Hopping Celestial Fox

“By the way, you never answered if you can breathe fire and stuff,” Frank asked, eying Mom’s scaly wings.

Mom glanced at him with a hum.

“I think I can. I’m not exactly sure how, but I have this vague sense of this warm spot here…” She touched the spot between her collarbones. “I don’t want to test it while we’re in this very flammable forest, though.”

I winced.

“Oh, uh, right. That could end very badly.” Frank chuckled awkwardly.

Still, the fact that Mom could now breathe fire sounded crazy. Being a little faster or stronger was one thing, but this…

“Still, I didn’t even know true form could do that,” Frank mused, echoing my thoughts. “I thought it could only make you a little faster, or better with a katana or magic or something.”

Elyssa hummed.

“That is not the case. A true form is exactly that, a form. It changes your physical form to what your subconscious mind knows is true to yourself. But it won’t make you better with weapons or at using magic.”

I frowned in her direction.

“Huh? What are you talking about? Renee said she never held a real sword before, and after using the true form, she suddenly became a freakin’ samurai.”

Elyssa frowned back in my direction.

“Uh… Yeah. After you taught me the true form skill, I suddenly just knew how to fight.”

“That’s… not supposed to happen,” Elyssa said slowly. “At most, you would find your body lighter or more flexible, but you would still need to learn how to move from scratch…”

Our party stopped, everyone staring at me again. It made me feel pretty uncomfortable.

Elyssa then shrugged.

“I suppose a goddess like you can simply skip that step as well.”

I wilted, feeling a bit bitter.

That explanation was getting old. It felt like whenever anything odd or unusual happened around me, Elyssa always said ‘goddess’ and waved her hand at it. I wanted to know the real reason for everything.

Sure, maybe Elyssa was right about the whole goddess thing. Considering we were currently inside Casey’s novel walking alongside an NPC from an MMO game world, there was probably something to it. But it still didn’t really explain anything. What about being a goddess or whatever made me skip needing training? Or see the portals? Or have those dreams? 

I shook my head.

“Whatever,” I half-growled and walked off, leaving everyone behind.

“Wai– Hold up, Renee!” Frank called out and caught up to me a moment later. “Hey, what’s wrong…? Why did you snap at Elyssa like that?”

I grit my teeth and sighed.

“I’m just tired of the ‘goddess’ explanation. It’s just a copout.”

“But… aren’t you a goddess? I mean, haven’t you kinda sorta made Casey’s novel real?”

“Well, sure. Maybe I am. But it doesn’t really explain anything!” I gave him a sharp look, venting my frustration. “Why am I a goddess? Why am I a goddess? Why are all these weird specific things happening?”

“Well… err… I guess… I guess we have to find out, right?” Frank gave me a bit of a forced smile.

“Right…” I sighed before growing bitter again. “Sorry, I’m just getting tired of not knowing things. I mean, if I knew more about my… abilities, then maybe we wouldn’t even be in this situation. Maybe I wouldn’t have accidentally brought a zombie plague to Earth…”

“It’s okay, Renee,” Mom said, placing a hand on my shoulder as she also caught up to me. “We all make mistakes, that’s just part of being a human.” I looked at her and she smiled. “You’re not alone. We’re going to make things right again.”

Which was true. No matter how frustrated I felt with all the mysteries, I wasn’t alone in trying to solve them.

“Right…” I replied before turning my head forward again and letting my idle thoughts wander once more.

We continued our journey in relative peace, with only a couple of those stupid boars trying to ambush us again, only to meet Mom’s explosive fist, Elyssa’s laser beams, Wi’s fireballs, Casey’s pre-emptive blasts, or my katana. Frank kept out of the fighting, guarding our luggage.

After the little revelation, however, I felt a little dirty using my unearned combat skills. Even though it hadn’t bothered me before, it just felt wrong now for some reason, and I wasn’t even sure why.

Still, I couldn’t just toss my katana and never try to fight again. Rather, since I had the opportunity, I needed to pay attention to my own movement and try to improve even more. That way, it would eventually start to feel earned… maybe.

