They sailed in silence while Jessica recomposed herself after what she had just witnessed. Eventually she decided she needed to break out of her over-analytic brain before she went into a thought spiral.

  “I guess we’re lucky you had that weird forcefield thing, huh? How come you never mentioned you had magic?” Jessica asked Naga.

  “I did tell you. When you asssked me to help train the guards I told you they would not do well againssst my magic. Nor should thisss come as a sssurprise. I am a monssster after all.”

  Jessica rubbed her temples. “Christ. No short form content and I still can’t focus. Incredible. Do you have any magic I should know about, Riza?”

  Naga smirked and Riza shot her a filthy look.

  “Shut up, fat noodle,” Riza said.

  “I did not sssay anything,” Naga replied, circling the mast like a merry-go-round.

  “You spoke with your eyes.”

  “Perhapsss you do have magic. I can project magical shields and you can project insssecurities.”

  Jessica cleared her throat.

  “You two managed to work together to get here, which, as your… uh… friend and roommate, I am very proud of. What say we keep up that sense of camaraderie?”

  “If she would mind her forked tongue,” Riza said.

  “It is forked. Ssso what?” Naga said, sticking out her ribbon-like tongue.

  “O… kay. I’m missing something here. Would either of you care to explain?” Jessica asked.

  This prompted another non-verbal sparring match that Jessica was hopeless to figure out. Social cues were not her forte let alone when they came from fantasy creatures.

  “Animalar…” Riza said, “cannot use magic. Some races can. Elves. Dwarves. Gnomes. Merfolk. And so on. Even some non-adventurer humans are capable of magic spells such as wizards and witches. The only race which cannot use any magic at all are the animalar.”

  “Why’s that?”

  It was only after Jessica asked this that she picked up on the bitterness in Riza’s voice.

  “That would be courtesssy of the Demon King,” Naga said, coming to a halt in her procession around the mast. “The animalar refused to ssside with him ssso he cursssed them to sssever their connection with magic.”

  Jessica held up a hand. “Wait, hold on… You’re telling me most races on Tushita can access the Tapestry, and that the Demon King could cut people off from it?”

  Riza hummed and tapped her foot. “My tribe calls it the spirit realm, not the Tapestry, but I believe they refer to the same place. As for the Demon King, he came from the spirit realm at the same time as adventurers appeared, so we believe he was also a being of it. Though he did not come from Earth.”

  Jessica glanced at Naga to see if she would rebuke any of this but the lamia, if she was even paying attention, didn’t seem to care. She was busy looking wistfully toward the south.

  “Why not take everyone’s magic then? Why stop at just the animalar? It seems like everyone but monsters hated the guy,” Jessica said.

  Naga spoke without changing her gaze. “My den passssed down ssstories of the Demon King. We were part of his forces ssseveral generations ago, you know. The Demon King believed ssstrongly in maintaining the equilibrium of the Tapessstry, so he could not overpower the adventurers thissss way. Perhapsss the Tapessstry itssself would have refused him.”

  Jessica was surprised to learn Morkal’s obsession with equilibriums had come to her by way of the Demon King. There was something about her zealousness that felt deeply personal. Apparently, it had been the Demon King’s official ideology.

  “But he still had Morkal develop a potion to sever adventurers’ connection to the Tapestry. It sounds like he didn’t even need it,” Jessica said.

  “As my den would have it, he only sssought sssuch a method when it became apparent Magnusss was playing to win and thusss ssspoil the game.”

  “I would not trust everything your tribe has to say,” Riza said.

  “Nor would I trussst your tribe. I can only tell Jessssica what I have heard.”

  For a moment Jessica worried this might spiral into another spat, but Riza, after a moment of thinking, simply nodded.

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  “You are probably correct. If you want a more complete picture, Jessica, you will have to ask this Morkal. It sounds like she would know more.”

  Jessica tried to remember when she had mentioned Morkal to Riza that the lizard girl would know Morkal was a ‘she’. Though ‘they’ was just as applicable.

  “I guess I didn’t ask her as much as I could have when I was in Barleyfield,” Jessica said. “Unfortunately, I doubt I have the time to go down there and ask now. It’s a lot of PTO to ask for.”

  And, more importantly, Mystiferia would send someone to tail her. That was the more pressing concern.

  “If there is anything elssse you would like to know about thisss world, I would be happy to tell you,” Naga said.

  “And I would be happy to correct her inaccuracies,” Riza said.

  Jessica’s brain dredged up the memory of her high school friends, Kyle and Aaron. The two of them joined the friend group around the same time because the guys all played an online game together and they were brought in by association.

  Apparently, the two used to constantly snip at each other, in game and in real life. It was to the point that the other guys would rag on them for how annoying it was. Despite this, they ended up becoming best friends. Aaron, the smarter of the two, even turned down an offer from Stanford so he could go to the same state school as Kyle.

  What prompted this memory was the awkward transition period where they were still arguing but almost as a performance. Because they were expected to. There was a friendship already there that had found its roots in the subtext of increasingly fake arguments. This was the same feeling she got from Riza and Naga’s recent interactions.

