Chapter 58: Mistflower 4: Northeastern Burrow

A familiar face woke me up the next morning. It was Wren but not quite Wren.

“Ugh, so early, you’re Mishelly I assume?”

“Yup! That’s me! Whoa your chest is huge!”

I looked down and at Mishelly. “Uhh, yeah I know. Your mother and I are friends.”

“Oh...my mother never talks about stuff that matters, burrow this, burrow that, fix this, fix that, she even tried to fix me, that’s why I ran away!”

Mishelly was giving off a lot of energy and I could understand why Wren never told me about her. I would never believe her if she said she had a strange energetic daughter like this...

Mishelly pulled me out of my bed and orbited around me while I dressed and fixed my hair. The childlike curiosity was refreshing but it would probably tire me at the end of the day.

“Who else will be joining us?”

“Oh, it’s me, you and a guy named Sym, do you know him?” Mishelly said as she touched a bottle of my mistflower perfume and almost dropped it.

Wasn’t that the name of the rabbit we carried into the Carrot room yesterday? And just 3 of us? This will work out right?

“Are you done yet?”

The blonde woman was hopping all over the place like a hyperactive kid.

“No almost. Haste makes waste.”

I failed another braid and tried again.

“Ah right! My mother told me that you’re slow and that I should kidnap you after you fail your 4th braid. Let’s go!”

I got grabbed by my waist, lifted and carried out. “Huh? Wait! I didn’t finish my braid! And after I failed my 4th braid? How rude?! How would she know that I would fail my braids?!”

Mishelly ran to the 5th floor and kicked in a door. “Sym! Wake up! Adventure time!”

She jumped on a sleeping rabbit, instantly waking him up.

“Oof! I think I lost a life there! Who are you?!”

“I’m Mishelly! Come, come!”

The blonde menace grabbed Sym, who was still in his pyjamas and dragged him out of the room.

“Wait! I’m in my pyjamas!”

Sym and I got carried and dragged out of the burrow to deep into the jungle before we got let go. Her energy wasn’t just for show. Her speed made me dizzy and I couldn’t follow where she was going.

There we were, a braidless witch, a blond energetic woman and a tired looking man in pyjamas.

“Ugh, I feel sick...” Sym leaned into a large tree trunk and slumped down.

“Stop being a wimp! What rabbit gets sick from a short hop like that?!”

“That doesn’t matter...I went to the Carrot room yesterday...”

Sym’s face started turning orange and he seemed unwell. Mishelly lost all her energy and showed terror and concern. “Oh! Sorry I didn’t know. Here have this to cheer up!”

Mishelly handed Sym a carrot who jumped away and freaked out.

Their interaction was comical but...is this my team? If I didn’t know better, they could pass for siblings.

Mishelly tried to feed Sym a carrot to cheer him up while Sym was greatly resisting being force-fed another carrot.

Wren warned me but I never realized the severity of the ‘strange’ behavior.

Sounds of giggling and whispering passed by over us.

Most of the fairies had learned to fly over the jungle as flying through the jungle would give the rabbits an extreme advantage. It didn’t make the jungle completely safe but it gave us a stealth factor.

A stealth factor that Mishelly and Sym were relinquishing by being noisy...

“Hey, guys stop it! We might attract the fairies!”

Gurgling sounds intensified and a swarm of horned flying fish fairies burst through nearby trees. Their long horns had dead fish eyes which felt like they stared into your soul.

The rabbits paused their fight for a moment to pay attention to the noisy swarm, curled their ears and continued fighting each other.

“Hey! Snap out of it! We need to run!” I pulled them off each other and dragged them behind a tree.

The tree acted as a cover and I waved my fan at them.

“Ugh, we had to get the horned flying fish, water magic doesn’t work well on them...”

All fairies were resistant to spatiotemporal magic and fire magic, my only option is wind magic but it’s not something I use often enough to be confident in. I should have paid more attention to Remi’s lectures about wind magic when I was still a student...

“It’s no use Azu, let’s run. Sym you know where the burrow is right?”

Mishelly’s personality had made a full 180. These rabbits seem to be able to change their aura to match the situation but more importantly to communicate. The energetic mishelly had disappeared and she felt more like her mother.

