We set off in the morning, not too early but still before most of the skymotes have turned green. Talgarth is close enough to the edge of Tempest Domain that the entire northwest horizon is bright with azure light from Tiganna. It has been raining all night, a welcome break from the winter snow, and the clouds have parted by the time we're ready to head out.

We climb the docking tower and start boarding the Celestial Duck. The Heroics start prepping for launch, making themselves useful with their superior rope skills.

"Whoever wants rope training, come join me and watch what I do," Belladonna says, waving us over.

"So this is your new skyboat," Milo says as he climbs on board. "I wonder how much a vessel like this goes for. Not to mention how one might build a dock like this."

We go over to help Belladonna with the ropes as the others settle in for the flight.

"You might be able to buy one like this for 40 or 50 gold, used," Belladonna says. "You'd be looking at double that at least if you wanted some basic security features like locks or alarms so some kid doesn't just come up and swipe it out from under your nose. Brand new legit aether pinnace? You'd have to fork over at least 250 gold."

With the sails open, I take a position at the tiller and one of the Heroics helpfully turns the ship on for me. I then spend a good two minutes trying to figure out how to overcome the pull of the skydock before realizing that I just need to pull straight up.

"How about that ship Aunt Savannah oak-slapped out of the sky?" I ask once we're underway. "That had to have set back whoever these people are."

"Oh yeah, definitely. That had to have been worth a thousand gold or more, depending on what features it had."

"I haven't had a chance to examine the scraps we salvaged yet," I say. "And I don't yet know enough about skyships to make sense of the sigils anyway."

"Are there places that sell skyships in Tempest?" Milo asks.

"Your best bet for that would be Dolwen, over on the west edge," Belladonna says. "It's bigger than Amroth and a bit less skeavy. I don't think there's anyone in Tempest who actually makes skyships. No aranea colonies here, for one thing."

"Why would there need to be aranea colonies?" Milo wonders.

Belladonna chuckles and points toward the shimmering aether sails. "You see those sails? That's aether silk. Aranea produce it naturally. And they're way better at piloting. No offense."

"I'm not offended that my Mechanics (Piloting) skill is still at novice tier," I say.

I spend part of the trip telepathically sending Milo information about some of the things I've learned about our skills. Even if he wants to spend less time laying on pillows and staring at the sky, some of it still might be useful to him.

"I'm a [Mystic Child] at the moment," Milo says. "That will help with a wider variety of magical skills, including Necromancy."

"Nice," I say. "I wish I could use magic already."

"Don't be in too much of a rush to get to Elite. I know I was worried about goblin lifespan issues and all that, but having another extra three years to train skills actually helped a lot. Even if the caps were only level 10, I was able to get a number of skills to cap. How many skills do you have maxed so far?"

"Uh… none yet," I say. "[Aether Sense] is close."

Milo chuckles. "You may wish to prioritize maxing out your favorite skills."

"It's not like I haven't been working on them…" I grouse. "I just got this boat and I'm absolutely going to max out [Piloting] and [Aether Sailing] as soon as I can. I didn't feel like grinding [Piloting] in a kayak."

Milo has been a good friend.

I don't know what Drake Corwen would have been like if he hadn't had ghosts in his head. I don't even know what Drake Corwen might have been liked if he'd killed Milo and become a [Heroic Child]. Would that have immediately increased my rank to Heroic, or was it just poorly named? Not that I wish I'd become a Hero.

The "extreme tourism" aspect of adventuring is fun. But while I don't mind helping people where I can, I don't want to be expected to take down villains and save the world from dark lords or whatever. So I made friends with the could-have-been dark lord before he had a chance to commit any atrocities.

I have no doubt that Milo would be capable of committing atrocities if he wanted to. He prefers having good public relations, though. He would rather get people's money because they like him and he's offering good deals on products and services.

Milo muses aloud, "Alright, so what I'm thinking here is that the way you removed that skill from yourself might not work for me, but that doesn't mean I can't do it. There's never only one way to do something."

"That's very true," I say.

"The key insight here is that they're skills. Every skill is a part of you, right? They're sitting there on our character screens, every dumb thing we ever did just enough to get it to show up. You didn't actually remove it so much as transformed the experience into the skills you used to fix it."

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"I didn't care to drink more to test it," I say.

"Yes, there are likely unforeseen consequences even if you think it's fine. I would prefer to do extensive research before attempting a shortcut like that."

"I am greatly curious about how they did it, but not curious enough to try to find out at 9 years old in a skyboat that only goes like twice as fast as walking."

Milo nods. "For our immediate concern, I will try to fix it using my own skills."

Skills increased: Enhanced Soul (Aether Sailing), Mechanics (Piloting, Rope Use), Enhanced Feet (Fast Travel)

We arrive back at Nefern and I bring us in to dock at the tower.

"You think this little goblin can help my niece?" Badger Nefern wonders, looking at Milo skeptically.

At almost 4 years old, Milo is still small even by goblin standards, but humans can't really tell that he's actually a child.

"I can make no promises," Milo says. "I've never done this before. But I am a reincarnator and have been learning Necromancy, and I'm not affiliated with the smugglers. And since I don't know if I can succeed, I'm not even going to charge, so it costs you nothing to let me take a look and see what I can do."

Badger grunts. "Very well."

He brings the little girl back out again, in the same condition she was yesterday.

"What's her name?" Milo asks.

"Poppy."

