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Cat Core 3, Chapter 38 + 39.
🕑 Added 2022-08-26 14:41:59 +0000 UTCCat Core 3 releases on Tuesday so I'm going to post the last few chapters over the weekend for you.
Chapter 38
“Get out of there, Hendry,” Reggie said as the door crashed down and the dead flooded inside. Hendry ignored the mage and charged into the fray alongside Bhargath, Mo, and Midnight. The simple rogue knew how to fight, which Florence already knew from his scuffle with George, but he seemed to be in the zone now, his pair of long daggers becoming a blur as he landed strike after strike on the undead horde.
Florence’s kitties did their best, but they were fighting opponents that didn’t feel pain and blindly followed the commands of their masters. Still, all her babies in this room were brawlers, and their attacks were slowly taking out the undead, despite the difficulty. The press of bodies pushed back the defenders, allowing Tater and Baxter to leap down from their ledge and join the fight. Even with five brawler kitties and one angry rogue, they were pushed back, and the two cats that had leaped down on their foes were pulled from their feet and thrown out the door, where they were attacked by the entire horde.
Bhargath fell next, but the good boy went down fighting, clawing off the arm of a zombie even as his newest friend Hendry was forced to use his flash bomb ability to resume stealth and escape. Florence couldn’t track Hendry or any of the other rogues, so she wasn’t sure exactly where he was lurking. Hopefully, they’d figure out that they needed to backstab the stuffing out of them two necromancers. A quick strike there might stop this whole attack in its tracks.
The last kitty on her feet was Midnight. Realizing the fight was a lost cause, she lured the mob of undead toward the fireplace but was pulled down before she could activate it. Despite the kitty not triggering the trap, an undead managed to blunder into it all on its own. A blast of flame erupted out from the fireplace, incinerating a handful of zombies and damaging several others. The horde didn’t stop for a minute and continued its rampage, running the gauntlet that was the hallway and flooding into both the sewing room and bathroom. Scylla and Charybdis managed to take out a pair of zombies, but Bob and Stubbs in the sewing room weren’t quite as lucky, being overwhelmed before they could get in too many hits.
At least the hallways seemed to be working as intended. The spear traps and occasional attack by Buddy and Princess whittled away the undead that passed in front of them. For the most part, the attackers ignored the cats hiding in the various holes in the wall, but when the necromancers passed by, they conjured up more necrotic fumes to smoke out Florence’s poor kitties.
Fizz’s gnomes were up next, their newest version of a barricade blocking the horde. With a gnomish battle cry, her allies unleashed a barrage of crossbow bolts and even a few blasts of electricity from various contraptions. Undead fists hammered at the steel walls, denting and slowly breaking through. Before the whole thing collapsed, Fizz ordered the gnomes back into their home, and not a moment too; the necromancers looked like they were about to step into the fight.
Like they had done against the last invaders, the gnomes left a parting gift, hitting a switch that caused the barricade to collapse on the nearest undead, taking down three more. For their last surprise, four gnomes held up strange metal contraptions that looked suspiciously like one of them super-expensive water guns they sold back home. Those things were a waste of money, but the gnome gizmos actually seemed to work this time. The four prototype weapons sprayed out a thick stream of slime over the front ranks of the enemy.
“Oh, so that’s what Fizz wanted with my slimes,” Sabrina said as her defenders, helpfully sprayed directly onto the foe, went to work dissolving everything they touched. The undead tried to smash them, but their blows did little to the slimes other than give them something else to munch on. Five zombies had gone down before the necromancers cast some black bolts of mana at the poor slimes, ending their feast.
“Ingenious, really. A slime is usually hampered by its slow speed, and the gnomes just turned them into biological weapons,” Doug said, sounding genuinely impressed. With a boom, the door to the gnome home slammed shut and Florence could see they were already working to barricade the place. Sure, them zombies could break it down if they wanted to, but it would take a while, and them necromancers weren’t going to stand around all day, waiting for it to happen.
“Knock, knock, let us in, little gnomes,” one of the brothers said.
“You’ve ruined some of our toys, so we’ll just have to take you for replacements,” the other brother added.
“Uh-oh, do you think they could use the same death cloud that turns you into zombie things on the gnomes that they used on the front lawn?” Florence asked, getting a bit concerned.
“I think it might be possible. They’re linked to our home, but they’re not defenders that you created with your mana. You better give Fizz a heads-up. He might want to get them moving into the escape tunnel,” Doug said. Luckily, the house had rebuilt itself following the plans that Florence had come up with the last time she had been a core, including the hidden tunnel that used to run from the gnome home to the garage. Since there weren’t any defenders in the garage anymore, now that Spud had been promoted to a floor champion, the goofy system that guided this world connected it to the next closest room, the laundry.
