Divinity Rescue Corps
80- Humpalumpagus

In the clear light of day warm on my skin, sky bluer than you’d ever seen it on earth, under a shimmering blanket of magic suffusing into the clouds, Chrysta absorbed the tale of The Lovers and Tara without a single expression or reaction. She wasn’t silently judging every word and muscle twitch like Drat. Rather, hers was the pure open naiveté of a child.

Then I told her about leveling up using Vellenia, swapping powers with Regina, Tara, Ivy and Isabelle. I told her about the Qualities that came with being a Pleasure Seeker, and she nodded right along.

And I told her how Cinzia’s emotional state had changed dramatically upon having sex with me, then finding out I had been with others. I tried to lay everything quickly but thoroughly, telling her she could ask questions afterwards. And not get too caught up in any details.

For her part, Chrysta was more interested in the Qualities, the Special Abilities from the Lovers, and the swapped Special Abilities from those I’d ‘brought into the fold’ using Entwined Ecstasy.

“I had known about second classes,” she said. “These have been stored by the memory keepers on the memory boards of my people. They are well established.”

I wanted to see these memory boards.

“Classes granted by a god are another thing,” she said. “This is exciting and special. And…” She turned all bashful here, “if I may make a request, it would be for you to increase your Adaptability. Please know that this contact is precious to me, Fletcher. Although I am your protector here, I feel as though you have protected me from years of suffering just by this simple contact.”

I told her that I was absolutely honored to hear this, and that I would see what I could do.

Which is how my fierce Guardian chaperone into this dangerous town ended up plastered against my arm the whole walk back, with her cheek pressed down into my shoulder and head nestled in the crook of my neck.

Now, here’s the thing: you don’t think about how weird that actually is. Real people can’t do this while walking. It would jar her head loose the whole time. You’d have to be riding those hoverboards with extreme expertise at the same speed in order to try this kind of walking while cuddling.

Chrysta could manage this because she floated through the air without the typical boat-in-water bobbing motion. She wanted to wrap more and more arms around me, being a creepy—yet somehow wholesome and adorable—ghost creature, but stopped herself because she started phasing into my body again and again.

Aside from wondering whether or not I was ever going to have sex with a ghost—I was pretty sure I eventually would—I kept my eyes on the surroundings. An Identify check here and there gave me more types of Nakamamon to add to my Nakamadex.

And then we found it.

“There,” I told her.

Stumbling around as if drunk, surrounded by a number of wet glittering little bits, was a fuzzy creature the size of a baked potato that was ninety percent mouth, but with stubby arms and legs shooting out of its blue furry head. It was the closest thing to a muppet I’d seen here yet.

As we watched, it vomited up another couple of tiny, tinkling gold and silver objects on the cobblestones. Concentrating, I focused on the creature and attempted to identify it. This time, Ingenuity live 8 and my Identify level 5 were up to the task, and netted me the 2 successes necessary to give it a name.

Success! You have Identified the god.

A broad smile broke on my face.

God of Lost Earrings

(Small/Unique Beast)

Description: This god is responsible for transporting lost earrings and other small jewelry out of existence, by eating them.

History: Unknown, though it appears this god is currently afflicted by the same ailment plaguing the entire town of Glumpdumpkin.

We shared a chuckled at the name and look of the thing.

“Is there any way for us to get it out of the affected area?” I asked.

Chrysta produced a shield very much like the one used by Isabelle, and took it in several frosty, clawed, semi-transparent hands. It was an easy enough task to get the insensate creature to walk onto that shield, but more complicated to keep it there. Chrysta rushed off at a much faster hovering dash than I’d seen her use before.

“I will see you outside of town,” she called over her shoulder.

I broke into a run as well. The town was much larger than Slinktrickle, and there was a lot to see, but I had a job to do and curing things made me feel just about as great as expanding my knowledge of this world, or the pure joy of uncovering more of it.

The timer showing me how long it would be until the next Durability check still had some two hours on it, and it didn’t take more than twenty minutes to reach the bottom of the swoosh. I’m pretty sure I spotted another god by the river that wound its improbable way over the Glumpdumpkin Humpalumpagus.

***

Sarah threw back her head and laughed like a loon. It wasn’t long before, clutching her sides and kicking her legs, she fell over on the couch and fell off onto Brayden’s old play mat.

Both my mother and father were also chuckling along with her, but Sarah was something else entirely. She howled, rolling back and forth on the floor, until a bewildered Brayden came tottering up to her, also laughing, and smooshed his confused body into hers. She hugged him and laughed until they were just tiny squeaks coming out of her.

