Dawn rose on their last day before they reached Flolon, but the clouds above them were just as dark and gloomy as those below. By time Keiz finished the morning debrief it was starting to snow, light flurries dusting the deck. Once he was done the crew dispersed, making their way below deck faster than they normally did.

  Mea shivered against the cold, keeping her hair tucked up on a fur lined cap to keep it from freezing. With everything that had happened yesterday she didn't get a chance to finish her thermoregulation training. Mittens was also tucked up in her cap, taking on the form of a fire fin fish to help her keep warm. While Mea appreciated his efforts, she had a plan that might help her learn to keep warm by herself.

  After the rest of the crew scattered to start working on their daily chores, Mea followed Keiz up to the helm. “Can I make a request?” She asked, shivering and holding her dress close to herself.

  Keizeron glanced at her, a bit of sympathy in his gaze. “That depends on what it is. If you want to ask about getting a heating enchantment, Sola already talked to me about that. We can stop further inland to look for something-”

  “No, not about that,” Mea shook her head. “I do want to stop somewhere else though, I’m just not completely sure where it is.”

  “That’s a tall order. What are you looking for?” Keizeron queried.

  “I uh, well I figured while we’re out here we might as well visit the local sister. I know she lives in a place called the Crystalline Spring, but I don't really know where it is. I'm sure someone told me at some point, but I don't remember anymore. I'm pretty sure it's in a city? Hm, no that might have the sister of Iwix actually,” She rambled, obviously chagrined by the situation. It was weird to be working on her pilgrimage after so many years, but better late than never right?

  “Ah,” Keizeron interest was piqued. “I didn’t realize you intended to visit the daughters on our trip.”

  “I’m not entirely sure I did,” Mea sighed, thinking back to when she took the job. When she received her letter of employment she mostly wondered if there would be any cute girls on the ship, and if she could afford the good drugs with the amount she was getting paid. The answer to the first one was yes, Willow was cute even if she wasn’t Mea’s type. The answer to the second was a resounding no, since the only spice Mea could afford made her sick. Such is life. “But the point of the visits is to reconnect with the plane of water and strengthen my powers. And if I’m going to be serious about this reassembling the rod nonsense I'm going to need to be stronger. Also we’re not even there yet and I am SO over this cold. Once we leave I do not want to have to come back.”

  Keizeron rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He hadn’t shaved his beard since they started sailing and it was starting to get thick. He normally would have trimmed it by now, but he decided to leave it, at least until they left Flolon. Seeing Mea shiver just standing next to him was all the indication he needed that he made the right choice.

  “I’ll ask Aka if they know where it is.” Surely such an important holy spot would be well known by aquans, and might even be a tourist spot for the other races. Keizeron had checked the map he got from Lady Adelaide to see if it had the locations of the sisters on it after Mea first told him about them. However he hadn’t been able to find them since he didn’t know their individual names and it slipped his mind to ask again. He was glad she brought it up, he was interested in learning about the process first hand.

  Keizeron just hoped that the spring wasn’t too far off their path, or if it was in a city not a very big one. He could justify adding a day or two to their trip through Flolon, but he didn’t think he could say the same if they lost a week. Satisfied they would at least try, Mea vanished below deck to warm back up.

  The snow continued to fall in lazy drifts, and Keizeron wondered how long he could stay out at the helm before his crew noticed something was wrong. Eventually Zero came up for a shift, with Sola tagging behind to keep an eye on him, and Keiz was able to head back to his quarters to warm up. Once he felt like he was an acceptable temperature again he sent a message spell to Aka, asking for them to come and talk to him. He was curious to know where the spring was, and the sooner they could plan for it the better. However he quickly realized he didn’t even need to bother with the spell, as Aka was already coming by quite frequently to check on the map.

  Sure enough, they appeared at his door faster than the time it took to get from their room to his. They stood at attention when he opened the door, still wearing the goggles they used to protect their eyes while they worked on various mechanical projects. “Yes captain?”