“I will hold them uff with nature energy, Azu make sure Sym doesn’t do anything reckless, i will be back in a bit.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

A mana wave rippled out, 4 long fluffy tails sprouted from her tailbone and air pockets formed. The wind picked up and light-yellow petals swirled around her.

Plants would normally grow when the rabbits went into ‘Rabbit Mode’ but the jungle must have an influence on that. The petals started shredding fairies and she started to shoot her [Flower Cannon].

“Come on Sym, stop staring. Where is the burrow?”

I pulled Sym along with me.

“Err, right. This way! Hop on my back!”

“I can run!”

“We know...no offence but you’re slow...”

I climbed on his back mildly offended. I know he means well but its not my fault that I’m slow.

The gurgling and giggling sounds became more bearable as more distance dot put in between us. My hairpin had returned to it’s hat shape as a thick low hanging branch approached my head.

“Sym! Not so high! I don’t want to be decapitated by a tree!”

An impact hit my head and I almost fell off his back.

“Woops, sorry. I got a bit reckless.”

My hat protected my skull from cracking open but it still hurt. Wren might have made a mistake assigning Sym as he was the most reckless rabbit of the burrow.

The world started spinning as we were tumbling down a mountainside.

“I’m sorry! I misjudged that jump and a root caught my foot!”

How long will I have to put up with this... I’m more likely to get killed by Sym than by fairies at this point...

We tumbled and tumbled and tumbled. It wasn’t new to me as I have been through this multiple times while fighting the large beasts but it doesn’t make it more enjoyable...

I waved my fan to cancel the momentum of my tumble, turned my fan into a large hat and caught Sym in the hat.

I wonder if sleight-of-hand magicians had come up with the rabbit-out-of-the-hat trick like this. However, his rabbit ears were the only things that suggested he was a rabbit beast kin and not just a reckless human...

“Oh, thank you Azu!” Sym climbed out of my hat and dusted himself off. Twigs stuck out of his small blonde afro. It was comical but the situation was less so.

“Oh, look we made it!” Sym pointed at a pile of plant detritus.

“it’s a compost pile...wait what is that doing here?”

Sym stomped and the nature energy wave moved it aside and revealed a hole in the ground.

“Huh? How? We were supposed to reach it at the end of the day. We...”

The long downhill tumble wormed its way back into my memory. The slope was dangerous so most of our travel would be taken up by carefully descending as going too fast would cause injuries.

Reckless but lucky...it must be the reason he hasn’t lost all his lives yet and the reason Wren sent him with us. The problem is that Mishelly would have to catch up...

The sound of yelling and cheering came closer. An enormous horned flying fish fairy fell down while thrashing around. A blonde rabbit was riding its back and using reins of nature energy to steer it as if it were a horse...

Wren said that she was strange, not crazy...

“Oh, there you guys are! Move out of the way! I don’t know how to land a fairy!”

Mishelly was on a collision course with us and i wanted to have none of that and dove aside.

“Oh, Mishelly you’re back we foun...”

The large ugly fairy crashed on Sym before he could finish his sentence.

That must have hurt...did it kill him? Losing a life to that sure must suck right?

“Ahh that was fun! Where is Sym?” Mishelly sent a nature laser through the fairy’s head after hopping off and looking around.

I pointed at the deceased fairy.

“What?! Did he turn into that thing? I’m sorry Sym!”

She tried to heal the dead fairy with nature magic and continued apologizing.

“No Mishelly, not the fairy... you crushed Sym, he’s under the fairy...”

“Oh...”

Mishelly took a moment before she started to kick the fairy's corpse. “Get off him stupid fish! You know that we’re vegetarian!”

I don’t see how that’s related. I thought that I was eccentric but these 2 proved that I was quite normal. I waved my fan several times and managed to blow the fairy off Sym.

Sym had lost consciousness, understandably so so Mishelly and I dragged him into the backup burrow. It felt like a deja vu as I had dragged Sym into a burrow like this the day before.

“Do you think he lost a life from that stunt?”

Mishelly unfurled her ears and inspected Sym. “Hmm, he seems to have 3 lives less than when we set out. This guy sure is reckless!”

There was so much to say but I just continued dragging Sym into the dark underground space.

