The shelter really wasn’t all that far from the Goat Bridge.

  “I think that’s the first brick structure I’ve seen in this world,” I said in surprise. “There’s pottery and ceramic roof tiles but I haven’t seen any brick.”

  “Uses a lot of resources,” the Zombie King said. “Metal’s mainly in the Highnds on geothermal hotspots that make natural refineries and forges. Gss too. There’s no oil or gas or coal that I can find. Why bother with brick if there are building materials close to home that do what you need and don’t mean deforestation to feed enough kilns? Gzed bricks get used for art stuff but that’s about it. And those are mostly made in the Highnds. Geothermal again.”

  “Makes sense on every level, given the context I’ve seen here.” Although I couldn’t help but wonder who had hauled bricks out to the middle of nowhere to build a shelter.

  “That’s a very pretty effect,” Zanshe said admiringly.

  She was right, it was—not enormously complicated, but made with care and thought. The square building was constructed of sandy and chocote bricks that alternated, but on the upper part of each side white bricks had been sometimes turned end-out to make a simple stylized sunburst. The ceramic-tiled roof was mostly red but with intermittent narrow stripes of white. The off-centre doorway on each side had been framed in white, then sandy, then chocote, with the same arrangement framing a rge gss window in the symmetrical position.

  Inside had a familiar arrangement: a walled-off corner with toilet and sink, a central firepit, both made of patterned sandy and chocote brick with white highlights, a trough, several jotun-sized ptforms made of short brick pilrs supporting heavy rectangur metal frames on which sheets of brown leather had been stretched.

  The ornithians came inside, had a drink at the brick trough near the toilet, and without waiting for the removal of their harnesses they flopped, curled together, for a nap. Aryennos slid their bridles off for them and gave them each an affectionate pat, then he and Serru unfastened the harnesses and eased those out of the way, rather hampered by the weight of the comfortable ornithians. I worked around them, headed for a bed-ptform where Zanshe had already spread a bnket. She helped me get Terenei safely off my back and down onto it, then tucked a rolled bnket under his head as a pillow. I tossed my weighted bnket over him and gave him my cat plushie; he smiled faintly, hugging it as he curled up.

  Who says neurotypical people can’t enjoy a weighted bnket and a toy to hug?

  “Do we need to set up a tent to keep Cheer and Peace safe from mosslings overnight?” I asked.

  “No,” the Zombie King said. “Not if they’re in here. Rules are, no mosslings or zombies inside shelters or settlements.”

  “Ottermarsh?” I asked pointedly. Beside me, Heket arranged a bnket into a cozy nest for Myu on one of the ptforms, and set her in it.

  He snorted. “I wasn’t going to raid the town for real. I wanted to see what you’d do when I started messing around in the park and make sure you were paying attention. I gave you what I thought was an easy way out, if you’d talk alone somewhere. I wasn’t expecting what you did do and I’ve totally given up on getting you to pay attention.” He leaned against the frame of one doorway.

  “I’m listening now.”

  “Yeah. Sort of. Not a great time for the big talk. But maybe we’ll get there after all.”

  “So, we’re out of the Highnds without ever tangling with the Moss Queen. Since I’m not going to the Axis until I know my friends have some kind of protection, I suppose the next thing we need is a post office, which this shelter doesn’t have. We need an update on the potion tests.”

  “The formu successfully made a potion for every alchemist who tried. Same potion, description matches nothing seen before. The ones with Identify abilities say it’s Purification. I told you it would.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Try to keep up, bro. Spoofed identities that all come to the same mailbox and adding myself under different identities to mailing lists that I figure I should keep an eye on. I kinda have a reason to add myself to that one. There are wardens talking about how to test it. I’d send them a zombie as a test subject, and before you throw a hissy fit, I mean someone already dead who would just get deyed a few days, but they’re all too far away and I’d have to either be there to get things started or zombie a corpse nearby and send them on a hike. So I guess it’s being tested on mosslings. It’s going to work, y’know. But I bet that’s still not enough for you.”

  “Sorry. I need to know for sure it does.”

  He heaved a sigh. “Saw that coming.”

  “You don’t seem to be bothered at all by the Purification potion,” Zanshe said.

  “It’s going to hurt her a lot more than it hurts me. I don’t really care that much. I’m probably going to look at trading a few of those crystals for a couple of potions, and I’m thinking of possible methods for ranged delivery.”

  “Its value as a weapon against her outweighs its disadvantages to your best-known skill,” I said.

  “Something like that.”

  “Did you decide yet about asking for help with whatever it is?”

