Where the Not-Deer Roam

The first thing I feel when I wake up is cold slime against my cheek. My eyes snap open, groggy and full of crust, and I sit up in my sleeping roll with a groan that sounds like a small landslide.

"Jelly Boy," I mutter, shaking off the goo like a dog who just came in from the rain.

The basketball-sized ball of blue jello buzzes with joy. I sigh. How can I ever be mad at something this god damned adorable?

I give my slimy companion a gentle pat on the head before rolling over and slowly getting to my feet. I walk around the perimeter of our camp, stretching the sleep from my limbs and taking a few additional moments to really wake up.

I stop mid-yawn when something catches my eye. Bluish ooze drips from the low branches of the brush surrounding our little camp. I crouch down, tilting my head as I examine the cooling smear of gel across the green leaves and the slow drip from the branch.

"Did you wander off to use the little ooze room last night?" I ask.

I don't get words in response—because slimes don't talk—but I do get a resonant blorp, a noise somehow filled with the same emotional bandwidth as an angry office worker who hasn't had their first cup of coffee. The little guy jiggles irritably from across the clearing where we made camp, glaring at me with the gelatinous equivalent of a middle finger.

"Not a morning person," I say, scratching at the stubble on my chin. "I get it… But I was only kidding, man."

We break down camp in quiet routine. The heat obelisk dims as I deactivate the rune, the warmth vanishing like it was never there. Clyde summons his pistol in a mote of light, spinning his revolver's chamber, dismissing his weapon, and then repeating the exercise. I've learned this is a habit of his. I think it calms his nerves, but he says practicing it makes the summoning faster. I haven't noticed a difference during our hike up Mount Alkazab. Veronica stretches, rolling her shoulders with the clank of armor plates shifting into place, her new shield already magnetized to her back.

Breakfast is another ration of Adventurer's Cookies, which is to say: not food. It's more like chewing on the concept of sustenance. But hey, it gets the job done and comes with the added bonus of bypassing bathroom breaks, which is probably the darkest kind of magic I've seen in this world so far.

"Man, I miss food," I mumble, finishing the last bite of my cookie.

You've consumed an Adventurer's Cookie!

You will now be sustained for forty-eight hours!

I can't help but think of my mom's cooking. My stomach doesn't grumble, but a pang of sorrow echoes though my hollow-yet-satisfied stomach. I groan.

"Aren't you gym-bros supposed to be mind-over-matter?" asks Clyde, slipping his pack onto his shoulders.

I sigh. "You've got a point… I can do this."

I grab my pack and Jelly Boy and shuffle behind Clyde and Veronica as we set out, back on our journey to the dragon's nest.

By the time the sun is high in the sky above our heads, we've put our camp far behind us and without encountering one Evil Eye or Crazed Badger or any of the other mobs that populated the side of the mountain.

Instead, we fall into conversation, like we usually do between near-death experiences. It's a lot more pleasant when it's been nearly an entire day since our last brush with a monster. I can almost pretend like we're taking a nice stroll through the Cleveland Metroparks.

"So," Veronica says, the wind tugging at her dark braid, "New York City, huh? … What brought you back to Cleveland?"

It's a casual question, but my guts squirm like they've been asked to do public speaking. Which—for the record—I am not a fan of.

"Uh," I say. "I had a pretty bad breakup."

Clyde raises an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Yeah. She was successful. Like, super successful. Came from one of those families that owns parts of Manhattan like it's a freaking Monopoly square. Family home in Connecticut… Place in the Hamptons. I'm pretty sure they viewed me as an entertaining charity case, ya know? Like, 'Look at our daughter, pretending to be a normal person and showing this loser what it's like to sniff the grass on our side of the fence.'"

Veronica winces. "Sorry. I didn't mean to bring up a sensitive subject."

"Couldn't stick it out and marry into money?" Clyde asks, looking over his shoulder to flash me a smile.

"Almost did. We got engaged and everything!"

"Woof…!" says Veronica.

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"Right?" I say. "I think she only said yes to my proposal to piss them off. That's the only explanation that makes sense. Because a few months later, she cheated on me. I found out. She found out that I found out. And then she dumped me before I could do anything about it. Pulled the rug so fast I didn't even know I was standing on one."

"That's brutal," Clyde says, and for once, there's no sarcasm. Just quiet, serious sympathy.

"Yeah," I reply. "It was. I shut down for a while. Quit my job. Moved back home with my parents. Just… wallowed in it."

Veronica looks over at me, her brow soft. "How'd you get through it?"

I shrug. "I hit the gym. Hard. I mean, I was always kind of into working out, even in college. But I still carried a bit of weight. I was a fat kid, you know? One of those bullied-every-day types. So, when the whole Sarah happened, it just… cracked open that same feeling. That I wasn't good enough. That I was still that worthless, awkward kid, and…" I internally groan. Why am I even saying all of this? It was all too personal, but I'd started and it had poured out of me like word diarrhea. "I don't know. It was like I'd just fooled everyone—including myself—into thinking I was something else."

I pause. Clearing my throat awkwardly and hoping we can all just move on from this subject now. Please.

"Well, we're happy you are what you are… Who you are," says Veronica. A gentle smile crosses her face—a comforting 'I see you.'