“Did you say Humpalumpagus?” she asked, wiping tears from her eyes.

“It’s a part of town,” I quite helpfully explained.

“Well?”

“You can’t just leave it at that,” my mother chided.

“Well, how do I put this? The town rested on the sleeping Nakamamon that was something like two hundred feet tall, and every once in a while it would shift and roll. The whole weird wings sticking up at odd angles were the sun-catching plates of the Humpalumpagus. You know those cool stories where the island is a colossal turtle or a fish, right?”

They nodded. “Well imagine that it’s a… hm. Imagine it’s like a pig, but with a kind of an iguana head, and that dirt sticks to it and grows plants, and that those two big plates are like solar collectors. It photosynthesizes some of its own food, and that allows it to sleep for… a long time. Years I guess.”

They nodded. “And the town just grew on top of it?”

“I guess it’s got the capybara disposition. It’s super chill.”

“Huh… huh… Humpalumpagus!” Sara said, and cackled all the more. Brayden laughed right along with her, even though he had no idea what she was so amusing.

***

Although the God of Lost Socks was freed, it still needed to be cured. This was a curious one, because once we got it out of the city it should’ve theoretically been fine.

“Is there an inoculation option?” Trent asked.

“A great question,” I said. “And… no, I’m not aware that exists.”

Lucky for us, the god was both tiny and not fast. It wobbled and tottered around the camp that had sprung up over the past number of hours. It also, and this was wonderful, responded to the joy of the team. All the girls needed to do was gush over it and coo a million times and keep it from running off. This left Alan and I enough time to research this, and send off a message to HQ.

The following day, we got back the order to do what we were already doing, which was diagnosing and then brewing up a cure for a mental ailment.

This meant using the various accoutrement for diagnosis, though it didn’t seem necessary at first. The glowing stones to check for magical ailment nearly glowed when I passed them near the creature.

“The main thing in town has to be magical,” was what Regina said from directly beside me. I turned a smile her way.

“Somebody’s turning into a nerd,” I chided.

Apparently, the creature being tiny and not seriously ill meant the successes needed were lower than they were for the God of Apparel, who’d been freakin’ dead. The spiritual and physical tests also proved out negative.

It turned out the mental ailment in question was Severe Confusion.

Congratulations! You have diagnosed the illness in question.

Severe Confusion means the afflicted god is periodically unaware of their own existence and capabilities. They may even be touched without causing divinity poisoning, though this is not recommended.

Oh stop being such a stick in the mud, I touched it yesterday.

What were you thinking?

I paused and wrinkled my brow in my own severe confusion. The next day, Alan would report that Rainer helped to write the system explanation messages with another famous Healer, who had since disappeared.

“Was his name Jack MeHoff?” I asked, and got a confused look from Alan. “Ben Dover? Ivanna Cumlotts? Dick Hump-frees? No?”

Her name, because apparently there was a senior Healer who was a woman, was apparently Dickens. I was hoping for it, and I got it. I wondered if she was European and her name was something like Gimme or Putya. “Though Ivanna is still on the table,” I mused.

For now it didn’t matter. The UI message was written by Rainer and Dickens, whoever that new person was.

You may test for divinity poisoning easily by using a live subject, though this is not recommended.

You’d better believe it’s not. The other (recommended) check for divinity poisoning is to use the Spiritual illness diagnosis test. If the divinity reacts even slightly, this means the god is exuding its power and may not be touched without dire consequences. This can be difficult to detect. Even if it is not exuding divinity, the signs that it has begun to do so are subtle.

So touch it while you can.

Definitely do not do that without extreme care, and I wish you would turn text erasing back on.

Rainer has a stick firmly lodged in his backside. And he looks like a Muppet.

He does not.

If he does not, it is only because he had it painfully, surgically removed. And had lots of facial reconstructive surgery to boot, to remove the filthy scrub brushes from every part of his head.

Stop being such a child.

I stopped reading from there, chuckling at Healer Dickens, and told the girls what I’d just learned. They probably had a short window of time with which they could physically interact with the fuzzy, little blue potato, though it might get the ability back at any moment.

To say they pounced at the chance to tickle and cuddle a god would be a gross understatement. It was seriously cute, and giggled when touched under its stubby little arms. Only Ivy appeared skeptical. Soon enough the little thing was in Tara’s hands, being snuggled by Tweedle Dee, dancing around the campsite with Fairy Poppins, and riding around on Isabelle’s head. Regina even buried her face in its blue fur, though it promptly vomited up a small hoop earring on her face.