  While they were learning to be more laid back with their crew mates, Aka was still overly formal with their interactions with Keizeron. He was sure their parents drilled it into their head to respect authority, but they were technically pirates now. Not that he didn’t want them to respect him, but the way they revered him made him uncomfortable. “I need you to find a location on the map for me, we’re going to need to make an extra stop in Flolon and I’d like it to take as little time as possible.”

  “Oh,” Aka almost sounded disappointed. What on Entalita were they expecting? “I suppose that is my specialty. What are you looking for?”

  “We need to stop by the crystalline spring while we’re here. Mea needs to see it for her training.” He stopped when he noticed the odd expression on his navigator's face. “What’s wrong?”

  “The crystalline spring? That’s the primal source of water for the entire continent of Flolon. It’s within Eldence city limits captain.”

  Keizeron sighed. He figured it would be in some sort of touristy area, but he would have preferred it being in an isolated and hard to reach area over it being in the most populated spot in the whole country. Eldence was not far off the path they were currently on, but Keizeron had planned on giving the capital city a wide berth. He rubbed his temple in annoyance.

  “I guess it couldn’t hurt to make a quick stop. As far as I can tell the coalition hasn’t noticed we have the rod yet, so what could possibly go wrong?” ((“Caine why would you say that!?”))

  Just as the sun was starting to set Aka noticed a set of lights in the distance while they were making their rounds. They pulled out their binoculars, leaning against the railing to try to get a better view. It was hard to see through the snow flurries, but eventually they spotted a light tower nestled between some overgrown evergreen trees.

  “Land ho!” They shouted with excitement, waving across the deck to Zero who was still on helm. “I have always wanted to say that,” they muttered, almost to themselves with a small smile. When they worked on their father's ships they had mostly been below deck since they weren't supposed to interact with the crew. They felt like they had missed out on a cornerstone sailing experience.

  As they walked across the deck to rejoin Zero on the upper deck, Keiz came out of his room blinking rapidly against the sudden rush of cold air.

  “You've spotted land?” He asked, joining the two of them by the helm. Aka handed over their binoculars, a rather plain pair compared to most of Aka’s more ornate trinkets, but a sturdy pair none the less. Keiz looked through them, and had to wait for a few moments for the light tower to spin in their direction again. The beam cut through the winter storm, alerting ships to solid land. “A little behind schedule, but a welcome sight. Once we’re back over land we’ll sail for another hour or so before we settle for the night.”

  “Heard captain,” Zero saluted, his hand making a dinging noise as it collided with his head a little too fast. Keizeron handed the binoculars back to Aka, and walked the deck to make sure all the sails and equipment were ready to be over dry land again.

  ((“It’s not like we’re sailing over the ocean, I don’t think the land needs to be called dry.”

  “Hey Winter, what are clouds made of?”

  “… yeah fair enough”))

  Because of the storm they weren’t actually too far from the land when they spotted it, and in less than an hour they were sailing over the tree line and over solid ground for the first time in almost a week. Nothing too jarring changed about the way they were sailing, but it was like a weight was lifted from the crew. Willow came up above deck, looked down at the trees with a wide smile, and went back to her chambers without a word to the current watch crew. ((“uh, is Willow good?” “She is now,” Lucky smiled.))

  In his office Keizeron felt a sudden chill that had nothing to do with the weather. Duchess looked up lazily from her bed as he shivered, and the captain pulled on a black knit scarf before making his way back onto the deck. Keizeron would take the last shift before they stopped for the night, and even though it wasn't terribly late it was already pitch black out.

  Even in the awful weather Keizeron could tell he’d find Flolon beautiful. The evergreens they sailed over were dusted with powdery snow, and he could see the high mountains that covered most of the land rising in the distance. They loomed over the horizon, like dark claws reaching into the sky. Yet, Keiz felt unsettled as he walked across the deck. He couldn’t see anything in particular, but as Keizeron looked out over the frozen landscape before him he couldn’t shake the feeling something was looking back.

  ~*~

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  ((Caine and Zenith pulled up to the pizza joint and parked in a spot that had a colorful sign assigning it to ‘a very special birthday kid!’ The car shuddered as it turned off, but the occupants didn’t get out immediately.