"Poppy Nefern Tempest Tiganna," Milo says. "Look at me."

Still glassy-eyed, Poppy turns her head toward him silently, and a bridge of vis forms between them when they make eye contact.

"Wake up," Milo says. "You're alright. Break the curse. Shake it off."

Their auras flare, and an aspect I hadn't even noticed in her vis dissolves. Poppy blinks, then turns her eyes to the old man.

"Uncle Badger?" she says.

"Poppy!" Badger says, pulling her into a hug.

"Who is the goblin?" Poppy wonders, looking back at Milo.

"A friend," Badger says. "What did you do, Milo? Was that Necromancy?"

"That was just Incantations," Milo says. "I'm surprised none of the Heroics tried anything."

"No sense butting in without letting you try first," Uncle Falcon says. "Warlocks are better suited for dealing with curses than Bards, in any case. How did you know it was a curse and not floj exposure?"

"From what Drake described to me, extended catatonia is not a likely side-effect of floj. They would not have made it impossible for people to go buy more floj. So I conjectured that it may have been a curse from pilfering the pirate captain's private stash."

"Colt found a box in the wreck," Poppy says. "He brought it to me to pick the lock. Then there was a flash and I couldn't move."

"Where is this lockbox now?" Milo asks.

"I couldn't move but I could still see and hear," Poppy says. "He said he was going to bury it and drew a map so we could find it again. Where is he? Where's my brother?"

"We were hoping you could tell us that," I say.

"He wanted to find someone who could help me and he didn't think anyone here would be able to."

"He was probably right," Badger says. "He still should have told someone, though."

"Did he say where he was going?" I ask.

"Amroth," Poppy says. "He was going to Amroth. And he hasn't come back? Oh no… I hope he didn't get in trouble."

"Ah, man," Anise mutters. "Maybe we should send someone that might not be recognized by whichever smugglers were smart enough to run away from the swamp monster? Okay, they might have been paying more attention to the swamp monster than us."

"My party can go to Amroth and look for him," Uncle Falcon puts in. "We're high enough level that they'd need to be serious to bother us, and we've plenty of reason to visit the Adventurers' Guild."

"Meanwhile, we ought to find the lockbox that caused this," Milo says. "Where is this buried treasure map?"

"Colt hid it in the school library. I can show you where." She climbs out of the armchair and stands up unsteadily, stretching out her stiff muscles.

"Are you alright?" Anise asks.

"I'm fine, now," Poppy says. "I just feel like I've been laying in bed for weeks like that time I got griffin pox."

With the Heroic adventuring party off to Amroth, Poppy leads my party to Nefern's school building. Some younger kids look up from playing with blocks to watch us because we're much more interesting than blocks.

"I know it was somewhere around here…" Poppy says, poking about a squat bookcase painted bright azure.

"The history books are very dusty," I observe. "One of them's got fingerprints on it."

Poppy pulls out the copy of A Genealogy of Tempest, 400–499 and blows a bucket worth of dust off of it. "Ugh, I shouldn't have done that." She sneezes several times, thoroughly coating the book in snot before putting it on the table.

"I'm not touching that," Rowan says.

"Sorry," Poppy says, wiping her hands on her shirt before opening the book. "What…?" She holds up a scrap of paper with scribbles on it that has been torn diagonally. "Why did he tear up the map?"

"Where might the other pieces be?" Milo wonders.

"I'll look inside the Hearth," Poppy says. "You guys can search the rest of the village?"

I nod. "Alright, we can do that."

We split up to scour the various buildings. I wind up with the task of searching the chicken coop. I'm not sure what would compel this kid to hide a piece of a buried pirate treasure map in a henhouse, but that's where I find it. I spot the corner of a scrap of paper and gently remove a hen to retrieve it.

Skill increased: Persuasion (Animal Handling), Search (Inspection)

It's a corner that doesn't even look like a map, but maybe it'll provide some useful detail once combined with the other pieces. Reasoning that he probably didn't hide more than one piece in the same spot and disinclined to disturb the chickens any further, I return to the school.

The others come back one by one, bringing five torn map pieces in total. It takes a bit of trial and error to fit all the pieces back together, but soon enough we're all leaning over the tiny kiddie table peering at it. (And not touching it, because it's thoroughly gross.)

"This isn't even a map," Milo complains.

Sure enough, rather than an overhead view of an area with an X marking the spot, it's just a sketch of a location. A stone wall with a wrought iron fence, a tree stump, and even some daffodils. There's a dotted line circling around behind the stump with an X at the end.

"I guess his [Sketching] skill was higher than his [Cartography] skill," Anise says.

"That's got to be a dungeon," I say. "I haven't seen gates like that on anything but dungeons."

"And look at how he drew the walls," Milo adds. "It must be inside."

"That's got to be the Secret Garden," Anise says. "There's no tree stumps in the Wisteria Garden and it's further away."

Poppy nods in agreement. "The Secret Garden! That makes sense. Let's go!"

"You, dear niece, are staying right here," Badger says. "These nice adventurers can go find the pirate lockbox. You still need to eat up and recover and it might be dangerous."

"But Uncle Badger, he's the same age as me," Poppy says, pointing to me and pouting.

"Yes, and his mother is with him and she clearly has confidence in him," Badger says.

"Oh yeah, tons of confidence," Anise says.

Poppy's pout does not abate. "I can be an adventurer too! Fiiiine. I guess I am really hungry."

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