The Mutonauts proved to be a group of wildly decorative

young men and women. Ange, on board one of their juddering

motor boats, had time to observe them, his latest captors. He

sat amongst them, holding a shuddering glass of pinkberry wine,

but he knew he was no guest of theirs. They laughed and

frolicked incessantly with one another, making quips and sly

remarks just as often as they gave each other playful kisses, slaps,

and furtive gropes. They were in a celebratory mood, and the

air about them was buzzing with sexuality and vivacious joy.

        All of them were gorgeous, with perfectly toned bodies that they clearly liked to reveal just as much as adorn. The speedboat, named Ahargonys, navigated its way back, leaving the labyrinthine Horozen; from the boat’s internal sound system blared a string of upbeat tunes; at the prow grew a stunted sort of shrub that gave forth the most deliciously sweet berries. The roots of the plant worked were indistinguishable from the gunwales of the speedboat.

        Despite this moniker, the boat went quite slow because of the many turns, and this meant that many of the Mutonauts took full advantage of this idle time, by dancing on the deck, and grinding up against one another in a way that Ange found both amazing and alluring.

        Next to him sat Mysbe, their ruler – the one that Falyn had warned him about, their so-called Queen. The man with the feline grace had been left behind as a rearguard, along with several other dour-faced warrior types.

        The Mutonauts dancing about them however were anything but dour.

        “Why are they all so happy?” Ange asked her.

        Mysbe turned, blinking at him with those bewitching purple eyes.

        “Why shouldn’t they be?” she asked; then she laughed, looking at him with unmasked affection. She and Ange hadn’t exchanged but a few more handfuls of words since he had been forcibly incited to embark upon her vessel, driven up the gangway by the man she’d commanded, the one who had taken him down with his bolas. This man, a fearful prodigy with preternatural feline grace, had encouraged him to keep plodding on with the occasional, unkind prod.

        Ange remembered what Mysbe had said about him, when he had asked why the warrior was so mean.

        “I need my Croft to be cruel,” she’d said defensively. “But don’t worry – I am friendly enough for both of us!”

        Being on the motor boat was a surreal experience. The dream was getting weirder by the moment. Ange’s brain was trying to make sense of it all, but seemed to encounter all kinds of barriers, and he could sense that it was getting nearer by the minute to some kind of break, a complete surrender.

        Some of the brawnier Mutonauts were drumming on wide-brimmed bowls carved of dark, well-oiled wood, over which were stretched the skins of felled sea-lions. Ange watched as Mysbe pulled out her own drum, to control the beat. He saw that her drum-bolus (made of sonorous supsum-wood, as she informed him) featured elaborate carvings that to him were most curious. He saw a great light radiating from a hand-held jewel. The woman who held it stood above a man who lay at her feet, either dead or dreaming. Her mouth was open, as if singing – his, open too, as though snoring.

        The skin of Mysbe’s drum was inked, tattooed with some kind of sacred runes or markings – but since her hands were playing upon its mottled surface so deftly, he couldn’t make out anything of the ideograms designated upon it.

        In the presence of such jubilant beings, Ange felt himself disjointed, abased, out of pace. Not one of them appeared to be more than five years his senior, but it was clear that this was but a cunning counterfeit. The way they danced and moved, the sheer acrobatic quality to them, was enough to convince him that they had found some means of constant rejuvenation. They were masters of shape and movement, inhabiting the limber bodies of those who might have in yesteryears been considered mere children; and Mysbe was the unchallenged mistress of them all.

        She drummed for a while, seated next to Ange, whose untouched glass of wine seemed to pick up the vibrations of her drumming – or was it the constant coasting over the little entangled waves within the Horozen-bound waterways, the thrumming of the motorboat?

        Her matted silver hair swam about her, and he saw her bare shoulders revealed, her lithe, slender arms – so pale, and also tattooed with all kinds of mysterious, sacred symbols.

