Tama

  Anna shimmered on me before jumping off my body and shifting into her human form. Her pretty pink dress flowed elegantly on her twelve-year-old form.

  She walked over to the area where Saki was and, after a moment, she slammed herself face-first into the panel the female goblin was touching. She instantly became water on contact and flooded into the panel.

  After a moment, the gate began to open. After a long moment, however, the gates stopped opening and slammed shut. Anna was ejected forcibly from the panel and landed as a puddle on the ground.

  She quickly reformed as she stood. She looked pissed. She stormed over to the panel and forced her way back in. Another few seconds and the gates began to slowly open once more, only for the process to repeat.

  Finally, after six more tries, Anna started screaming at the gate. I joined in and started slashing it with Serenity! Saki facepalmed and looked to Tristy, who was already throwing fireballs at it.

  "Stop it!" Saki screamed out of nowhere. She seemed very upset. "Look, you can clearly see the runic designs. It clearly needs a password or specific input," Saki said quietly as the three of us watched her.

  "Yeah, I know!" Anna said angrily. "But I am specifically locked out because of what happened 10,000 years ago! The nerve of that High Priestess!"

  I shrugged and sliced the wall a few more times. I heard Saki sigh heavily before she spoke. "Tama, just because she is locked out doesn't mean we can't find a way to open it. The goblins clearly were able to."

  I shrugged and made a motion to go ahead. She walked up and looked carefully at the wall before nodding and saying, "Okay, Tama, I need you to put your hands right here." She pointed at the panel that Anna had jumped into earlier. I walked over and put my hands on it. It felt cold to the touch, but I also felt something stirring beneath it.

  "Okay, now you need to summon your water into the... does that say inside?" She paused and looked closer at the wall before nodding. "Yes, inside the wall and push the water inside with it up to force the lever." She finished and then looked at me.

  I shrugged and did as she asked. I began to push the water I summoned up, pushing the rest of the water up with it. After a few seconds, I felt a presence connect to me and I idly felt it mentally look at me before disappearing.

  After that, the gate began to open and didn't stop. Once the gate was fully opened, I felt the thing inside stop turning. M y water could still flow, but the gear inside wouldn't go any further. I let go and instantly felt it start to slowly roll back. I realized what was happening and pushed it back into place and turned to Saki.

  "Saki, Tama has to wait here for you slow ones to go through. Then Tama will blink to you before the gate closes!"

  Saki simply nodded and turned, before walking towards the gate. Tristy, however, looked horrified. "I will not leave you, my Mistress!" she said as she fell to her knees and grabbed my legs. I stared at Tristy for a moment before Anna suddenly jumped onto Tristy and possessed her. Tristy stood, dusted herself off, and walked casually towards the gate. Saki snorted and followed through.

  After I was sure they were through, I let go of the gear and it started to close. I didn't blink immediately though. Instead, I blinked directly in front of the gate and leaned forward with a smirk. Right as the gate was almost closed, I blinked through at the last possible second and landed perfectly on the other side.

  Saki

  Tama loved my shadow creature. She called it a shadow goblin. I t was not a shadow goblin. But I had learned early on that correcting Tama somehow made me wrong. So I just didn't do it.

  Instead, I let her continually try to befriend the creature. I could feel its fear of her, its terror as she tried to control and hug it. It made me smile watching it suffer, just like I had suffered for so long. If Tama wanting to give it love was horror to the creature, then I would let Tama try all day.

  When we reached the gate, I quickly got a migraine as I watched the neanderthals that was my party attack an ancient and powerful gate. I wasn't sure what was worse. T he fact that they were attacking a void legendary masterpiece, or the fact they were actually severely damaging it.

  Luckily, I managed to talk them down and figured out how the gate worked. After that, and after Tama once again removed Anna from Tristy when she started to use Tristy's body to dance in her underwear again. What was with that divine water spirit and nudity?!

  Either way, we got through the gate and I lectured Tama, who didn't even pay attention, about why blinking through the gate at the last second was insanely stupid.

