Derpy’s musical horn flared.
Light spread across his hands and caught the drifting links of a chain. Beyond that small circle, the darkness remained complete. There was no ground to put his feet on, no wall to reach for, and nothing that made him feel better about the enormous hyena slowly turning upside down in front of him.
She was still laughing.
“What’s your problem?” he asked. “I have no idea where we are. Do you normally tackle people you don’t know?”
Her ponytail swept through the light as she completed another lazy turn. Now that he could see more of her, the resemblance that had made him call out Tina’s name seemed less convincing. This woman was taller. More massive, too. Her broad shoulders rose above the mauve neckline of a torn charcoal sweater, and her heavy boots drifted past him with enough weight behind them to make him move his face out of the way.
She noticed the movement and grinned.
“A mate,” she said. “I finally get a mate.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
Her nose twitched. She studied him with renewed interest, eyes moving from his face to the white fur at his throat.
“But you’re female. You smell male, though.” Her brow furrowed. “How would this work?”
Derpy closed his eyes for a moment.
Apparently, finding a way out would have to wait while he explained himself to the woman who had tackled him here.
“First off, I’m male. I just turned into a female.”
She leaned closer.
“I used a spell that took a part of me,” he continued. “My dragon side. I guess it took more than my dragon side.”
He let out a long sigh. Saying it aloud did not make it sound any less troublesome.
“How about we start with introductions?”
The hyena reached for him.
Derpy shifted sideways, letting her hands close on empty space. The movement carried him farther than he intended, and he swept his tail behind him to stop himself from turning.
She seemed pleased by that, too.
“Hydra. Daughter of Varok.”
Derpy steadied himself.
“Derpy. Son of John and Taylor. My birth mother is Lunara, and my birth father is Vorath. My grandmother is Okamihana.”
Hydra’s smile lingered through the first names, then faltered at the last. She looked at him again, as if his face might have changed while he was talking.
“Half-relative?”
“I believe so.” Derpy held up a hand before she could reach for him again. “So, no mate.”
Her ears tipped back. For a moment, he thought she understood.
Then her grin returned.
“Doesn’t matter. Still my mate.”
She lunged.
Derpy twisted away, one of her cuffs passing close enough for its chain to brush his sleeve. Hydra sailed past him and caught herself in another slow turn.
“It doesn’t bother you that we’re related?” he demanded.
“No. Because it’s disgusting, and I’m disgusting.”
He had been preparing to dodge again. The answer made him stop.
Hydra gave a short laugh, but this one sounded different. Her eyes had moved away from his face.
“No wolf wants to date a hyena bred with a human. Coral took me in.”
Derpy watched her fingers curl around the loose chain at her wrist.
It took him a moment to put the pieces together.
“So you’re adopted?”
She nodded.
“I don’t know who my real parents are. I always assumed Varok was my dad.”
“You could have started with that.”
“You asked who I was. That’s who I am.”
Whatever the blood connection was, she had already chosen the family she belonged to. Derpy left the name alone.
“They take care of you?” he asked.
Hydra shrugged. The movement lifted the thick neckline of her sweater before it slipped back below her shoulders.
“My living conditions aren’t poor. I have things. A place to sleep.” She rubbed her thumb over a worn patch on the cuff. “I just never get included in pack hunts. Nobody lets me test my power against anyone, either.”
“Why?”
She looked down at herself, then back at him.
“My size.”
Derpy glanced at the arms that had closed around him so easily. He could imagine what it would feel like to be on the receiving end of a proper hit from her. He could also imagine how little that mattered after hearing the same refusal enough times.
His grandmother had been knocking him into the ground to make him stronger. Hydra was being kept out of everything because she was already too big.
Neither arrangement seemed particularly interested in what they wanted.
An idea began to form.
He let himself drift while he worked through it, thinking about the clearing, the training he still needed, and the way Hydra had brightened at the possibility of having somebody of her own.
Something warm closed around his back.
Derpy looked down.
Her arms were around him again.
“When did you—?”
Hydra tucked him closer, delighted with whatever his moment of distraction had allowed her to accomplish. Heat climbed into his face. He planted both hands against her and pushed himself free before she could settle him anywhere more securely.
“Would you like to play a game when we get out of here?”
She stopped reaching.
“With you?”
“Yes. With me.”
Her ears rose.
“We can play games, if that interests you,” he said. “But you can't tell anyone about this place. And being my friend isn't the same as being my mate.”
Hydra's smile faltered.
“If I say stop, you stop. No tackling me into things. No grabbing me because I looked away.”
“You'd still come hunting?”
“If we agree on it.”
She considered that for longer than he expected, then nodded. He wanted to believe she had heard all of it.
Hydra looked around the darkness, then back at him. Her smile grew until the tips of her fangs showed.
“You’ll actually play?”
“That is what I just offered.”
She folded her legs beneath her, somehow making a seated position look comfortable without a single solid thing to sit on. Her tail moved behind her. For the first time since she had tackled him, she seemed willing to stay still.
Derpy was considering that an improvement when she looked upward.
He followed her gaze.