There's a silence after that. Not awkward, not heavy. Just still. The kind of silence that respects what came before it. Jelly Boy bumps against my chest, soft and warm. He doesn't say anything. But the little squish he makes? Feels like he gets it, too.

It's a couple hours later when something sets off my [Perception] Skill.

The hairs on my arm stand on end and I feel like something is off… No, not off, wrong. Not wrong like a trap about to spring on us or anything, or a monster about to pounce. No. It's harder to explain than that. Wrong in the way it felt first seeing the live news footage of a monster that escaped one of the Gates. Something not quite belonging.

I freeze mid-step.

The wind, which has been our constant companion, suddenly hushes. No birds singing from the treetops. No skittering bugs. No distant screeches from Evil Eyes in the distance. Just silence so thick it presses on my eardrums like I'm sinking into the deep end of a public pool, the sounds of laughter and crowds drowned out by the dark liquid around me.

Then, the silence breaks and I'm rushed by an orchestra of ambient noise. Veronica is saying something to Clyde.

We're not alone.

I freeze. And then I see it.

"Guys," I hiss.

I keep my eye on the presence that had drawn my attention.

A deer. It's just... standing there behind a row of bushes, on a patch of grass about thirty feet ahead, framed in a shaft of pale sunlight filtering through the pine branches.

It looks normal. Serene. Idyllic, even. It has brown fur, antlers like curled tree limbs, dark gentle eyes. It lowers its head to nibble at some moss growing improbably from a boulder. I don't think it notices us. Maybe it's just a deer, Joe. Maybe you're just getting paranoid after spending so much time in a fucking nightmare Realm.

Then it moves. And everything goes to shit.

The legs bend—not forward, not backward, but sideways. Like someone took a mannequin and forced the joints the wrong direction until they popped free and rotated like a Rubik's cube made of bone and flesh. Knees fold in on themselves, spiraling into something that isn't walking so much as crawling upright. I almost scream as it lifts a limb to scratch its neck, and it's not a hoof. It's a hand. A human-like hand extending from where the fur of the slightly too long, twisted bestial legs ends—alabaster skin, slender, nails short and clean.

My stomach lurches. My fingers twitch, wanting nothing more than to clench into a fist and cast Wizard's Fist.

Then its neck stretches, unspooling from its body. It stretches upward, serpentine, twisting in that boneless way snakes do. It rises until its head is eight, nine feet off the ground, and then it tilts sideways, plucks an entire bird's nest from a branch using its tongue, and swallows it whole.

The neck retracts with a soft, wet shlorp.

My breath is stuck somewhere between my lungs and my spine. And then the aura hits me. A pressure, like the air before a thunderstorm suddenly turned into a barbell across my shoulder. It hits me deeper, making my bones itch.

It turns its head and stares. I try not to move.

New Monster Identified: Not-Deer, Level ?

Classification: Demonic Force, Mimic

Veronica hasn't moved. Clyde's breathing is shallow. Even Jelly Boy is still, quivering ever so slightly like a Jell-O mold trying to pretend it's invisible.

And then—the Not-Deer thankfully turns away. Just like that. Slowly walking away from us, its strange child-like hands reaching up to part a pair of branches, and then finally vanishing into the pines like it was never there.

The pressure in my bones fades.

I finally remember how to exhale. The breath that escapes my lips is shaky.

"What the fuck," I breathe.

Clyde wipes a hand across his clammy forehead. "We're getting close. The journal said we'd be seeing some dangerous shit when we got close to the nest. I wonder what else is poking around here."

"I vote we don't find out," Veronica mutters.

Clyde nods. "Monsters like that? They're the reason we shouldn't have to worry about the dragons when we get to the nest. That journal said creatures under a certain power threshold are basically ignored by Storm Dragons. Camouflaged by proximity to stronger predators with bigger auras. Less threat, more background noise."

"So… we're ticks on a bear's ass?" I ask.

"Exactly."

"Comforting," says Veronica.

We move on. The incline steepens. My calves ache, but no one complains. Several more hours pass before we finally reach the ridge. Clyde's the first to reach it. He just stops. Vernoica eventually reaches his side.

"Woah…" she breathes.

I pump my legs, eager to see what they're looking at. I finally get to Veronica's side and my jaw drops.

The Nest.

The mountainside looks like it exploded, but instead of shrapnel, it birthed a fortress of impossible scale. Towers of frost-covered blackened glass spiral toward the sky, the peaks are covered by small, dark rings of storm clouds that flash with the lightning they each hold. Plates of molten rock, somehow frozen in mid-eruption, form jagged terraces across a wide basin. The air crackles with static, and the scent—ozone and sulfur—hits my nostrils like a truck.

A shadow moves across the sun. A shape—winged, enormous—passes through the storm clouds, just a flicker, like a thought too big to fully comprehend. It descends, landing on the other side of the gigantic crater filled with storm-gathering glass towers. I hope that isn't the baby dragon, I think with all the optimism I can muster.

Veronica finally whispers, "We're really doing this, huh?"

I nod, swallowing past the lump in my throat.

"Yep," says Clyde.

A beat.

I stare down into the crater and the drop beneath our feet. Something inside me cracks, just slightly. I chuckle. "Guess now's a bad time to say I have a fear of heights?"

Lightning flashes from beyond the edge on the other side of the crater. Thunder follows, long and deep and hungry.

Clyde laughs. "Welcome to the dragon's nest."

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