“Fizz, get out of there. I don’t want those creeps turning you into zombies. Hit the escape tunnel and hurry. They’ll be in the laundry room as soon as they realize you’ve hightailed it,” Florence warned.
“All right, boys, you heard the lady. Get going!” Fizz ordered, throwing open the escape hatch in the far corner of the room. Work on reinforcing the door ceased as the gnomes began to crawl as quickly as they could through the short tunnel. As soon as they hit the laundry room, the gnomes ran for the kitchen, where Fizz had told them to regroup and eat some cookies, because he really liked Florence’s recipes, especially the chocolate chip ones. From there, they would head to the core room to wait things out.
“My, what a strong door you have here. I’m sure my minions could smash it down eventually, but we’re on a bit of a time crunch so I’ll have to speed things up. Hey, brother, what’s this door made of?” one of the brothers asked.
“Why, my brother, this is made mostly of wood, with some iron reinforcing it,” the other brother answered.
“And what is wood?” the first brother asked. Florence really couldn’t tell the pair apart. Neither of them had any distinguishing marks, and both wore identical clothes and even sounded similar.
“Why, my brother, wood is the flesh of a dead tree. Oh, I see what you’re getting at. We’re masters of death, and whether it’s the flesh of a tree or a human, it’s ours to command,” the second brother said, touching the door, which began to decay at a rapid pace. Once it degraded enough, the door collapsed inward. The iron hardware clanged to the floor, warning the gnomes their time was up. All but four had made their escape, and seeing the threat, the remaining gnomes shoved Fizz into the hatch and locked it shut, over his loud objections.
Grabbing hammers and wrenches, the trio of gnomes attacked the necromancers, only to be intercepted by a flood of undead that had started to enter the room. They gave it a good try, the three crunching down two of the zombies before being overwhelmed. Once they were down, the necromancer brothers waved their hands, pouring mana into the gnome bodies until they rose once more, joining the ranks of the undead.
The surviving gnomes made it through the tunnel and out of the laundry room just as the horde entered. Arya and Q fought hard, but the clothesline trap in the room proved to be the most effective defender, taking the heads off three zombies before snapping. Florence had high hopes for the next room, the library, since it had been reinforced by George’s champion, Crusher.
Not subtle or unpredictable in any fashion, the zombies poured into the library, on the attack. Crusher got right to work. His four arms swung away, and with each blow, he turned a zombie into nasty pulp. Fluffy and Fluffy Junior tried to keep the horde from surrounding Crusher, but the big monkey wasn’t all that into team play and just charged ahead on his own. With a flash of light, the two magic missile traps fired, pummeling the nearest zombie, but in addition to being slow and stupid, the zombies were also pretty durable.
Zeus unleashed a lightning blast into the zombies trying to surround Crusher. With his previous level, Zeus’s attack was a simple jolt of electrical energy. Now the higher-level mage was able to send five of the zombies to the ground. They twitched as the electricity discharged into their bodies, but they weren’t out of the fight and made might fine targets for the two Fluffies to attack. Zombies hammered away at Crusher, who, for the most part, ignored their attacks. He went into a battle haze, focusing solely on smashing as many of the undead as he could.
If the zombies had been there by themselves, the defenders in the library might have stopped them cold, but sadly, them two necromancer brothers had to join the fight. They dispensed with the death cloud attack this time, likely because Crusher was so tall and the cloud would only come up to his waist. Instead, they each fired beams of black energy into the big monkey, and them beams must have hurt, given the squalling that both the monkey heads were doing.
Crusher was slowing down, and his blows became less powerful by the second as beam after beam was blasted into his oversized body. Where the beams hit, his body sort of shriveled up and rotted away, a disgusting effect the necromancers seemed to find supremely amusing. Crusher fell, and soon after, the horde swept aside Fluffy, Fluffy Junior, and Zeus. Her kitties and George’s Crusher had done a number on the invaders, though; this one room took down piles of the monsters.
“I count forty-one remaining. We’ve taken down over half the zombies and we’re not even through the first floor,” Doug said.
“Let’s hope their casualty rates continue,” George added.
The fight carried on. The horde, along with the necromancers controlling them, pushed through the game room and dining room while taking more and more casualties. In the master bedroom, her champions, Zork and Chubbs, nearly finished off the bunch, and only the intervention of the necromancers saved the last three badly damaged zombies.
“Good, those necromancers are tough, but there’s no way they can finish off our home on their own,” Florence said with confidence.
“You had to say that, didn’t you?” Doug complained.
“What? I can say whatever I want in my home,” Florence reminded him.