  “I cannot believe you convinced me to have our launch party at Polly Possoms. Those animatronics they have here are so scary,” Caine stared at his partner.

  “I used to come here all the time as a kid! Besides, I only want the best for you my love,” Zenith squeezed his partners hand in return. He leaned across the console to give Caine a quick kiss. “I rented a private party room, so you won’t have to deal with any screaming children."

  “You know where else I wouldn’t have to deal with screaming children? At any other restaurant that doesn’t specifically cater to children's birthday parties.”

  “What’s done is done,” Zenith replied solemnly. “Besides, you were out voted. Lucky fuckin loves this place, and Blair thought it would be great content for their social media accounts.”

  Caine stuck out his tongue in annoyance and his partner laughed. Caine and Winter had voted to hold the party at a real restaurant, but in the end they lost the tie to Ren when he decided he wanted to go because he had never been before. Since he grew up in Japan he had never had the mascot pizza place experience. Caine didn’t think he was really missing that much, or at least, it was harder for party to enjoy the experience because they were all in their mid twenties to early thirties.

  “You all are getting eaten by a dragon next week.” Caine said as they got out of the car.

  “I love you!” Zenith replied with enthusiasm.

  At least they had decided to make it fun by dressing up for the occasion. Caine wore a black dress, while Zenith had on a nicer button up shirt and black slacks. A significant step up from his normal look of jeans and a black v neck, a shirt that he owned ten of. One would think that a decently popular streamer would have a better fashion sense, but one would be wrong.

  The two of them made their way inside, and Caine overheard a server mutter something about prom season as they went to check in. The venue smelled of spilled soda and stale popcorn, which was strange since Caine was pretty sure they didn’t even serve popcorn here. Once they confirmed the party room with a very confused host, they were ushered towards a side room away from the legions of screaming children running around the arcade and show room.

  Winter and Ren arrived shorty after them, dressed to the nines. Winter was wearing a sharp red dress, while Ren had on a nice jacket, tan dress pants and a fashionable beanie. It brought Caine satisfaction that their plan had worked so well. They thought it would be funny if they all dressed up nicely to contrast against the trash themed rodent room they had rented, and they were right.

  While they waited for the last of the party members to arrive, Ren and Zenith made a few rounds about the arcade, playing some of the rigged games and winning a surprisingly high number of tickets. Ren even managed to win a polly plush from a crane game before Lucky showed up, her older sister Kat in tow. Shorty after Blair arrived with their fiance, Matthew.

  The eight of them sat down around the provided table, with a ninth seat being occupied by an over sized possom plushie stuffed with synthetic cotton. It was a real party now. They placed their orders, a couple of pizzas for the table and some individual salads and appetizers, and a few of them donned their provided party hats.

  Caine stood up while they waited for their food to come in and cleared their throat. “Friends. Family. Lucky.”

  “Hey!”

  “I have gathered you all here today to celebrate the launch of Some Nights Society on not one, not two, but three whole podcast platforms. We’ve already gotten tens of views, which is actually really cool considering our only advertisement so far has been Blair mentioning it in a tiktok like a month ago.”

  “I also told my followers about it,” Zenith added, waving at the group like he had done them a large favor. “As recently as last week!”

  “Thank you Zee. Regardless of if we get crazy popular, or if we stay as another obscure real play podcast, I wanted to thank each of you for the fun we’ve had and the joy you’ve brought me. I couldn’t have asked for a better group of friends to be playing with.”

  They held up their glass of sweet tea. Ren had offered to smuggle in some real drinks, high school prom style, but Caine politely declined. Mostly because they didn’t drink, but it was the thought that counts. The rest of the group raised their various non alcholic beverages.

  “To Some Nights Society, and many more episodes to come.”