The air wasn’t as good as in the other burrow. It also didn’t smell like fresh soil but like decaying plant matter.

“Hey Mishelly, just a question. Nothing lives in here, right?

“Hmm? Why wouldn’t it? We often have to chase animals or monsters away when we relocate burrows.”

That was not the answer I wanted to hear...

I made a small flame to increase the visibility but Mishelly put her hand over it and choked the flame. “That might be a bad idea. I smell gas. Whatever lives here has been for a while and has been farting a lot.”

Not sure if this was a joke or serious but something seemed to be living down here indeed. How am I supposed to fight in the darkness? My ears aren’t as good as the rabbits. I can’t fight in the dark.

“What about the Carrot room? What if it ate all the carrots?”

“The Carrot room is sealed properly. The carrots should be safe. Let’s wake Sym. We might need him as fighting in the dark is a bit hard.”

I heard slaps and groaning. “Ugh...morning already? Give me 3 more hours...”

My vision was impaired but it was easy to figure out what was happening...

More sounds of smacks and slaps. “Wake up Sym!”

The arm I was holding moved so I let go.

“Oof!! I think I bumped my head into a rock! Why is it so dark here?!”

Sym groaned and the sound was followed by a thud and an ‘Ouch’.

“Relying on Sym in the darkness might have been a tall order, I’m sorry Mishelly but it seems it’s just you.”

“Hmm, do you know any light elemental skills?”

“Oh, I know [Lightball]! It travels slowly though. Nothing will get hit by it.”

“That’s fine! As long as you can use it to light up the burrow so we all can see.”

A hand grabbed me and led me through the dark burrow. I couldn’t see anything. The only sound I heard was something getting dragged along and periodic ‘Ow’ and ‘Ouch’.

“Ohh, this thing sounds fierce, do you hear that?”

“The only thing I hear is Sym groaning...”

We came to a halt as the smell got increasingly more unpleasant and pungent. I was grateful for not having a great nose as my human-like nose was stinging from the stench. Breathing seemed like torture.

“My nose... are we fighting a skunk?” I covered my head in an [Airball] which helped but not by a lot.

“Close but not quite, we don’t know exactly what this thing is but we call it a gas badger. At least it smells like one. First those fairies attacking our ears and now a gas badger attacking our nose.”

“You could say that the fairies are also attacking our eyes by being hideous!” I knew it wasn’t the same as ugliness won’t hurt your eyes but noise and stench could hurt your ears and nose.

Retching sounds came from near the ground.

“Sym, get a grip! Make an [Airball] around your head like Azu did.”

“Hey Mishelly, do we even want to see what this thing looks like? Its smell alone intimidated me. How about we just sneak past it, get the carrots and leave? How are we going to move all those carrots anyways?”

“We move the room. It can move up and down floors!”

“Like an elevator?”

“A what?”

“Right, they don’t have elevators on Nesher, never mind. So, the Carrot room is a large elevator, that still doesn’t explain how we move it to our burrow.

“We sent nature flares and build a nature transfer bridge!”

“Uhhm, and now so that non-rabbits can understand?”

“Hmm... so I send the ‘sender’ flare and a rabbit at our burrow will send a ‘receiver’ flare. I then send a flare indicating the size and the receiver will send an ‘ok’ flare or a ‘please wait’ flare. We then make a bridge of nature energy which will connect the points and the carrot room with or without us will be sent to the receiver through the nature energy stream!”

“So, it’s a bridge teleport...”

“A what?”

“Never mind. I forgot that magic isn’t as advanced here as on Kaledon, it’s an outdated form of teleport, we use mana pings nowadays to teleport unless it’s a spatiotemporal teleport. I don’t know how nature energy works so I can’t help you improve it. How are we ensuring that no fairy knocks it out of the bridge while the Carrot room gets transported?”

“Well, that’s what we are for! We ride the Carrot room and shoot down every fairy that wants to steal our disgusting carrots!”

“It feels like I’ve gone back in time but this could be an interesting experience. My interest is piqued, let's deal with this gas badger first.”

Intrigued by their antique teleport methods, I pulled my hairpin out of my hair and unfolded my fan. The sooner this gas badger dies, the better.