After some hours bumbling through in the dark and huddling around An so nobody tripped or banged their heads, it felt like we’d descended quite a long ways. We emerged from the tunnels beneath the cliff with a slight problem. I knew this because Trent announced it.

  “We have a slight problem,” he said.

  “What’s that?” Isabelle asked.

  “We are very close to the outside of the cliff face, which is good, because we can get out of here.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a problem,” Isabelle said.

  “Close to the outside is good,” Ivy said, quite unnecessarily.

  “I’d like to be outside again,” Cinzy said. “Feel like I’m breathing recycled air.”

  “I-I-I’m running out of m-m-mana for l-l-l-light s-s-s… s-s… s-spells,” An said, and got a reassuring pat on the shoulder from almost everybody.

  “Has anyone seen Drat?” Ivy asked.

  No one had. However, we were all focused on Trent.

  “The elevation is the problem. We’re too low. If I open up the tunnel we might all get a bit soggy. Or… maybe, uh… drown.”

  “Drowning is bad,” Isabelle added, then ducked when Ivy clipped her on the back of the head. “Hey!”

  “Yes, Isabelle, drowning is bad,” Ivy said with a roll of the eyes.

  He opened up a tiny hole at waist level, and water started spraying into the tunnel, so he quickly sealed it back up.

  “I didn’t think I’d have to reiterate this, but drowning is bad,” Ivy said. Isabelle cuffed her upside the back of her head, and both of them had a ugh.

  “I have to agree,” Drat said from beside me, making me jump. “Is there any way we can go up another level and break out of here?”

  Trent looked at me desperately. “It would take another couple of hours for me to tunnel that far. Here we’re just a couple of inches of rock away, and it’s structurally sound.”

  “Let’s try squeezing through a smaller hole up a few feet,” I suggested.

  “The marsh is right outside, and we don’t have a raft. I guess if we all crawl out a smaller opening… I can engineer a ptform.”

  “We are taking this easy,” I said, “and not taxing your powers to the limits, right?”

  He nodded, frowning. I could see he wanted to do the impossible, but the word existed for a reason. He couldn’t please everyone.

  “I c-can g-g-give us w-w-w-w…” An started, but faltered when everyone looked at him. The shyness overcame his ability to speak.

  “Go on, buddy,” Cinzy told him in a soothing tone, and gave him a pat on the back. I felt a hint of mana flowing out of her, and An sucked in a deep breath before continuing.

  “I have a w-w-water… breathing. A s-s-spell.”

  “You can give it to all of us?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “And it works. You’ve cast it before.”

  “Y-y-y—”

  “Well then,” I announced. “Prepare to get wet, and probably dirty.”

  “Wait a second,” Ivy and Cinzy said as one, then gred at one another.

  I didn’t. An was in the middle of casting, and I called out, “Trent, the floor is yours. Or I guess the wall is yours.”

  There was no second. A hole opened up in the wall and a torrent of water began rushing in. Larelle dashed in and was gone a second ter. The rest of us followed.

  As it turned out, we didn’t really need the water breathing spell from An. It wasn’t a close thing, though it was a bit uncomfortable having our gear with us. The majority of the marsh was shallow enough that we could walk, though the muddy bottom really wanted to suck our boots off.

  Larelle helped us out, since the water tried for a little while to suck us back in through the hole. She had braced against the cliff’s edge and pulled us up and out, then against the wall, making sure our heads were above water.

  Soon enough though the water level evened out, as the short hall filled with water and the force of water entering stopped being a problem. One by one we popped out of the hole. Cinzy came bobbing up coughing and spluttering, hair pstered to her forehead and looking miserable. Ivy looked just as uncomfortable with this situation, but Larelle shoved her toward us and against the cliff wall.

  The sun felt incredible once we exited. After having been in the cave for nearly six hours, both the air and sunlight were welcome changes. Although the marsh wasn’t cold, it was spongy and sticky, and soon I had grainy mud oozing into my boots. I had to fight to keep them on.

  We all took turns congratuting first An, and then Trent. Both of them really needed the confidence boost. An peered around, all smiles, perhaps looking for the prank or the KICK ME sign on his back, and only grinned brighter when there wasn’t one. Trent was just as pleased his skills had a positive impact yet again.

  “Aw, you’re doing great too,” I told Ivy and Isabelle. The former had a dark look, and the tter almost screamed when I came up behind them. “We need pack mules and day borers even more than we need a water breathing spell.”

  Ivy chuckled. “Thanks.”

  “Yeah,” Isabelle said, rolling her eyes. “Appreciate being a pack mule and day borer.”