        Who was she, and what sort of things could she teach him? Ange was drawn to her, and watching her drum her people into a frenzy that could at any moment give way to a wild orgy of blissful, carnal dances, he knew that he had missed out on a key lesson about one’s primal existence. He had learned survival, in his own Realm, and with the Hunt – but he had never been in a position like these Mutonauts enjoyed, in which their every thought and gesture was made in an impassioned and lustful celebration of life. He came from a land of nothing, and now he saw that these people, oblivious to the plight of those who had lost out, were the exact opposite of him, for they had no knowledge, really, of any suffering – and this was the foundation of their power, and their beauty.

        After a while, Mysbe put her drum aside. Reaching for her flute, which one of the Mutonauts had refilled for her as if by some preordained order, the alluring Queen flashed him a sort of girlishly fiendish smile.

        “I know what you’ve done,” she said in a low voice, as she came close to Ange. “I’ve seen it – with this.” She indicated a white stone set into the silver circlet she wore across her smooth, brown brow. “It used to be set in a sword pommel, or so Crofty says. I think he dreams of the day, ages ago, when big battles were fought and won.”

        “And what do you dream of?” Ange asked.

        “Look about you!” Mysbe said, gesturing at her cohorts, the lovely dancers, the lively Mutonauts. “Life is like a dream! You’ll see. In my sanctum the only conquests we concern ourselves with are sensual ones, in the everlasting hunt for adventure and love!”

        “What about Falyn?” Ange couldn’t help but ask. “Sure you mean to vanquish him?”

        Mysbe’s mood changed, and her face darkened, so that Ange almost regretted bringing it up. “If it comes to that, I suppose he deserves no less,” said Mysbe soberly, “but personally, I’d be content with just driving him out like we did with the rest of his kin.”

        “His kin?”

        “Yes, didn’t you know?” Mysbe asked, the fire coming back into her wild eyes. “He is a beast that has learned how to take the shape and bearing of a man. He is the opposite of me and my Mutonauts. He tricked us so he could get close enough.”

        “For what?” Ange knew already the answer; he carried it hidden in his pocket.

        “To steal the aumbulet, which luckily you managed to steal back!” Mysbe said it boldly, but not loudly. Ange looked around to see if anyone had overheard, but everyone was too busy with the onboard revelries. He could see nothing but a confusion of inked-up limbs moving, bums wiggling, and brown faces smiling or laughing.

        “You know what I did,” Ange answered, almost whispering to Mysbe. “Do you know where I come from, too?”

        Mysbe drew in very close to him, and Ange felt her warmth, the promise of love, which was just another drug. “I know it doesn’t matter nearly as much as where you’ve come to,” she said. “Sitting here with me – this is where you belong. We’ve been waiting for you, my boy. That’s why we’re celebrating.”

        “You really believe that to be true?” Ange asked, unsure how anyone could be so certain as Mysbe seemed to be about absolutely everything.

        “Don’t you?” Mysbe asked in return, as if surprised that he hadn’t figured out that belief was the best and only way to make whatever you wanted transpire in the here and now, making of reality the nicest dream one could ever conjure up or imagine.

        “I suppose so,” he muttered sheepishly.

        “Then it’s settled,” Mysbe said, planting a kiss on his cheek. “You can hold onto my stone a bit longer. Keep it safe for me. But I will ask you one thing: won’t you tell me your name?”

        “Gabe.”

        “You’ve been mistreated, I think; maybe you’ve been hurt.”

        “I’ve learned how to protect myself.”

        “How exhausting that sounds! You can let your guard down with me, my boy. Poor duck, you must be so tired of mistrusting everyone and fighting for your survival! Rest now; come, put your head in my lap and I will sing to you.”

        They travelled from sunup to midday without any reason to worry; but as the false sun reached its peak intensity and would begin to wane and fade by increments, the Mutonauts came upon an unexpected barrier when they saw that the Horozen had closed about them, cutting off their escape. The motor boat engaged its reverse engine to avoid coming up against a wall as it entered what should not have been (but most assuredly was now) a dead end.

        Mysbe pushed Ange aside, hopped up, and gave a call like a vengeful mother hawk. At once, the Mutonauts stopped partying and stood at attention.

        “The monster comes!” she called out, glancing with a fearful look at Ange. “Brace yourselves, Mutonauts! Here comes the beast! Get ready to face the Jugoroch!”