Far above them, the opening they had fallen through marked a small break in the darkness.
Very far above them.
Hydra’s tail slowed. Her ears flattened as she looked from the opening to Derpy and back again.
“I didn’t mean to bring us this far,” she said.
“I know.”
“Can you reach it?”
He studied the distance instead of answering immediately. The route he had meant to take and the place they had ended up were apparently two very different things.
Hydra had stopped laughing entirely.
Derpy drew a breath.
“Kefa. Luda. Ruda. Ruka. Brin.”
He waited.
There was no familiar movement beside him, no excited voice answering his call. Only the faint clink of Hydra’s chains as she shifted her hands into her lap.
“Hmm.”
He tried again.
“Envy? Frost?”
Nothing.
Derpy’s ears tilted forward. He listened harder, as though the answer might be somewhere beyond the reach of his horn’s light.
“They’re not coming, you know.”
Both of them turned.
A rabbit woman had appeared in the darkness.
Derpy recognized Pest before she smiled. An enormous dwarf rabbit, here of all places, looking entirely comfortable while he struggled to work out which direction would take him home.
“Hello, love.”
Irritation tightened his face.
“Don’t call me that.”
He moved in front of Hydra before thinking about it. Behind him, her breath caught.
When he glanced back, her cheeks had gone warm beneath her fur.
“So you are going to be my mate.”
“What? No!”
Pest laughed. From the sound of it, she was having a wonderful time.
“I felt you enter,” she told him. “But I didn’t expect you to come into the very depths of the Soul Seam.”
Derpy looked toward the distant opening again.
“That wasn’t the plan.”
“I gathered.”
She flicked her wrist.
An unseen pull caught him around the middle. Hydra made a surprised sound as she was drawn along beside him, her boots turning toward Pest before the rest of her followed.
“Come on,” Pest said. “Just this once, I’ll take you.”
Derpy tested the pull with one hand. There was nothing to grab, but the direction remained steady. At least somebody here appeared to know where she was going.
Pest turned, leading them through the darkness.
After a little while, she glanced back at Hydra.
“You know, I don’t know what happened. I’m only guessing here. You were about to enter, and that broad did something that threw you off.”
“Hey,” Hydra protested. “That’s not very nice. I was excited. Father told me about the new person.”
“And you decided to introduce yourself with your whole body?”
Hydra folded her arms. The chains hanging from her cuffs bumped together.
Derpy barely heard the sound.
The hairs along his neck had begun to prickle.
A memory pushed through the darkness in front of him: Lewd, the desperate need to reach her, and the terrible sight of parts of himself beginning to fade. The longer he stayed away from his body, the less of him there had seemed to be.
Then Pest’s voice, remembered clearly enough to make his shoulders tighten.
I’ll kill you next time you enter here.
He looked at the rabbit guiding them.
“You’re not going to kill me?”
Hydra’s arms came apart.
Pest looked back without slowing.
“No. I’m passing my sister’s duty to you. In exchange, you’ll bring me into the world.”
Derpy stared at her.
That answer required considerably more explanation than the one he had expected.
“I don’t follow. Wasn’t this your kingdom?”
“A kingdom I’ve been running since my sister Roae was gone.” Pest’s gaze stayed on his face. “Now I’m passing the torch to you. You’re my sister’s successor.”
“I can’t.”
The words came out before she had quite finished.
Pest raised her brows.
“It’s bad enough I already have so much going on in here.” He pressed a hand against his chest. “I came to figure things out. I didn’t come to take over a kingdom.”
Her smile returned.
“You’re about to have one more.”
She moved close enough that he started to lean away.
Her lips touched his before he could finish the movement.
Then she was gone.
Derpy jerked backward, one hand flying to his mouth. A sharp warmth spread along his side. He twisted and dragged the fabric away from it, watching a rabbit crest take shape against him.
“Pest!”
Hydra reached toward the mark, then stopped when he turned.
“This isn’t fair!”
“I can hear you.”
The voice was close. Much too close.
Derpy looked over one shoulder, then the other. Only Hydra floated beside him. Pest’s guiding pull had brought them clear of the deepest darkness, but the rabbit herself was nowhere to be seen.
“Where are you?”
“Inside you.”
He shut his eyes.
Of course she was.
“If I can’t gain a lasting presence in the world through Lewd, I’ll have you bring me into it,” Pest continued. “I don’t have to explain the rest.”
“You owe me the rest,” Derpy said. He touched the warm crest. “You heard me refuse. Remember that when we discuss this again.”
Pest gave no answer. Ahead, he could make out the fragments.
“So how do we get out of here, Derpy?” Hydra asked.
He looked back at her. She had drifted a little farther away while he was distracted, and the uncertainty had returned to her face.
His white tail reached out and wrapped around her, holding them together.
“I’m going to figure this out.” He checked that she was secure before moving. “And when I see Lewd again, I’m going to ask her what Pest meant.”
“I offered her a deal,” Pest said inside his mind. “She chose you.”
Derpy’s jaw tightened.
“I sent my sister to persuade her, but that failed. So now you get to take responsibility.”
