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38: FORTRESS OF FURNITURE


Ten empty nactka sat in the front of a furniture tower in the middle of the twins’ bedroom. There was no sign of the twins.

Oh, dear gods, have my little sisters run away into a city filled with oni? Tinker stopped at the door, fully aware that ten sekasha had charged up the stairs with her. She put out a hand to keep the warriors from pushing into the room.

They’re just little girls! Well, little wood sprite girls with eleven baby dragons and four impossible-to-define babies.

“Louise?” Tinker called—trying not to snap. “Jillian?”

No answer.

She hoped that they were still in the room, just hiding, perhaps on the other side of the furniture. They could even be invisible. “I’m not angry.” Much. “I am…upset. You should have discussed this with me before letting them all out.”

“You were going to use them!” Louise’s little-girl voice came from somewhere inside the tower. Correction: fortress of furniture. It seemed haphazardly stacked until you realized that it created a solid barricade with little spyholes.

“Yeah!” Chuck Norris squeaked. “We can outsmart you! We have you outnumbered!”

“Chuck!” Louise yelped.

“You didn’t actually need the baby dragons!” Jillian shouted. “You can just do the spell regularly. Get everyone together. Bammo!”

“Surely we can think of some other way,” Nikola called out, the voice of reason.

“She’s going to have to,” the two other mice muttered together. “Now that we let them all out.”

This was life with herself. Karma. Tinker grumbled, remembering similar scenes from her childhood where it was Lain arguing with the child who was sure that she was right.

“I’m hoping that you’re right, but we can’t know that—not now. We don’t know where the main force of the oni are and what they plan to do and if we can get to the East Coast to where Windwolf’s brothers and sisters are unconscious. Six of his brothers and sisters are at his other holdings—all currently helpless. We might not be able to get to them. We certainly can’t get to them quickly. Even with a gossamer, they’re over a full day away. And that’s just Windwolf’s siblings. There’s Stone Clan Spell Stones to the south with who knows how many domana who are currently helpless, and while we’re trying to get to Windwolf’s holdings, we’re not going to be able to go save them!”

“We’ll find a way!” Louise called back. “With Forge, there are four of us.”

“Eight!” Chuck Norris squeaked.

No wonder many of her visits to Lain ended with Lain having a headache.

“Yes, we’ll find a way,” Tinker said. They now had no other choice.



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Framed