  “I mean Chrysta is the real queen of wood chopping, but you two are amazing as well. In different ways. Not firewood.”

  Ivy flicked me on the forehead. “You almost had a brownie point there, Fletcher.”

  “Guards!” I called. “Guards I’ve been attacked.”

  The way Cinzy and Ivy compined, you’d think they had just survived being shipwrecked in a category five hurricane. Trent, Isabelle, An and I were ughing at the horrible misery of their lives, and at one point I locked eyes with Isabelle, getting a furious blush in return.

  Neither could I keep my eyes off her or Cinzy. With their clothes clinging to their bodies like that, it was easy to see their incredible figures. Isabelle wasn’t wearing a bra, and her white t-shirt showed exactly how big and dark her nipples were, which in both cases was very. Cinzy wasn’t much better off. Although she wasn’t as busty as Isabelle, she had worn an even tighter pink tank top, and it was pstered to her body like it was painted on.

  We trudged forward, and were soon met by shallow boats. The boats were full of ivory white humanoid natives, complete with mint green accents. Each was unique: some had fully green arms while others had stripes running up the backs of their arms. Some had the same coloration on their faces. All of them had thin, translucent webbing between their fingers and toes, and small fish fins protruding from their upper arms, calves, their backs and some of them had fin-like sails running up the center of their heads, and we would learn that they had tails ending in a tail fin. Their heads weren’t exactly humanoid, missing noses and ears and hair, and instead having finny things.

  They were all super naked.

  “Uhh…” An said in confusion from behind me.

  The natives were here to receive us.

  “Huh,” I said. “Cinzy, I hope you’re—”

  I broke off when I noted that not only was Regina seated with them in one of the boats, but she’d also gone sans clothing. Her freckles were on full dispy, glittering and even more pronounced than before. In fact, I would come to find out that each glitter freckle was now surrounded by what looked like flower petals, tiny colorful areas in different floral patterns: jagged ends of nceleaf flowers, the round multitude of peony petals, the pointed multitudes of sunflowers, or the star-shaped autumn lily were just a few of the ones I counted. Tweedle Dee sat beside her, and yipped in welcome when I saw her.

  Beside Regina hovered Chrysta. She, also, appeared to be a nude woman now. Where before she’d only seem to have a half body, now she had the hints of transparent legs ending around the knee. Where before she’d had a sort of formless white cloak, now she had a slim, snow white body with a few spots of ice blue. She was staring a challenge directly at me.

  I decided it was probably wise to look away.

  ***

  The clothing situation got decidedly weirder when Cinzy stopped compining, strode forward, opened her mouth to begin speaking her prepared greeting. She got exactly three steps closer before all her clothes vanished as well.

  The vanishing was accompanied by a loud whoosh of sound and rushing air, blowing Cinzy’s ponytail up for several long seconds. Almost immediately, a fsh of blue white energy announced that her clothes had just dissipated into vapor. The tiny motes of mana flew up into the sky to join the rest of the shimmering light show that was all around us.

  Then she was stark naked. She had unslung her rge backpack, but the smaller hip bag containing Fairy Poppins vanished and the fairy peered around in confusion.

  She noticed immediately, because she gave a loud, “Eek!” and peered down into the hip-deep water. “My boots! Oh my gods, you guys, it feels so yucky!”

  Never mind that her butt crack was right in front of me just at the surface, or that her tramp stamp tribal tattoo on her lower back was on dispy. Never mind that her boobs were out, you guys, her feet felt gross.

  Apparently we were also supposed to not mind that Regina and Chrysta had made first contact, without any social skills between them, before our ‘diplomacy expert’ currently freaking out about icky bugs and gooshy mud.

  I felt like ughing and screaming at the same time. This was a blunder. It was a catastrophe. It was boner-inducing also, and thankfully I had my own clothes on.

  Thankfully Cinzy still had her rge hiking pack on, and the smaller bag she usually kept at one hip. This contained Fairy Poppins, and would’ve been dragging in the water, except she had it held to her chest.

  “Cinzy,” I said, and tried to ce the word with as much warning as I possibly could.

  She cast a gnce back at me, and I nodded toward the nude natives. Maybe they just had a thing about clothes and they could enforce it magically. She needed to get her shit together.

  “I hope you’ll forgive me for my outburst,” she said, a complete one eighty in tone, although she was still bobbing up and down a tiny amount, probably from discomfort. “I was greatly surprised that… all my clothes suddenly vanished. I’m Cinzia, and this is Fletcher, leader of our expedition, and I hope it will be possible for us to talk about assisting your vilge in any way you neeEEEEEEE something crawled on me!” She literally jumped, spshing me and her stuff.

