not a single hair down below. I know this because I had a completely unobstructed view.

“Nigh Impossible,” the assembled team members said, and looked at one another in wonder.

“Yeah. Easy, Moderate, Difficult, Very Difficult, Extreme, and then Nigh Impossible,” I said. “I have an ability that will double the value of my Tokens, and it still said it would take 9 Tokens to make this happen.”

After protests that ‘maybe that wouldn’t be so bad’ and ‘didn’t you get 3 bonus Tokens for curing the spiritual illness?’ I had to remind them that administering the cure would take yet another check of roughly the same difficulty. And if I wanted to use any Tokens on, say, healing them when they got hurt, I would have to have some Tokens.

It almost certainly wouldn’t have worked. I had 7 Free, 3 Bonus, and then 5 Affinity Tokens, so a total of 15… that wouldn’t have been enough.

And it felt like cheating. Some of my team members said they would use their Tokens to lower the difficulty, but when pressed, only Alan and Trent had enough Affinity to really make a difference. They had special abilities that required the use of those Tokens. Isabelle and Ivy didn’t even have the 3 Affinity in order to help lower the difficulty by a single point.

The ace in the hole was Larelle, who had contributed 15 fracking Tokens once upon a time… but for whatever reason she didn’t offer those up at this moment. I made a mental note to ask her later: why not?

To get out of the funk this put me in, I headed out on expeditions to see more wildlife and identify it using my skill. Also, I needed more herbs, plants and flowers. This also allowed me to test out my Beastmaster special ability. In the evenings, I split my days between researching the best cure for the job, and trying to make meditation work at replenishing my Tokens.

Regina refused to go anywhere with Tweedle Dee not at full strength. I’d been using the Healer’s Breath on him each day. Closing in on the cure for the nudity god made this easier each time, but Dee seemed to lose a few flower petals each day. His fur seemed just a shade duller as well.

This meant mainly going out with Tara or Trent.

With Tara, we were able to get some brief bouts of air time on the back of Airaconda. The Slitherwind didn’t have the endurance to take two people far.

“Okay what the heck are those things?” I asked, eyeing several tiny tornadoes in the distance. They were difficult to make out against the clouds, little more than smudges of vertical cloud. As Airaconda closed in, I squinted and used Beastmaster to kick in with its Identify bonus.

Cyclowl

Basic Nakamamon

The Cyclowl will routinely hunt in packs, using its tiny cyclones to throw smaller prey off course, or draw them from shallow waters. When larger prey is snagged by a flock member, they are happy to share the catch.

Typical length: 3-5 foot wingspan (small)

Typical weight: 2-4 pounds

Gender: unknown

Aspect: air/creature (beast)

Transformations: Cyclowl -> unknown

Cyclowl has been added to your Nakamadex.

That was pretty metal. The tiny cyclones criss-crossed one another and seemed to flick at other smaller creatures. Using Eagle-Eyed, I was able, with difficulty, to make out what they were hunting. Again, Identify kicked in.

Flameingo

First Stage Nakamamon

Flameingoes use powerful elemental fire to keep predators at bay, and to keep rivals from their main food source: valuable minerals in volcanic lava and ash.

Typical length: 3-5 foot wingspan (small)

Typical weight: 3-5 pounds

Gender: unknown

Aspect: fire/creature (beast)

Transformations: unknown -> Flameingo -> unknown

Flameingo has been added to your Nakamadex.

I couldn’t keep the awe out of my voice. A surge of amazement and glee shot through me, seeing a burst of fire come out of the red Flameingoes, and cause the Cyclowls to veer away.

“That is so cool,” I muttered. “Does this mean we’re close to a volcano or a vent or something?”

“There,” Tara said, pointing down at a mass of escaping steam and smoke. Dozens of Flameingoes were landing there and clustering around other creatures.

“Let’s head down.”

The heat was palpable as we drew closer, but thankfully it lessened as we descended. “Hot air rises,” I told myself.

I quickly located and Identified the tiny offspring of the Flameingoes, as Kindlets. These things were adorable, with big fat heads and fire smoldering over their entire little bodies in the shape of new feathers. They weren’t even a foot tall, and stumbled and fell down repeatedly because of the size of their heads.

“I love them,” Tara breathed. Then, when her bonded pet made a groan of complaint, she got in a bunch of head and neck scratches. “Oh hush, you. I’m not going to replace you. Things can be cute, you know.”

A number of Magmamanders also basked nearby, grumpily moving aside if pecked too many times by the Flameingoes.

“Wait, do you see that?” Tara asked.

I followed where she was pointing, but only saw a hump of glowing coal, like an ember but a good six feet long.

“I don’t… wait, is that thing breathing?”

It was. The system identified it as a Scorchomp.

Scorchomp

Unknown Nakamamon

A rare Nakamamon with little known information. HQ records indicate that this Nakamamon should be regarded with extreme caution.

Typical length: 12-15 feet (large)

Typical weight: 1-2 tons

Gender: unknown

Aspect: fire/draconic

Transformations: unknown

Scorchomp has been added to your Nakamadex.

Peering into the camp fire was a hypnotic and meditative exercise, and this wasn’t any different. So it was, looking over the assembled creatures trying to eat the minerals bubbling out of the volcanic vent from several hundred feet away. I couldn’t take my eyes off the heat shimmer of the basking Magmamanders, the darting heads of the Flameingoes, or the cute antics of the Kindlets.

I couldn’t tell you how much time passed. However much it was, suddenly the smaller creatures surged into motion. I’d never seen Larelle’s Magmamander react except when feeding, but these things suddenly burst into action. They scurried away from the Scorchomp, which lumbered to its feet.

The thing was a dinosaur. Spines that had lain flat before now stood up, and the triangular head lifted. An obsidian eye opened, and one flame-orange pupil swiveled and locked onto Tara and I. It had chips of volcanic glass for teeth, we saw now that it yawned. That maw would easily be able to fit my leg into, possibly both. The tail unfurled behind it, long and powerful.

Like a cat waking up, its maw opened in a long and relaxed yawn, and it quivered as its spine arched in a stretch. It reached out with front legs, then rear legs, before it shook itself. And here was the wildest part: it stuck its head directly down into the lava, then moments later disappeared down inside. The volcanic vent they’d all clustered around swallowed up the Scorchomp. I held my breath, expecting it to burst out closer to us, huge crocodilian mouth wide, but it didn’t.

Beside me, Tara shivered. I definitely felt that.

Identify went up to level 3 that day, and level 4 three days after that. I catalogued a lot of new creatures.

Ranging further from the village went like that: I’d add this or that creature to my Nakamadex, a system-based index that catalogued all the Nakamamon I’d seen.

By some kind of Wizard spell nonsense I didn’t understand, new entries and information was periodically downloaded from whatever all of us had seen, and added to the overall index. The person who’d engineered this was a collector, that much was clear. They wanted us all to discover all the Nakamamon for ourselves.

The natives of Slinktrickle didn’t push us. They continued to supply us with food, allow us to use their buildings, and once in a while, Alan or Trent would stagger back to camp with a certain smile on their faces. They wouldn’t talk about the dopey grins, or what they’d been up to, but I knew. The girls knew, too.

This is Christopher enjoying the wider world, and trying to regain some of his chill.