  The group cheered their drinks together, the plastic cups clinking like real glass before taking their sips. The group devolved into chatter as the food started to arrive, the table quickly filling with cheese and pepperoni pizzas with a few leafy salads dispersed throughout. Blair made the rounds with their camera, taking selfies with the group and recording snippets here and there. Ren was a bit camera shy, but agreed to take a few pictures with the group for posterity's sake. After all the food was eaten he escaped back into the arcade, this time with Lucky and Caine in tow.

  “So why did we call the podcast the ‘Some Nights Society’?” Ren asked as he threw basketballs at a hoop that was deceptively small. The first few bounced off the rim, but once he got the hang of it he was swishing baskets pretty consistently.

  “I guess we never talked about it on record before huh?” Lucky observed. She leaned against the machine while Ren started another round, only to recoil in disgust when she touched something sticky on the side. A piece of gum or worse, they didn’t want to look and pulled out a pocket hand sanitizer to feel clean again.

  “It’s not a crazy story or anything,” Caine shrugged. “We started playing a few years ago, back when we all went to the same college. I made some fliers advertising a dnd game that would play on ‘some nights’ depending on everyone's availability. It started with me, Blair, and Winter, and then the next year Lucky joined when she started at the school.”

  “And Megan,” Lucky added.

  “Ew, Megan,” Caine shuddered. Ren paused his throwing to stare at his friends, clearly wanting to ask for an explanation. He was stuck at a crossroads, because judging from their reactions and the fact Megan was no longer in the group it did not end well.

  After a few somewhat awkward seconds, Caine finally put his curiosity to rest. “Megan briefly dated Winter and joined the group because of it, and was absolutely insufferable the whole time. She min maxed, meta gamed, and tried to rules lawyer me, the dm, constantly. And even more unforgivably, she was an ass to Winter. We didn’t see a lot of it because we never saw her outside of dnd-”

  “And we kicked her out after three sessions.” Lucky interjected.

  “Yeah, uh, wow it was only three sessions before I had had enough of her shit huh? Anyway yeah she was real manipulative and kinda a bitch to Winter. Winter would come to a session crying over something Megan had said or did, and we’d spend the first thirty minutes of a few sessions doing group therapy and subtly suggesting to Winter that she needed to break up with her.”

  “There was nothing subtle about the time Blair told her ‘you need to break up with that bitch’ I think.”

  “I was subtle at least. Anyway, they broke up after about three months, and I made the character that Megan played into an evil npc. When we finally fought her Winter got the killing blow. It was super cathartic for all of us.”

  The game Ren was playing started blaring as he got a high score and tickets started pouring out of a slot at the bottom. Easy for a small child to reach, much harder for a tall guy and two other grown adults. Ren had to crouch a significant amount to retrieve his reward, and they moved on to a side scrolling game called Pony Princess 3, the reckoning because it looked funny. However, Caine played it for about five minutes before they realized it wasn't going to give them any tickets. They moved on to the skee ball machines nearby next. No kids were playing there at the moment, but there was something sticky on the ground in front of the first one so they had to move further along. It was probably just a spilled drink, but with kids you can never be sure.

  This time Caine and Lucky took turns rolling the balls up the track while Ren watched them play and listened to them continue their story. “Shortly after Megan left the group, good riddance, Blair watched a documentary about secret societies and got super into cults and stuff. Like, learning about them not joining them. Anyway, they decided to edit one of my original fliers to advertise us as the 'Some Nights Society' and it stuck even though we never tried to recruit at the school again. Zenith joined the group after we had been dating for a few months already, so I could vet him and make sure he was cool. After that campaign came to an end, Winter suggested the next one we do should be a podcast. So we took a few months hiatus while I came up with a skeleton for the game, and now we’re here.”

  “But why Some Nights Society? I thought the game we were playing right now was called Aria’s lament? At least that’s what the name on the online service we use is.” Ren asked. They were on their second game of skee ball now. Caine stopped playing to let Lucky shoot the whole rack, as she was consistently getting the high scoring spots and Caine wasn’t paying attention anymore.

  “Ah, well we decided to name the podcast after the group instead of the game because that gives us the room to run a second game if we want. The campaign I have set up now has potential to be pretty long, so who knows where we’ll be when it ends, but if you guys want to keep playing we have that option. Plus I liked it better.” Caine explained. He wished he had brought his sweet tea with him, but he knew how clumsy he was and didn’t want to be another person to spill their drink on an expensive game console.