In the meantime, Alan and I got to work on the cure for Severe Confusion.

This cure was quite different from the glowing, singing, feel-good juice we sprayed all over the eggs and on the townsfolk once Cinzy had left.

We needed gingko biloba, first and foremost. Thankfully it was an infusion from the leaves as opposed to the orange fruit, which smelled like someone had shat and vomited in the same bucket and then stirred it all up with a dead fish.

Okay not the dead fish part, but the first part was true. It was gross, let’s just leave it at that.

Now, this wasn’t something that could be found in this world easily, so while I had a stockpile of it, I needed more from HQ. They had access to the portal.

“How are you doing on that portal spell?” I asked Alan, hoping we could get back to HQ for some of the rarer and more difficult ingredients that we couldn’t get here on this planet. When he started stuttering more than usual, it was instantly clear he wasn’t high enough level to do it.

“Okay then, we’re going to need to request a stockpile. I think this entire cloud is a Severe Confusion effect from whatever the god is. We’re going to see a lot of it.”

He nodded and frowned. I knew he was trying to progress through his levels by doing wizard spells; he’d done a lot of enlarging and shrinking of the clay tablets that gave us the majority of the known illnesses and cures. He practiced a number of other minor spells constantly as well, though I hadn’t kept track. There was the cold ray, the light making spell, the water breathing spell I no longer needed, the mending spell that put things back together, and a host of others.

It was only a matter of time before the little god got its divinity back momentarily and inflicted the girls with it. While the girls played, and all of them got divinity poisoning when the God of Lost Earrings went through a lapse in its ailment, I worked my butt off getting this cure up and running.

This one needed pure water, which wasn’t difficult to get normally, but all of the water flowing out of Glumpdumpkin was potentially tainted. This meant sending Airaconda off on a scouting mission one way, Chrysta another way, and getting the pure water later.

In the meantime, I separated out the gingko biloba, got the snake’s head fritillary, the ginseng root, and the St. John’s wort as ready as I could.

Soaking the gingko took a few hours, while the girls all eventually ended up staggering in, complaining that they weren’t feeling good. Several doses of Healer’s Breath later, they were sprawled out on my laboratory tent floor, moaning ‘are we there yet’ with respect to the cure.

“I did warn you that its power could come back at any moment, didn’t I?”

They all moaned that yes, I had told them so. And no, none of them regretted their regrettable actions.

Some of these cures took absolutely ages, but this one was over in about six hours.

Develop Cure (small/Unique/Beast) check: This check is Difficult. You may spend 2* Tokens in order to succeed. Would you like to spend these Tokens?

Total Tokens: 0 Affinity and 7 Free Tokens.

*Hard At Work: Your Tokens are worth double given you are engaged in your class duties.

I did not decide that spending the Tokens was in order, and promptly succeeded at the check. This one had much less in the way of steps: stirring this way and that, deeper stirring, shallower stirring, collecting and discarding the scum, temperature changes, color changes, mana addition slow or fast, or done in a specific pattern… by contrast, this one was easy peasy.

I only had to steadily add mana for a good thirty minutes, without requiring a specific shape to the mana. The stirring was constant and slow, no problem there.

“W-w-what if it’s th-th-th-th-the humpal-l-l-l-l-lumpagus?” Alan asked.

“Hmm?” I asked, as I was watching it make its only color big change, from black, oil slick iridescent to a more opalescent white with threads of pink, pale green and robin’s egg blue.

“Th-the big bad,” he said. “Th-th-the god. W-w-w-what i-i-if the problem—”

“Ohhhhh sorry,” I said, watching the pastel colored threads dissolve until the mixture was just a shiny pearl-white. I sighed. “Yeah, if the actual problem is the gigantic creature that the whole town is sitting on, I guess we’re relocating thousands of Glumpdumpkin… ians. Glumpdumpkin… ites. What do you think?”

Alan blinked his confusion at me.

 Success! You have crafted a magical cure for a unique creature.

“You like Glumpdumpkinians or Glumpdumpkinites better as a term? By the way I finished the cure.”

“WHAT?”

“Yeah, let’s go douse the little guy so these girls stop writhing on the floor and moaning.”

“Yes… please…” Regina groaned.

This is Christopher grinning in satisfaction.

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