  “No.” He straightened and walked out the door beside him without another word.

  “He’s been telling the truth,” Zanshe said quietly. “Not all of it, of course, and a lot of what he says I don’t understand, but as far as it goes, it’s the truth.”

  “Which is a very odd thought,” Heket said.

  “Hey, that’s neat,” Aryennos said. “There’s a bar to swing across each doorway. That will keep Peace and Cheer in with no tethers.” He circled the shelter, swinging them into pce. It was simply a wooden bar on a pivot, red with thin white stripes, and it fastened with a very simple tch, but that would indeed keep rge animals in. Horses. Or ornithians.

  Still centaur-form, I turned back to Terenei and used Diagnosis. It came up with physical fatigue and skill fatigue. “You’re fine other than being tired. So my recommendation is that everyone should spoil you for the rest of today and tonight.”

  “That sounds good,” Terenei said. “But maybe a little nap first.”

  I left Terenei asleep, Serru and Zanshe having a very serious-sounding discussion about the camping supplies, Aryennos writing furiously in the middle of one ptform, and Heket tending to Myu’s every desire, and went outside after the Zombie King. Except possibly I should just be thinking of him as Logan, because there was obviously a lot more to him than that rather dramatic title. I switched to human, just because. Anything was easier than centaur for opening the rail and getting past it and closing it again.

  A short walk away, far enough that it reminded me of two cats making it unequivocally clear that while they will tolerate each other they are absolutely categorically not together, there was now an open portable house.

  The wood was different, darker, and it was scaled up a bit to more jotun-ish proportions, but the general design was unmistakable.

  The middle gss door was open; I tapped on it, then leaned against the frame, realizing betedly that I was imitating him a short time ago.

  “I assume you don’t have any water over here.”

  “I’ll live.” He was still jotun-form, his back to me.

  From what I could see, the ground-floor rooms were entirely dominated by jotun-scale tool-strewn workbenches with stone tops and heavy wooden legs and underneath they had shelves or drawers or cabinets. More cabinets and storage were above that. A single rge table stood at the left, with clear space between it and the workbenches behind it, halfway into a side of the house and halfway in the triangle that formed when it opened; when it was closed, the rest of it must fit into the other side. If he had a kitchen, it was upstairs, although there was a toilet down here.

  “No one’s going to bite if you come over to the shelter when you need it.”

  “Got it.”

  “You built it, didn’t you?”

  He gnced back. “What?”

  “The shelter wasn’t here before. Someone built it recently. It’s made of a material not common around here, and it has features that will keep the ornithians safer. I saw your house, at least from outside. I think you could have built this while we were slogging cross-country to the bridge.”

  He turned back to his workbench and shrugged. “I had most of it done. I just hadn’t decided where to put it yet. It wasn’t a big deal to put it together.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Whatever. You won’t leave them behind, which is actually the most sense you’ve shown yet, and a safe spot to crash should get us in motion faster.”

  “I’m impressed, actually. Always have been with the pyers who can build cool structures. Anything I py with building mechanics has tended to mean mostly basic functional squares.”

  “I’m not your friend. I’m not going to be. We have a common enemy and there’s a major change happening and I’m looking out for myself. I don’t care who you fuck or how or what you’re wearing while doing it as long as I get what I need.”

  “Pansexual and, Idunno, gender-fluid’s probably closest.”

  “What?”

  “Who I fuck is determined by something other than their hardware. How is none of your business unless it’s you, and it is not going to be. Wearing something isn’t impossible, depending on the situation, but is certainly not mandatory. My gender is flexible but my job is not. And they are not my harem. I would personally be fine with tossing any of them in bed if they wanted that but I have a girlfriend already.”

  “Sorry, bro, hate to tell you this, but oh wait I already have. You don’t have a girlfriend because there is no way home. And that is more information than I really needed.”

  “Just figured that if you’re going to keep insulting me based on orientation and gender, you might as well at least know what you’re insulting. What is it that you need so badly that you’re willing to team up with the person you kidnapped, beat, and dumped in a cave?”

  “Oh, get over that.”

  “No, I don’t think I will. That much pain tends to linger. But if I thought there was a reason, I might not hold a grudge.”