  “What would harem-bait know about the ssstate of the world, hmm?” Naga said.

  “Who are you calling harem-bait, experience point meat!”

  That was how Jessica was choosing to see it, anyway.

  With the arguments no longer needing her intercession and her body being so terribly exhausted after yet another traumatic kidnapping, Jessica let the rolling waves drag her off to naptime.

  She awoke alone on the sailboat anchored in the harbor below Elsifeya Castle. The water was pinkish gold where a sunset shone through the arch of a tower bridge. Waves lapped gently against the boat. She didn’t want to get up. Getting up meant breaking the spell that made the world seem so peaceful and unburdened. Here, at last, was a slice of the escapism she’d been denied since reincarnating.

  “The world looks prettier after a battle.”

  Jessica turned her head and found Riza perched on the edge of the dock beside the boat with her hands between her knees and her lizard tail stretched long behind her. Her eyes had a sharp, reptilian focus.

  “I think I could give up pretty sunsets in exchange for not being in constant danger,” Jessica replied.

  “There were some among my tribe who made the opposite trade.”

  “I’ve still got a world to get back to though. I’m not ready to lay my entire life on the line for this one. Where did you stand on the matter?”

  Riza gave a vague smile. “This is the only world I have. And I have work to do in it which cannot be interrupted. Plus, I may some day need to breed in order to repopulate my tribe’s numbers and to pass down the stories to my hatchlings.”

  Jessica coughed and sputtered. The word ‘breed’ caught her off-guard.

  “Do not worry. I am not thinking of running away from my bonds of debt to make a nest. This would be years from now. When the world has been won,” Riza said.

  “Right. No, that’s totally understandable. We’re just a little more… euphemistic about that subject on Earth.”

  Riza giggled. “I have heard this about adventurers. For as often as they seek out harems, they are remarkably uninterested in mating with them. How do you create offspring if not by mating?”

  Jessica shrugged helplessly. There was no way to explain any of this to Riza without going into a long explanation of economics and demographics and various social sciences which she was absolutely not equipped to speak on without sounding like an idiot. And even then, the social sciences didn’t provide concrete answers the way the physical sciences did.

  “Life finds a way, I guess.”

  Riza hummed in thought as though this were something to be deeply considered rather than a half-assed movie quote. Contemporary English might transfer over to Tushita but cultural context did not.

  “By this you mean the world is in a constant state of evolution of which procreation is merely a single part?” Riza asked.

  “Yeah, totally.”

  “In which case, you’re suggesting that adventurers contribute to this evolution by means other than procreation and that it is precisely because you exist outside the mundane compulsions of breeding that you can untether yourself from the equilibriums which the Demon King and his servants are so fascinated by?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  As much as Jessica wanted to deny being ‘untethered from the mundane compulsions of breeding,’ this was unfortunately a fitting description for being in a chemistry PhD program. That was her excuse anyway. She couldn’t speak for the other adventurers.

  Riza stroked her chin. “I see… No wonder adventurers have such mastery over this world and the Tapestry. I am loathe to agree with that scale-laden turd, but there may be something to the idea that reincarnated humans were meant to be our masters, as you are mine.”

  Jessica coughed involuntarily again. It was her own rotten, degenerate brain at fault, but she really needed Riza to stop accidentally using phrases like that.

  “Just so we’re clear, I consider your debt more than paid off. All I did was buy you a meal from Sheetz— I mean Traehagen General Store. Meanwhile you saved me from becoming a quadruple amputee. If that doesn’t square us up, I don’t know what would.”

  “But you also saved me from slavery,” Riza said.

  “Yeah, well, I still consider your debt paid. You can leave any time. And actually, you’re probably better off leaving if you’re worried about repopulating your tribe. If you stay with me you’re risking being killed by adventurers or Mystiferia doing… something worse probably. I consider you a friend, Riza. Not a retainer, not a servant, not a harem member, but a friend. And I don’t want my friends to die.”

  Riza narrowed her eyes. “Is the snake staying?”

  “Yes?”

  “I cannot leave you alone in the clutches of a man-eating monster.”

  “I’m a woman though.”

  “I do not even want to know what she does with women. It would be best if I stayed.”

  Jessica pushed herself upright and took a full body stretch until she felt she might pop apart. Tension lingered in her inner muscles where a stretch couldn’t get. Naga was no doubt babysitting, but as soon as she was done, Jessica felt a coiling session was in order.

  ?? Even gods need to be held sometimes

  What to Expect:

  - An epic, multi-book space opera with a large found family and multiple POVs.

  - A powerful but emotionally vulnerable protagonist with chaotic powers he struggles to control.

  - Strong, capable, and sometimes morally gray women.

  - High stakes, cosmic threats, and detailed world-building.

  What NOT to Expect:

  - LitRPG/System elements

  - Lone wolf power fantasy

  - A story that is only about romance

  This story contains mature themes, explicit sexual content, and graphic violence. It is not suitable for readers under the age of 18.

  90+ Chapters in the first month

  500,000+ words already written and backlogged