        The transformation from revelry to irruption was a wonder to behold. The interrupted Mutonauts seemed to act out of a singular will. Some of them transmuted into various shapes [describe], while others stayed in the form of men and women, while taking up all kinds of javelins, harpoons, and other throwing weapons. [Can they change within the Horozen? I think maybe not – except that Croft did already, but only for show, not as a plot point]

        Ange turned to Mysbe. He noticed that he was still holding a full glass of wine. For a second he wondered if he should throw it over the side; but then, remembering Falyn, he decided to down it all in a single gulp.

        Mysbe observed this and let out a wild laugh. “You’ve got some balls, my boy!” she said approvingly. “Let’s hope the Jugoroch doesn’t find enjoyment in ripping them off!”

        Ange laughed too, and tossed the slender empty glass up towards the sunlit sky. He pulled out the crossbow he’d named Ornyroth, and within a split-second he managed to aim and fire a bolt, shattering the empty flute as it reached its zenith tumbling through the artificially blue sky. It didn’t seem a waste to him at the time, even though it essentially was.

        It really was all just a dream, Ange realized. Every moment of his life before had been like a nightmare, but now he was at the other end of the weird, spectacular spectrum. These creatures about him – he hesitated to even call them people, since they were so unlike any of the miserable, cutthroat, calculating, and desperate people of Nemn that he had heretofore known – were magical, pure and simple; and they knew it.

        Ange looked about, then realized that none of them had transformed into another shape. He drew close to Mysbe, who was now wielding a light, shining cutlass, and hoarsely asked his question.

        “Why has no one, you know, changed?”

        Mysbe didn’t spare a second to even glance at him. All her senses were alert. Ange had seen the Huntsmen like this: enlivened by danger. She was sniffing, listening, and seeing all that she could, in order to survive the fight that was coming to her, and to hopefully, also, to save her people.

        Ange heard a bellowing roar rise up out of the labyrinth – a bestial cry, inhuman, but full of regret and woe. He thought he’d heard it once before, and he remembered the night that Falyn had returned to him, injured, washing up on the shore with the javelin sticking out of his ass.

        “We can’t morph in the Horozen,” Mysbe answered. “By Falyn’s design, only he can transmute within the Humorous Sea within the bounds of the maze he created. We are never more vulnerable as when we venture into his trap, which is of course precisely what he wanted.”

        Ange said nothing after that, but waited with the rest of them, listening to the lizards chirping invisibly in the tangled canopy that formed the tops of the confounding corridors that had been shaped by Falyn in turns and twists that were designed apparently not only to keep the Mutonauts out when he wanted them excluded, but to keep them in, when he wished to keep them from being excused.

          The roar came again, closer now.

        The trees about them, forming the two colonnades on either side of the Ahargonys, and the barrier that blocked its way, reacted in unison to the sound of the approaching beast: they shuddered, as if a wind were passing through them, although the air was still. The trees also began to emit a sort of noxious gas.

        “Pynzog!” Mysbe shouted to the Mutonauts. “Light the braziers!”

        Ange watched as the Mutonauts in the aft of the boat lit a spark and got a sudden blaze going in a great cauldron that had been set in place. Mysbe grabbed Ange by the arm and dragged him up to the hot, bright flames.

        “The poisons of the trees burn off easily,” she explained. “We have, as you can see, created a few defenses against Falyn’s treachery.”

        Ange remembered the old man – who was neither old, it turned out, nor even a man – and he wondered how he could have been taken in so completely by the villain. Falyn had saved him, and then Ange had returned the favour, when Falyn had been impaled by Croft’s handy shot with the lance. Was the false man really a traitor and a scoundrel? Ange remembered the art he’d seen in Munowyste, remembered how Falyn had needed him in his solitude, and couldn’t help feeling sorry for the exiled codger that he had in turn betrayed.

        Nearby there was a clamour and a mixture of battle-cries and strangled sounds. Ange looked at Mysbe. He saw that many of the Mutonauts were also looking to her for guidance, for directives, for salvation.

        “We’re sitting ducks,” Ange murmured, realizing in a sudden flash what they were in for.