A couple of hours later of mostly silent marching through the homogenous forest while fighting off the occasional monster, Casey stopped us, looking worriedly in a specific direction.

“What’s up?” Frank asked. “More pigs?”

Casey shook her head.

“The demons’ border patrol must have noticed us somehow. They’ve sent out a scouting party.”

“Oh, shit… Are we going to start a war…?”

Casey’s eyebrows creased as she seemed to concentrate for a moment.

“Not… necessarily. We just have to take a bit of a detour and it should be fine.” She turned her head, narrowed her eyes, and bit her lip as she stared in another specific direction. “We can’t use the secret tunnel I talked about, or they might follow us… I think we’ll need to cross the chasm and take a bit of a riskier route.”

“Are you sure that’s the best option…?” Mom asked, clearly worried.

“It’s either that, or we risk them tracking us down. And if they do, well… They would report back and the war with humans would start again.”

“But why? I mean, none of us even look like humans right now!” Frank interjected.

Casey pursed her lips.

“They’ll still think we’re with the human kingdom because we came from that direction. Worse, they’ll think that the humans have a dragon working with them,” she said, glancing at Mom. “So to get the upper hand, they’ll launch a preemptive attack, which will restart the war.”

There was a moment of silence as everyone digested that.

“Let’s cross the chasm, then,” Wi said, her expression dyed with grim determination.

Casey gave her a nod and then glanced back at Mom, who looked like she was going to complain again, but then sighed and nodded as well.

“Alright…” I agreed while Elyssa also gave a nod.

“Well, at least our adventure is gonna get a little more exciting.” Frank shrugged. 

Exciting but also more dangerous, I didn’t say.

With everyone in agreement, we changed directions and followed Casey, who turned into a light sprint.

“Make big strides from now on. As if you were running,” she directed.

I exchanged a glance with Frank, who shrugged and did as instructed. The rest of us followed.

About half an hour of wading through brushes later, we came to an abrupt stop. The forest was cut off here by a massive ravine. It was so abrupt that we might have walked off the edge without even realizing it if Casey wasn’t here to guide us. The other side was rocky and had barely any trees to speak of. It was like someone had taken a pencil and drawn a ravine to divide the two areas before taking an eraser and deleting all the trees on the other side.

“Alright, umm… we’ll need to cross here,” Casey said, glancing at Mom and Wi.

“Oh, you mean flying over it?” Frank piped up.

“Yeah. Their trackers will find our tracks later, but they’ll think we were chased off the cliff by a Mana Gorger that will walk through here a few hours later from now on.”

Oh… She'd even used the knowledge of the fact that a monster would walk through here after us, but before the demons? Clever. So that was why she had us pretend to be running.

Mom, on the other hand, frowned and lightly flapped her wings.

“I haven’t really practiced flying, though… I don’t want to drop anyone.”

“I can try to carry everyone myself,” Wi suggested.

I was skeptical. She was shorter than even me, not to mention still very much emaciated from her time as a slave.

She must have seen something in my expression because she took a step closer to me and opened her arms invitingly.

“Come on. Time to switch. You carried me, now it’s time for me to carry you.”

I could have sworn she had smirked for a moment there. I shot a brief suspicious glance at Frank, thinking that she must have picked up some of his habits on their date.

“Um… I’m not sure about this…”

“I’ve been practicing flying a lot these past few days.”

“Still…”

“It’s fine,” Casey confirmed. “I’m pretty sure Wi can actually carry all of us over… Well, I’m sure about everyone but me and you, Renee. But we’re both lighter than the others, so it shouldn’t be a problem. She’ll just need to rest a bit between trips.”

I thought about it for a brief moment but couldn’t come up with a good argument against it. So, in the end, I sighed in defeat and took a step closer to Wi before letting myself be picked up in a princess carry.

It felt incredibly embarrassing.

Then I heard a snap and whirled my head to see a grinning Frank holding up his smartphone.

“Frank!” I yelled, feeling my cheeks heat up.

“Sorry, couldn’t resist! This was just way too adorable!”

I groaned, covering my face with my hands.

For a moment, I seriously considered throwing myself down the ravine instead.