The True Endgame

“So, Red told me that your dog here can find the right trees?” Tabitha asks.

“Kind of. She doesn’t get it right every time, but she does a pretty good job,” Fenrir explains.

Tabitha looks down at Rock and taps her foot as she thinks. “Why?”

“What do you mean why?”

“Why – how, whatever, how can she tell?”

“Maybe she’s just naturally attracted to really hard things?”

Oleander snerks which causes Corwin to join in him corrupting Fenrir’s words.

“I should have expected that. But really, maybe she’s attracted to things with the same density and hardness as rocks?” Fenrir proposes, trying his best to phrase it in a way that can’t possibly be corrupted by Oleander.

It doesn’t work. Oleander still ends up covering his mouth to laugh.

“Eh, whatever. Not like it matters as long as she can find what we’re looking for. You got that, Rock?” Tabitha tells Rock. “Now, go find us some steel oaks!”

Rock barks, runs off to the forest, and chomps onto the first tree that she sees!

Going by how much bark she peels off with her fangs, it’s not the tree that they’re looking for, and doubt in her grows.

“Ya sure she can do it? I’m about to just start choppin’ away,” Tabitha says.

“Hang on,” Fenrir says. “Rock, think you can try to lead us where we were yesterday? Remember where those really tasty,” at least, he’s asumming they were tasty to her, “trees were?”

Rock wags her tail and tilts her head. Then she tilts it the other way. Then she tilts it back in the direction that her head was previously tilted.

Then she barks and runs off deeper into the forest.

Everybody takes off after her to try and keep up, but only Fenrir and Shogun are able to keep up with her easily. Fenrir has to hang in the back a bit to ensure that the rest of them don’t get lost.

Unfortunately, Rock leads them to a clearing in the forest that looks nothing like where they were yesterday. Fortunately, Shogun lifts a paw and points his snout to the left. Rock runs in the direction that Shogun pointed at.

With Shogun’s assistance, Rock leads the group to where they were yesterday and Shogun rewards her with a few kisses, letting her take all of the credit.

“Ya could learn or two from him, dog boy,” Tabitha tells Fenrir.

“What was that? You’re just so short that I have trouble hearing you from up here,” Fenrir replies.

“That wasn’t even a good comeback. Besides, I like being short.”

Fenrir looks down at her and tries to think of a comeback but fails. Tabitha, seeing the failure expressed on his face, smiles and gives him a slap on his back. “Come on, we’ve got work to do. These the trees?”

“Yeah. Rock, can you find more trees like those ones?” Fenrir asks, pointing at a few of the trees that she tried biting chunks out of yesterday.

Rock barks, runs to one of the trees, and bites it! Just like yesterday, it sounds like rock banging against metal as her teeth struggle to pierce the hard-as-metal wood. Of course, that doesn’t stop her from hanging onto it and shaking her head around to try and break the wood free from its source.

“I’ll be darned, she actually can find ‘em,” Tabitha says.

“Darned?” Fenrir asks.

“Ya got a problem with that, ya darn dog boy?”

Fenrir tries to think of a comeback again, but Tabitha sees him failing at it, smacks him on the back, and says, “Let’s get to work!”

And so, they work.

They only need a single tree for this expedition to be worth it. One tree will provide all that Tabitha needs to make them some improved tools.

But, cutting even a single steel oak down with regular axes is difficult.

Fenrir’s axe manages to cut a few inches into the tree before the blade cracks and shatters into pieces. Cassiel’s axe is next. Hers makes it farther than Fenrir’s did since he already got past the bark, but it breaks before even making it halfway through the tree trunk. Meanwhile, Corwin and Oleander are going around, tree to tree, with Rock to mark all of the steel oaks that they find. They may only be able to cut down a single steel oak for now, but they can at least go ahead and mark more of them for ease of finding in the future.

“Let me show ya how it’s done,” Tabitha says, stepping up to the tree that Fenrir and Cassiel have been working at.