        Mysbe bared her teeth. “We’re not ducks,” she said. “And we’re not sitting! We are Mutonauts!”

        The crowd around her cheered and yelled fiercely – but their defiant yammering turned to shouts of dismay when they saw at last the beast appear down at the length of the cut-off corridor.

        Ange felt compelled to break away from Mysbe in order to see what was approaching. He tore free of her grasp and peeled away from the fire to go to the stern of the stalled speedboat. Gazing out into the strained light of the late afternoon, he beheld the terrible beast.

        A massive body it had, many times the length of the motorboats that carried all the frightened Mutonauts. A single horn protruded from its cranium. Ange saw this as it reared its great head to let forth another of its intimidating bellows. Then as it drew closer it dove down, meaning to pass beneath the boat, and as it plunged, Ange saw that it had three great divergent tails, all of which ended not in a split fin, but in menacing pincers that could bend forwards and grasp a man, perhaps cutting him with inhuman force completely in half.

        Ange fell back, aghast; but there was someone behind him, ready to catch him as he fell. He looked up into the loving face of Mysbe, who now appeared to him upside-down.

        “He comes for the aumbulet,” she warned him.

        There was no time for anything else to be said or done, for in the next moment their sturdy craft, Ahargonys, sustained a lethal blow from the great horn of the Jugoroch, which sent the speedboat nearly out of the water; and when it came back down, shuddering, with everyone on deck tilting and toppling, it was clear the hull had been punctured, and that within moments it would be foundering.

        “Breach!” Mysbe hollered. “To the Skyway!”

        The Mutonauts reacted as one. Ange watched as they came together and formed a bracket of arms and legs still trying to keep upright on the deck of the wildly bucking speedboat. At their center, an archer aimed a mounted crossbow that he had failed to notice was fixed in place upon a stand. Hadn’t there been in its place a keg of wine, only moments before?

        The weapon was huge, and Ange saw that what was loaded into its firing socket looked like no harpoon or javelin, but a grappling hook, attached to a supple, silvery, glowing line.

        The archer canted the bow steeply, firing in the next moment, and Ange saw that indeed the hook was aimed up toward the high, lofty boughs of the great, hoary trees of the Horozen.

        The silver line flew up like a pixie taking off after a shooting star. Ange had never seen such a creature, but he’d heard men of the Hunt, who proclaimed themselves honest, honourable, and true, speak of the olden feys of Nemn, which Ange hoped against hope had yet all to disappear from his aged and devastated home-realm.

        It had always seemed a thin hope, and one that might be without any merit – that is, until now. Ange was steeped in magic; and if he didn’t hustle along with the others, he was about to be steeped in hot water, too!

        “Come with me, my boy!” Mysbe said, grabbing his arm with a fiercely strong hand, a mother now acting with no love-born kindness but only by some hard, cruel instincts that may prove to be the only thing that such creatures as mothers can call magic enough to save their loved ones from misfortune and disaster. Mysbe was pulling him along like she would any other queenly possessions she would naturally be compelled to salvage from the imminent wreck that she clearly could not bear to be without.

        When they got to the mounted bow, Ange saw that the silvery line, putting forth a glowing light the very shade and hue of brilliant defiance in the sinking dusk of their last, flagging hope, was now fastened at this end to a great iron loop bolted to the quintessential crossbeam of the foundering ship. Upon the line one of the Mutonauts – a sleek, otter-like boy of what looked to be nineteen- had secured a kind of engine that was rumbling and smoking, ready to be engaged, but for now simply idling.

        Two stirrups hung from the engine that Ange imagined would climb the line, chugging and shuddering all the while to bring up whatever cargo was so precious that it needed a quick escape. Ange knew what that cargo was – it was him, and more specifically, what he carried. He remembered what Falyn had said about the stone, that it could never be taken by force, such was its nature. It had to be gifted.

        Ange of course hadn’t taken it by force, but with his wiles and burgling skills.

        “Put your foot down upon the strap,” Mysbe instructed him. Ange saw how pleased she was by his quick wits, for he had already done so. “Lock your knee. We ride together. Now come close and hold fast to me.”