  She ignored me and pointed towards an exit in the large cavern we found ourselves in. Gone were the buildings and roads. Instead, all around us looked like we were in a large cavern, with a large opening in the cave wall. It seemed to go up at a slant.

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  "Oh, we aren't going that way," Anna said cheerfully as she came back from her nice long Tama-induced walk. She instead formed an arm and hand from Tama's gi and pointed towards a dark area to the left. It was pitch black over there.

  Tama spoke up. "Nya! Tama loves dark corners!"

  I looked at her in utter confusion. Tama had said many strange things, but that was simultaneously the most normal and the strangest I had ever heard. Tama marched towards the dark area, but I grabbed her arm.

  "Tama, are we certain about this? I can't see anything in that area and Anna is known for her... fun pranks." I glared at Anna as I said the last part. Anna giggled in response.

  Tama shrugged at me and said, "Tama can see in the dark. It's just a small opening in the wall over there. There is a thing with red eyes, but he looks friendly!"

  I facepalmed and shook my head. I wasn't dealing with this. I turned and instantly fired a void sphere into the dark area. Nothing happened and after a moment Tama said, "You made a bigger hole in the wall! The thing with red eyes went away."

  I nodded and said, "Alright, let's go. Tama, tell me if anything with red eyes comes back. Also," I took her hand and squeezed it gently, "keep hold of me."

  Tama nodded and we began walking into the darkness.

  When we got close, Tristy summoned a ball of light and lit the area up. I instantly felt extremely stupid. I completely forgot Tristy made fire... I was so distracted by enemies. I turned to Tristy and said, "Lead the way please!"

  Tristy's response was to stick her tongue out at me and flip me off. I sighed and tried a different tactic. "Your Mistress requires you to lead the way into the cavern using your light. Do you want to upset your Mistress?"

  Tristy looked at me, then Tama. She smiled and bowed as she spoke. "I live to serve my Mistress!" and she rushed into the crevice first. I winced at her lack of fear. Tama followed close behind and I behind her, making sure we still held hands.

  The crevice was small, but so were we. We fit nicely and were able to squeeze our way through to the other side, where I almost stepped off the edge of a small ledge into a ravine. Tama caught me since she hadn't let go of my hand and pulled me back up.

  "That stupid void water spirit!" I cursed at Anna. Anna shimmered, showing she was snickering at me. I resisted the urge to erase her and looked around. Tristy had fallen off but simply blinked back up before she fell far and used her fire feet to hold herself in the air casually.

  That took less essence than I thought? All I saw was a ledge for miles in either direction across , far across was the other side of the ravine. Above, daylight shone down from far above. At least a couple hundred feet up at minimum. My heart sank at what that meant.

  "Anna, please don't tell me that's your shortcut!" I snapped at the water spirit. Her shimmering laughter told me all I needed to know.

  Tama turned to me and said happily as she bounced on her feet... on a small ledge over a deep ravine... I couldn't even see the bottom... "Tama can get us up there super quick! She will just blink a lot !"

  I felt my stomach churn at the thought of Tama not blinking with me once, not twice, but based on distance, at least a dozen times. I felt dread begin to creep in and said, "Tama, maybe we can take the other path? I am certain it is safer!"

  Anna responded affirmatively. "Yep, it's just a long path upwards on a slope with multiple rest points!"

  I considered that and asked, "What's the time difference?"

  Anna shimmered and said, "Six days."

  I cursed under my breath and looked back up at the open air and sunlight streaming from the top of the ravine. "Tama, maybe the royal guards will be nice and reasonable?

  Maybe we can meet them down here and they will let us go to Drestor first!" I said hopefully.

  The look on Tama's face told me that wasn't happening. I considered every possibility I could, like trying to mimic my shadow goblin and travel through shadows... but I had no idea how to do that.

  I considered extending my tail to ledges, but my tail couldn't extend that long. I considered literally using the void to create a staircase. But that could cause instability and it would be the same as walking all the way up anyway.

  Finally, I sighed and said, "You know I hate you, right, Anna?"

  Anna's response was to giggle and respond, "I know."