  “Could we talk in your vilge?” I asked.

  The nearest being in the boat with Regina smiled just slightly, face crinkling in delight as Cinzy tried to keep both feet off the marsh’s mucky bottom. Several others were snickering.

  In short order several boats were poled up toward us, and the natives helped us aboard. I’d only done a couple of canoe trips with my folks, and the sudden swaying of the little boat was extremely unsettling. I y ft on the wide-bottomed craft for some time, even as An came aboard and nudged me out of the way. Phooey on that. The most I could do was scootch over a bit and let him get seated.

  “Thank you so much,” I breathed.

  A number of other light shows followed whooshes and the loud noises. It hadn’t been a cold day, but there’s an undeniable difference when the daytime temperature is hitting you all over. I shivered and looked down to find myself just as naked as Cinzy.

  We were all naked.

  “I’m going to go ahead and say this has godly influence written all over it,” I said.

  “No shirt, Sherlock,” Regina said, grinning. Then she tore her eyes away from between my legs and blushed fiercely.

  “This is, by the way, not cool at all,” Drat grumbled. He was on his hands and knees, naked butt thrust out, picking things up from the bottom of the boat. Some of them were those coins I’d seen when I spent Tokens. I immediately wondered where he’d gotten those, and how he could just have them out in the open.

  There wasn’t time to question it. I didn’t want to have anything now except for a unified front. We had discussed this beforehand. Cinzia would do the talking, she would confer with me, and then all anybody else needed to do was nod along. If they were asked questions or challenged on anything, it was Cinzy’s job to help smooth things out. They were only really encouraged to answer questions about themselves, their life stories, or the css they had, since neither Cinzy nor I were experts in what they were experts in.

  “What is the name of your vilge?” I asked.

  The nearest native turned, and I noted she was very female. She had immacute proportions, and the minty green stripe ran up her legs, fnked her tummy, and accentuated her breasts before running out over her arms like full sleeves. The interior was fully white, save for her nipples, which were a slightly darker version of that minty color.

  “You humans rather enjoy your names. This was just called the Cliff’s Marsh Vilge before you came. We have chosen from the list of names, and decided on Slinktickle.”

  I chewed on my tongue and the inside of my cheek, and tried like hell to force the ughter down. This required me to massage my cheeks and nod sagely, which probably looked as silly as it felt. Yes, yes, of course, Slinktickle. Perfectly normal name. Yes of course.

  “May I know what sort of Nakamamon you are?” I asked.

  “We are Marshins,” she said.

  “Of course you are,” Drat said from the next boat over, his deadpan making it even harder to force the ughter away. Somehow I was able to manage it. Ivy and Isabelle snorted, then masked their ughter with coughing. An was busy repeating something to himself under his breath as a way to stop himself from ughing.

  “Do you have leaders?” Cinzy was asking. “We ought to talk to them if at all possible.

  It turned out the Marshins had a few vilge elders who presented what they thought were best options for the people, and the people voted. I wasn’t sure how this went, but it sounded like a great way to get things done.

  Everyone, big and small, male and female, was in the nude here. Every single one of the Marshins appeared to be ‘mature,’ meaning probably capable of reproducing sexually. I say ’appeared to be,’ because for one they were hairless, and for two they were all basically the same size. Some difference in body and shape, and most importantly patterning made each of them unique, but none of them were the size of children.

  There were hundreds of them, all nude, and all mostly androgynous. If you were a Marshin, you either had rge bare breasts, or you didn’t. None of them had genitalia that I could make out, but I was mainly focused on literally anything else. I was completely nude, after all. If there was one thing I did not want to do here, it was get an erection.

  The buildings we’d seen from the clifftop were much rger than I thought, and the ptforms surrounding them were positively enormous. They had a market square on one of them, with dozens of the creatures peddling handicrafts, ceramics, children’s toys, and all manner of foods I’d never seen before. The Marshins were paying with thick jade beads on wires.

  “Those probably doubled as bracelets and neckces and earrings,” I told the girls.

  “Huh?” Isabelle asked. She was preoccupied with covering herself with her hands. “Why don’t they put them on then? It would be easier—”

  “They would be clothing then, and probably disappear just like all the rest of the clothes,” Ivy said. “Fletcher, what do you think hap… don’t look at me!” She brought up her hands to cover her nipples and the turquoise tuft of hair between her legs. “Just answer my question.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine. What do you think happened to all the clothes? Gone for good? And what caused it?”

  “Oh, this is exactly like the footsteps thing,” I said. “It’s bound to be a god situation.”

  This is Christopher’s stomach going butterfly mode.