  “When are we going to meet Aria anyway?” Lucky looked up sharply as Ren asked about the game.

  “That’s spoilers. You have to figure it out during a session and then I’ll tell you where she is.” Caine wiggled an accusing finger at their friends.

  Ren huffed back at them, “but Zenith knows some secrets! That’s favoritism!”

  “It is not, Zenith knows secrets because Sola has figured some things out. He rolled stupid high during that first session so he gets extra info, it’s up to him when he shares what he knows. Once Annie Mea and Willow start investigating the secrets of the Fortunes Favor and Captain Keizeron I will give you secrets, but I was under the impression you two were more concerned with looking for your sister or getting paid than learning about the lore.”

  “Look Annie doesn’t care, but I do! Besides, we'd love to investigate Lady Adelaide but we're currently in the middle of a frozen wasteland.” Ren complained.

  “The Fortunes Favor is a ship Adelaide had built for you, it contains secrets that will help you figure out what she’s about. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.” Caine divulged. He had probably said too much, but he wanted the players to at least KNOW there were more options than the ones they were exploring.

  Ren and Lucky looked at each other, not needing to say anything to begin the conspiring. Lucky grinned, “I have the feeling Willow and Mea are going to be a lot more interested in the ship from here on out.”

  “Oh, oh! If we’re investigating together what’s our team name?” Ren asked with excitement.

  “Team girls,” Caine joked, collecting the tickets from the skee ball machine before they moved on.

  “No! No, I have it,” Ren was laughing so hard from the idea he just had he could barely speak. “Team thots and prayers! Like, t-h-o-t-s.” The three of them melted into a fit of giggles, before deciding to give up on games and just rejoin the party. Some of the kids, and more importantly the parents of those kids, were giving them strange looks.

  Caine had to admit, the pizza joint had been an excellent idea for the launch party. As the night wore on the group pooled their tickets, and Ren took them to the prize booth to get a hoodie based on the fox mascot of the Polly Possom verse. Once he was back with it, he presented the gift to a surprised Caine.

  “Thank you for dming for us!” The group proclaimed, just slightly off chorus.

  Caine tugged the hoodie on over their nice dress, tears welling in their eyes. “I look like a fursona,” they sniffled. “I love it!”

  They gave each of their players a big hug as Blair grabbed the last of the pictures and video clips they needed. Zenith was telling a horrified Ran and Lucky about how twenty years ago some kids went missing in this very pizza plex and were shoved into the animatronic suits for Honey O Badger and Polly Possom when Winter leaned over and assured them it wasn’t real, just the plot to five nights at freddy’s. As the last of the pizzas were put into to go boxes the groups started saying their good byes, excited already for the next session.

  Ren and Winter left together, the Polly plushie in Winter’s arms and a smile on her face. Caine wished them the best. Lucky left with her sister shortly after them, and finally Blair and their partner left, hand in hand. Once the rest of the group was gone, Caine and Zenith made sure they didn’t leave anything behind before heading to their own car.

  “You had fun,” Zenith said in an accusatory way as they got into the car. He tugged on the hoodie Caine was wearing fondly.

  “Of course I had fun, I was with my best friends,” Caine replied, not even looking up at him as they turned on the car. They heard their partner laugh, and they finally glanced at him. Zenith was wearing an affectionate look, and they both laughed. “Fine, you win this round Polly Possom Pizza Plex, but next time we reach a mile stone I pick the party venue.”

  “We're going to have a vote like we always do, but I promise to take your side next time.” Zenith said, taking Caine’s hand and pulling it close for a kiss. “I love you.”

  “I love you too,” Caine smiled, pulling their hand back so they could drive. The pair made their way home, chatting about inconsequential things as soft lofi played on the radio. Caine snuggled into his new hoodie, feeling comforted by the plush wool and already missing his friends. ))

  End of part one; the Catalyst