“Oh, one more thing before you go! I got you a new pet!”, Lucina stopped Phoebe outside.

  “Really?”, her eyes glimmered with hope. That hope dwindled considerably when Lucina pulled a slime out of her bag. “I don’t want it”.

  “Ah, come on! Isn’t he just the cutest?”. “No”. “At least give him a name!”. “NO”. “…I promise he won’t eat your food!”.

  Phoebe stopped. “…Really?”. A worried smile played across Lucina’s lips. “…Well, not too much of it at least… hey, wait!”.

  “You could not possibly pick a worse gift”, Phoebe marched away.

  “Should I tell Count Boogula about the many romance novels you’ve penned?”.

  Phoebe marched backwards and grabbed the slime. “This is blackmail”.

  “What’s the slime’s name?”, Lucina asked cheerfully. “Luggage”.

  “The Heart of the Phantom, Chapter One. It was a dark and stormy night…”.

  Phoebe’s face flushed red. “Stop, stop! Ok, fine! His name is… I don’t know, Globert”.

  “Well, it’s not that strange for a ghosthunter to write novels about ghosts”, I reassured her. “Besides, everyone has…”.

  “NOT. HELPING”. Phoebe’s tone left no room for argument. Lucina held back a chuckle.

  And thus our journey began. As we left I noticed there were already fewer patrols. Eventually, everyone would be freed from Hex’s control, and Mechadream’s technology would spread all across the kingdom. The world would change.

  Sugaria was very close by, little more than an hour away. When we landed, Phoebe immediately retrieved a spoon from our supplies.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “You sure you want to eat that?”, I looked at the ground. It was indeed ice cream, but dirtied and mashed flat by foot traffic.

  “The trick is to scrape the top layer off”, she demonstrated, digging down to the clean ice cream underneath. I was suddenly reminded of eating snow as a kid and smiled. If only we could’ve had this instead.

  We couldn’t stop for long though and beelined straight to the adventurer’s guild. It was a mostly empty building, with a gingerbread man at the counter. A few other equally strange citizens were indulging in some kind of syrup in the corner, hopefully an equivalent to beer.

  One thing that stuck out to me was the number of quests on the board. There were quite a few that offered large rewards: the Candy Warden, Red Velvet, clearing out sugar worms… it seemed like Sugaria had no shortage of trouble.

  “Howdy, adventurers!”, the gingerbread man exclaimed. We were somewhat taken aback by the friendly greeting. “My oh my, the two of you smell delicious today!”.

  “I think that’s a compliment… Ow! Why’d you bite my hand?!”, Phoebe whispered to me, but was suddenly interrupted by the strange receptionist.

  “Oh I’m sorry, I forgot you’re new!”, the gingerbread man licked his lips. “You taste like a Phoebe to me. Want to bite my hand?”. He reached out his left towards her.

  Phoebe shook her head, but our pet slime Globert quickly took him up on that offer.

  “Heehee! That tickles! Anyways, my name’s Fluffygrin! Nice to meet ya both!”. Around this time, I started to realize he wasn’t blinking enough.

  “…Yes, we’re here to talk about a king slime that’s probably headed this way”, I brought the conversation back on track. “We need advice on how to defeat it”.

  “Ah yes, Sugaria has a storied history of king slime attacks! The year was 812, when the Three Heroes of Yore heard a quake, felt a shake, got a backache…”.

  “I’m sorry Fluffygrin, but we’re rather short on time”, Phoebe cut in. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the king slime or our pet munching through the receptionist.

  Fluffygrin nodded vigorously, dislodging one of his gumdrop eyes. He didn’t seem to notice. “Absolutely, sugarplum! Let’s cut through the chatter and get to the heart of the matter! Salt! Yes, most king slimes were defeated by luring them into the Salted Caramel Flats, where there once was a great lake…”.

  “Thank you, Fluffygrin”. Phoebe forcibly pulled Globert off of him, revealing not much of our receptionist was left. “…Are you ok?”.

  “Yep! I’m just dandy! Dandier than a dandybeetle!”. He smiled too wide, which was quite impressive given that half of his mouth was gone.

  Phoebe took a free tourist map and we quickly backed out of the guild.