  He spun around, hands gripping the edge of the workbench behind him. “The reason is that you’re stubborn and stupid and have ignored everything you’ve been told and everything around you! You’ve been here like five minutes and you’re so fucking sure you know how everything works, and you absolutely do not. You are missing some important information but right now I bet it would mostly just distract you just when you’re actually starting to act like you’re taking this seriously so I’m still going to have to wait on that little chat. I got warned to stay away from the Axis when I got here, and you had better believe there are days I wish that after the first site, I’d just taken that offer and just gone back to Brightridge and stayed there, but I was dead fucking sure that I just had to finish the game. There are, Idunno, twenty, something like that, newcomers in this world who were smart enough to listen. You listen only to the natives, and they’re basically NPCs. Not because they aren’t individuals. It’s because they can’t see it from outside on any kind of meta level. I haven’t been here for over a fucking century without figuring out that they’re people, but there are things they can’t get their heads around. You’re so sure you know absolutely what’s right and what’s wrong and what’s ethical and you stomp all over the world like some kind of saviour, and that gave... someone... a chance to use you get that potion into the world. I didn’t pn on the thing with the cave, but I was angry and frustrated and you were stupid enough to be standing there alone paying no attention like there was no risk at all and you were minutes from finding out what a moss infection feels like and I was close to there to check on you while I was coming back from trying to find corpses to zombie because that takes time and they’re my best protection from her. And that is absolutely not the first time you’ve been saved from a mossling you didn’t even know about by a zombie you didn’t see, b-ut you decided early on that I’m the same as she is and that I’m out to get you! I am still angry and frustrated because it’s like talking to a fucking wall but I’m stuck being involved, because you have stirred up more shit than you understand right now but you’re still clueless. I always sucked at escort missions and for over a month you have been absolutely the worst one ever! I have weighed every way that this mess can come out, and the best outcome for me is if you get to the Axis. But I am not happy about hanging out with you and your wannabe harem to help that happen.”

  “Well,” I said reflectively, “it’s a reason, which is what I asked for. Waking up here was a bit on the disorienting side, and I got my orientation talk from Serru, so obviously that had her perspective. When you learn early-on that the people around you have only two major dangers, it’s kind of hard to take advice from either of the people identified as dangers when it runs counter to everything else you hear. Especially when you call me nasty bigoted names, you threaten Ottermarsh, she threatens Myu, you mess with the bridges in the Shallows, she attacks the music festival, you attack me, all with no expnations other than notes that sound sort of like threats and a vague ‘don’t go to the Axis’ which frankly points to it being bad for you if I do and I can’t think why I’d care about that.”

  “Yeah, well, never was very good at talking to people I don’t have much in common with, but it has never been as much of a problem as it has with you. What she does isn’t up to me. And you could have asked why you should avoid the Axis if you’d stopped treating me like the vilin for one fucking hour. Or at least as much as I can say.”

  “Thank you for any time I missed when you protected me from her.”

  “Whatever. I don’t let her have anyone or anything if I can stop it.”

  That seemed like a good time for a change of subject. “This is pretty sweet, by the way. I bet you can make just about anything in here. Where did you have a portable house stored?”

  “I got sick of carrying around a box and hacked my backpack so it holds it without imploding spacetime or something. Just like I hacked the mail system, that’s a post office outlet in the corner. Because I have been here a while and have more than a microscopic fraction of clue.”

  “Very cool. Impressive, actually. That would simplify life a lot. I’m not doubting your skills or your experience. It’s just a bit harder to trust your intentions and honesty when you’re also insisting that you think I’m a pervert and that you’re only out for yourself, and I’m going to need to think about that. On the other hand, I’m not going to turn down useful help that keeps my friends safer. Based on the history my librarian friend was able to dig up, I have to admit that I had spped a couple of bels on you and assumed that was basically who you were. That was obviously a mistake, I think it might have been massively out-of-date information, and I’ll try to keep that in mind. I should really know better anyway.”

  “I don’t care what you think unless it makes you actually listen once in a while.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “It’s a start. There’s a vilge we can reach tomorrow. Your friends will be safe from her there. From there you could almost for sure be at the Axis in less than a day if you fly. You’d understand a lot more after that and... it’ll change some things. Then you can come back to them. It won’t stop her from having a tantrum, but then, nothing’s going to do that. Lots of Shallows isnds are empty, maybe I’ll build you a hospital on one far enough out that she can’t get mosslings there easily and your friends can stay there with you.”

  “I... once they’re in the vilge. I’ll decide then.”

  “At least you didn’t say no.” He shrugged. “Get out of my house. I have things to do.”

  “All right. Come get water any time you need it. Or anything else.” I turned away and went back to the shelter and my friends. I really didn’t need more to think about, but clearly I had it.

  Was there honestly no way to get back to my family and Grace? Were they always going to wonder what had happened to me?