“I don’t see how we’re going to chop it down without ten more axes,” Fenrir says.

“Yeah, I don’t – what are you doing?” Cassiel asks as Tabitha gently places her axe’s blade into the cut.

Letting go of her axe now that it’s secure in the tree, Tabitha takes her hammer off of her back, extends it to its full size, and holds it like she’s about to swing a baseball bat. “This,” she says, swinging the hammer into the back of the axe’s head!

The axe shatters from the blow of Tabitha’s hammer, but not before cutting clean through the rest of the tree.

“Ya might want to – back!” Tabitha shouts as the tree falls.

Fenrir grabs Tabitha by the back of her shirt and Cassiel by her hips, jumping out of the way with both of them in tow as the tree falls onto where they were just standing.

With Cassiel to his side, looking cuddled up next to him, Tabitha is lying down on his chest and glaring at him.

“Oi, dog boy,” Tabitha says.

“Y-yeah?” Fenrir asks, unsure why she looks so pissed off.

“What’s with this cheesy cliché?”

“It’s – it’s not like I wanted you to land on me this way. I was just trying to get you out of the way.”

“Ya sure about that, or do I need to hit ya with my hammer? Maybe there’s a few screws loose in your head there makin’ ya think that you can just pull underage-lookin’ girls onto you.”

“You can get off of me at any time now, you know.”

“I know, but I’m tryin’ to decide if I need to smack you or not.”

“I vote for not.”

Tabitha narrows her eyes and furrows her brows, but then laughs and gives his chest a few, hearty smacks. “Thanks for the save, wolf boy.”

“No problem, shortie.”

Tabitha gets up off of him which allows Fenrir to turn his attention to Cassiel. He looked over and saw that she was fine, but doesn’t know why she’s been so quiet. “You alright?” he asks her, keeping his voice low since her head is right next to his.

“Ye-yeah, thanks,” Cassiel answers.

“You sure?”

She nods her head against and says, “Just… that – that was…. it was, you know, nice.”

“You mean you think your totally awesome boyfriend is hot for saving you from a falling tree?”

“I did until you ruined it.”

“Am I at least a little bit awesome?”

Cassiel sighs and kisses his cheek. “That’s all.”

“Good enough.”

“Hey! Everybody alright?” Oleander shouts, running over with his boyfriend and the group’s canines.

“Yeah, we’re fine,” Fenrir says as he helps Cassiel get up.

“Oi, I just thought of a problem,” Tabitha says. “How the heck are we supposed to take this thing back?”

“You’re only just now thinking of that?”

“Don’t worry about when I thought of it. All that matters is that I did think of it.”

Fenrir notices Cassiel still standing close to him and slightly blushing even if he did supposedly ruin the mood, so he wraps one hand around her to rest on her waist so that he can pull her close against his side.

Naturally, this causes her to blush brighter than before and part her lips as if she wants to ask him what he’s doing, but she gives in to the romantic gesture and leans against his side. Plus, she really, really likes this.

Tabitha looks behind her, sees the lovey-dovey couple standing together, and sighs. “It’s tough bein’ the only single gal around,” she says.

“You’ve got Aza…. wait, where is she?” Fenrir asks.

“Huh. No idea. Fox, ya bring her over?” Tabitha asks Shogun.

Shogun looks up at her, tilts his head, and then shakes it.

Meanwhile, back on The Shoebill, Azalabulia is standing around moping. “They – they forgot about me!” she whines to herself. Looking overboard, she contemplates jumping into the water and swimming like Fenrir did, but she knows she could never bring herself to do that. “I – I wish I knew how to swim.” While she may not be able to go and join the others in the forest, at least she has her little tentacle companion to play with that she got from the dungeon.

That is, until it slips out from her hands and falls into the water.

Azalabulia stares down at the water with a shocked expression.

Then she somehow slips and falls over the railing.