        Ange obeyed wordlessly. Putting his face against Mysbe’s body, he found himself pressed up against her firm breasts. His arm went around her bare waist. He felt safe; he felt secure.

        Then it all fell away as Mysbe, standing with one foot in the other stirrup, engaged the engine, and they flew toward the tree tops in a great, unexpected burst of upward-thrusting energy.

        Ange started to scream as they took off, but Mysbe – as if she’d been anticipating this – moved the arm she had about him and her hand clamped down on his mouth. He inhaled through his nose sharply, wide eyes staring down towards the lost ship, the waiting Mutonauts, and the watery corridor of the maze in which Falyn had somehow found them and trapped them, so that his beast, the horror they called the Jugoroch, could impale them with its rampaging unicorn.

        Mysbe’s smell was heady and lovely. As he breathed it in, he fell in love with her in some profoundly childish way. He knew it even as it happened, and he surrendered to it, his puppy love. Her hair was scented like the most fragrant of springtime flowers, and her skin seemed to exude from its pores a vibrating puissance that was both comforting and exciting. Ange felt her self-assurance in her grip, felt her strength and her confidence. He felt her breath as she drew it; that’s how closely she held him.

        When they reached the top – in mere moments, really, Mysbe looked down at him, her boy. She unclamped her hand, letting free his boyish mouth.

        “What’s that I feel against my knee?” she asked, almost playfully. “Something is hard down there.”

        Ange looked up into the deep pools of her eyes. In that moment he was lost entirely to her; but this didn’t stop him from lying to her, automatically.

        “It’s your stone,” he said. “In my pocket. That’s where I keep it?”

        Mysbe smiled at him. “Yes,” she agreed, pressing back into the hardness she felt. “Family jewels.”

      Ange flushed and looked away, ashamed. Mysbe only laughed and left him as she clambered onto the sinewy tree-limb, the low-hanging branch so thick she could balance upon it with her two bare feet easily enough to reach down so she could pull him up.

        Ange glanced down one last time and saw that the Mutonauts hadn’t wasted any time. They were all climbing the line, freehand, coming up in their instigated evacuation, following their valiant queen leader. Ange admired them all, and her most of all.

        I want to be like them, he thought to himself in that dizzying moment as he staggered to his feet him up in the lofty canopy, staring down at the ship, which in that moment took another, final hit from the enraged Jugoroch. This time the ship was torn asunder by the spike of the Jugoroch’s long, merciless horn; it’s whole stern came undone and sank away underfoot; but the remainder remained afloat, if only because of the silvery, glowing line.

        Then Ange saw in horror that the three pincers of its whiplashing tail came snapping out of the water. One of them swung towards the silver line, but too eagerly and too early. It failed to catch – as did the second one that came out, for it hit the wall of the Horozen blindly and rebounded. The third, however, caught the line full on, and with an efficient, almost elegantly timed, effortless snip, it cut the line that the Mutonauts were desperately climbing, leaving those who were scaling upwards, hand over hand, swinging suddenly freely – which unhappily unhinged at least a couple of Mutonauts, who then fell into and dislodged several more – but left those still on deck of the speedboat, which was now detached and breaking apart fast, paddling water, dunked in something like their worst nightmare.

        “No!” Ange cried out, seeing this.

        Mysbe may have looked over herself, or maybe not. Whether or not she concerned herself with the fallen, she acted out of courage and duty, and she pulled Ange close yet again, and pulled from her satchel now a gelded, curved, and richly-decorated horn. She noticed Ange’s admiring look, then raised it to her lips and blew hard, three times; then cocked her head, inciting him, and made off down the tree-branch which was roughly textured, easy to grip, and thick as the trunk of a slender, Nemni tree. Sure-footed, Mysbe moved with urgency, and Ange, stumbling along behind, came up obediently like some lapdog, moving as nimbly as he could.

        “Where are we going?” he asked, looking up into the tangled canopy they were about to enter.

        “Into the thick of it!” Mysbe called back. “The others, if they survive, can follow us. The beast cannot come up here!”

        “That’s a comfort,” Ange spouted.

        “Don’t get too comfortable!” Mysbe warned in a strained hiss. “We’re not out of the woods yet – not by a longshot!”