Four
By this point, the Abcurses had collapsed on the floor. Coen and Rome were the only ones who hadn’t fallen into a mess of laughter while they watched a hysterical Terrance try to avoid the two mudhogs chasing after his little body.
“I can’t tell if they want to fight him or mate with him,” Siret confessed between bouts of laughter. “Usually it’s the males that mate with the females … but Donald might have just stolen the two randiest mudhogs on Minatsol.”
I gasped. “Is that why…? Are they chasing him…? Oh my gods.”
I turned wide eyes on Donald, who seemed almost as stunned as me, standing by a chair with two leads still dangling from her hands.
“Donald!” I called out. “Can you please grab the two mudhogs and take them back to their home?”
She recovered in an instant. “Of course, Sacred Naked Willa.”
Siret’s laughter increased.
“You five should be helping too!” I snapped, unable to believe I’d just turned an Original God into a screechy mudhog. I shouldn’t have snapped at them for my own mistake, but I was possibly losing it as much as Terrance.
“Do you even know which one is Terrance now?” Coen asked, his expression hard to read, though his eyes were definitely laughing. “What if Donald takes him back to the dweller farm? It’s not that easy to tell the males until they’re excited.”
I was dead.Terrance was definitely going to figure out a way to kill me. I’d taken away one of our allies before we’d even begun. I hadn’t even made it to the damn party.
Hands wrapped across my arms, distracting me from the morose thoughts, and I jerked my head back to find Yael and Aros both gripping me, a hand on each arm.
“All is not lost,” Yael told me, his expression and voice heavy. “Turn Terrance back into himself, and … you might be surprised by his reaction.”
I swallowed roughly. “Maybe I shouldn’t turn him back. He’s … so cute as a mudhog.” And way less dangerous.
There was a scuffle on the floor then. Donald had dived across a small side table and two puffy cushion chairs and was now wrestling with three mudhogs. Apparently they hadn’t appreciated her interfering, and were now kicking her with their strong little hind legs.
Naughty little creatures. Muddy hogs. Naughty muddy hogs.
Donald’s thoughts were rapid and tinged with annoyance. Her emotions were more volatile than they appeared to be from her outward appearance. It might have been wishful thinking, but I almost believed that deep inside, where only I could feel her, she was breaking free from whatever Staviti had done to her.
“Willa …” Aros drew my attention back to them. “Yael is right, you need to turn him back.”
With a sigh, I pressed myself closer to both of them, absorbing some of their calm strength. They never panicked about things, and I had to remember that they were on my side. Terrance would be pissed, I had no doubt about that, but the Abcurses wouldn’t let him kill me.
“If he tries, just turn him back into a mudhog,” Rome drawled, looking amused from his perch against a nearby wall.
He must have moved there to get a better view of the commotion. Either that, or he had been afraid that I would ask him to wrestle the mudhogs apart. His tone suggested that while he was amused, he would also crush the Bestiary God if he tried to touch me. Happiness clutched at the emotions in my chest, breaking through some of the panic. I wasn’t alone, and that meant we could deal with anything that was thrown at us.
I focussed on the screeching mudhogs, all of whom now appeared to be best friends. They’d finished kicking Donald—who was crawling across the floor after them, her eyes narrowed—and were now hightailing it toward the front door. Terrance—I assumed—was now leading the group instead of running from it.
What in the worlds …
Turn into a god. Turn into a god. Turn into a god.
The heat rose up in me with force, and I squeezed my eyes shut for an instant. Not because it was painful, but the sensation was mildly unpleasant. Foreign. I wondered if I would ever get used to having this sort of energy swirling inside of me, or the way it could rise and fall in such huge waves of power.
Had it always been there? Hidden away underneath my dweller mortality? Shouldn’t it have felt more … normal then?
“Uh, Will …”
Siret trailed off and my eyes jerked open. I recognised that tone of his and it usually meant I’d done something that completely shocked them. It took me more than a moment to focus on the new scene I’d created. Then the tangle of naked limbs started to move and three figures rose to their feet.
Without thought, I reached out and covered Yael’s and Aros’s eyes.
Three naked, beautiful, perfect specimens now stood in the centre of the room. One was recognisable as Terrance, only … I was seeing a lot more of him than I had before. The other two were female. Long waves of silky dark hair trailed across their breasts. They looked confused, their heads darting around, until they settled their gazes on Terrance. The moment they saw him, a calmness descended over the panic.