“You keep saying that as though it explains why I don’t get a choice.”
Hydra glanced between his face and the empty space. “Is she still talking?”
“Unfortunately.” He kept moving toward the fragments. Lewd could give him her side when he reached her.
The four fragments noticed him approaching. They were other selves, not the little maids he had called for in the darkness.
Derpy felt the moment their attention settled on him. He stopped a short distance away, Hydra floating beside him with his tail still looped around her.
“It’s time to come home.”
Red chains flew from his back.
They streamed toward the fragments, bright against the space between them. Derpy braced for the answering pull.
Instead, the chains were rejected.
He flinched as the refusal traveled back through them. Beside him, Hydra caught his arm to keep herself from turning with the movement.
“You can’t take us and go,” one of the four told him.
Derpy looked between them.
“I’m not leaving you here because she decided I should run this place.”
“We’ll manage the Soul Seam. You go back outside.”
The answer came without hesitation.
He glanced at the red chains, still stretched between them, then back at the fragments.
“And if something happens?”
“Harpy and Wolf have bodies in the outside world. We can communicate if we need something.”
Another of the four shifted closer.
“You have friends to see again. You’re not going to be stuck with a responsibility that dumb hare forced on you.”
Derpy almost looked down at the crest.
He decided not to give Pest the satisfaction.
“You make it sound simple,” he said.
“We’ve been here longer. We’ll handle it.”
His chains slackened.
Hydra’s hand remained around his arm, unusually gentle for somebody who had introduced herself by tackling him through a portal.
“Your friends are waiting,” one of the fragments reminded him.
Derpy opened his mouth.
The push came before he could argue again.
He lurched backward, tightening his tail around Hydra as she gave a startled yelp. The four receded. A route opened behind him, drawing them away faster than he could turn to look.
He reached down as they moved.
Far beneath the departing fragments, at the bottom of the Soul Seam, something caught.
His fingers closed.
He pulled it with him.
None of the four appeared to notice before he and Hydra were pushed through.
Grass struck his shoulder. The sunlight had shifted while they were below; shadows now reached across marks he had drawn in the open. He had no useful measure of how long the journey had taken outside.
Derpy rolled, dragged in a breath of open air, and found himself staring at the sky above Petal Fields. Real sky. Real light. Real ground pressing against his back.
His tail loosened, releasing Hydra onto the grass beside him.
For one wonderful moment, nobody spoke.
Then somebody shouted his name.
Derpy barely managed to lift his head before the first of his chibis hit him. The others followed so closely that trying to identify the order became impossible. Kefa, Luda, Ruda, Ruka, and Brin crowded against him, all talking at once.
Envy and Frost reached him in the same rush.
He went back into the grass beneath a tangle of worried hands and familiar faces.
“We couldn’t find you!”
“Where did you go?”
“Friend Derpy, you disappeared!”
He tried to answer one voice and immediately found himself looking at another.
“I’m here. I’m back.”
That did very little to stop them checking.
One small hand caught his sleeve. Another touched his cheek as though to make certain the rest of him was attached to it. He stopped trying to sit up and let them crowd close for a moment.
The unanswered calls in the darkness had bothered him more than he had wanted to admit.
Hearing all of them at once was almost a relief.
Almost.
“Can somebody move off my arm?” he asked. “I need that one.”
The pile shifted enough to let him prop himself up.
Hydra had found her feet. She stood a little apart from the reunion, brushing grass from the mauve edge of her sweater. Her gaze moved over the people gathered around him before she turned to walk away.
The chibis noticed her together.
“New maid or warrior?”
Derpy followed their pointing hands.
“A new friend,” he said. “Possibly a companion.”
Hydra’s tail began to wag.
She kept walking, but the movement was impossible to miss.
Derpy watched her for a moment, then looked toward the crest he had marked into the clearing. His book still lay where he had left it. Everything outside had continued while he was away, and somehow he had come back carrying more trouble than he had taken in.
“There you are.”
Okamihana’s voice made his ears turn.
His grandmother approached through the clearing, her pink tail moving behind her robes. Her gaze passed over the gathering around him and settled briefly on Hydra.
“I see you’ve met my adoptive daughter. I hope she gets along with you and your friends, Derpy.”
He eased himself out from among the chibis and stood. There were several things he could have said about how that introduction had gone. None of them seemed more important than the voice now living inside him or the duty Pest had tried to leave in his hands.
“Grandmother, can I have a word with you?”
Okamihana looked back at him.
“It’s very important.”
The easy expression left her face. She studied him with the concern of a parent who had just realized the child in front of her was doing more than complaining about training.
“Of course,” she said.
Derpy let out a breath.
“But your lessons will continue with me,” she added. “Hydra will be joining us.”
He glanced toward the hyena.
That part might actually help. He had already offered to play games with her, and somebody finally letting her take part in training would give them somewhere to begin.
Then Okamihana finished.
“She’s going to be your partner and mate for the festival.”
Derpy looked back at his grandmother.
For a moment, he could only stare at her, wearing the expression of somebody who had just heard his own death sentence read aloud.
“Please explain more.”