“You sure can, but look, you jinxed us,” Doug moaned. The necromancers were building up mana and releasing it in the master bedroom. From the floor, bits and pieces of zombie began to knit themselves together. The creepy mages were pasting together working minions from the refuse that was ruining Florence’s floor.
“Brother, I think we need to rebuild before we continue to the next level,” one of them creeps said. They stopped their advance, backtracking through the home and piecing together any zombie they could, a torso here, a head there, and a pair of donor legs from another coming together to create a working monster. About the only good thing was that they couldn’t just reanimate them all, and it took an average of just under two casualties to create a single working undead minion.
When they were done, the horde had gone from three back up to forty-nine, but Florence could tell them necromancers were starting to look a bit tuckered out. They had expended huge amounts of mana, and even powerful casters couldn’t keep that up for too long. Sure, they’d regenerate some over time, but there was a hard cap to how much mana a mage could absorb in a day, and these two were going to hit that cap sooner rather than later.
The second floor proved to be more of the same. The horde swept through her defenders, and the necromancers added their magic support when facing a particularly difficult opponent. When their numbers ran low, the brothers pieced together the fallen to replenish their horde. Their only problem was that they were running low on undamaged bits and pieces. It was taking them four or so fallen zombies to create one functioning one now, and the ones they were creating weren’t quite as effective as they had been when they were freshly risen.
Tachi, the chronomancer minor champion with the tiny head, fought well, requiring the necromancers to step in and expend more of their mana on them deadly black beams to take down the kitty. Sabrina felt bad that her infestation rats didn’t perform. Sure, their bites did damage, but the parasites they inflicted didn’t do much to an undead creature. Spud was also less effective than normal; his stench didn’t affect even the necromancers, who must have a class ability or had just built up a resistance to bad smells over the years, given the nature of their work.
Her stinky champion did do something nice, though. When the fight turned against him, he batted the gnome Surly out of the attic window. Sure, he fell two floors down to the lawn, breaking his leg and arm in the process, but he was saved from the necromancers who were just about to zap him. The gnomes ran from the core room to grab their injured comrade. Surly cussed up a storm the whole time, but Florence gave him a break since he was hurt.
Inside her core room, the gnomes began to build another makeshift fortification, preparing to make a final stand and defend their home if the enemy made it this far. The enemy still had to fight past the home champion and the last of her kitties. Florence also had just under five hundred mana to work with, and she began to use it, summoning several kitty defenders and buffing everyone once the horde shambled their way down to the lawn, their number down to eighteen functional zombies. A few zombies fell from the ladders, damaging themselves further, but they all made it onto the back lawn, where the battle was picking up steam.
Florence had summoned eight of her kitties, the upgraded ability now generating multiple kitties per cast. It was a good mix of brawlers, including Baxter, Tater, Astrid, and Sasha, as well as a mage kitty, Zeus, and a trio of commandos, Marshmallow, Willow, and Obi. They joined the current cats on the lawn—Spooky, Sun Wukong, Lizzy, and Scamp—as they tore into the remaining zombies. The necromancers tried to support their undead with another necromantic cloud, but her babies were able to claw down the last of the zombies before they succumbed to the cloud.
As the cloud dissipated, only her Spooky was still standing. She was the subtype ethereal assassin and had vanished into her ethereal form as the cloud briefly covered the lawn. The short duration of the cloud told Florence that the two brothers were just about out of mana. Now that the danger had passed, Spooky leaped into action, appearing behind and clawing into one of the necromancer brothers. Her initial strike glanced off a magical shield, but the next strike dug deep into the mage’s chest, interrupting the spell he was about to cast on her.
“No, you will not harm my brother!” the other brother shouted, firing off a black bolt of energy into Spooky, knocking the cat out of the fight.
“Are you okay, brother?” the uninjured one asked.
“I’m good. Just give me a moment. We only have the champion and then the core is ours. The master will reward us greatly for this. Help me raise what we can for the final strike,” the injured brother replied. They kept an eye on Mortimer in the distance as they assessed the remains of the zombies, looking to piece together something for the final strike.
“It’s over,” Reggie said with confidence.
“What do you mean?” Florence asked, a bit worried about what the mage meant.
“The necromancers are done. Watch.” He gestured toward the TV, which now showed the back lawn with the brothers rooting about.
Florence didn’t need no TV; she could see everything in her home. A glimpse of movement caught her eye, and then six figures appeared, three around each of the brothers. Silent, the guild rogues drove their blades deep, enchantments on their weapons overcoming whatever shielding had hampered Spooky’s attack. With only enough time for a short squeak of surprise from the necromancers, the threat was ended. A quick strike with enchanted and poisoned blades had done in the pair that had given Florence and her defenders so much trouble.
“Just how long have they been stalking those two? You know, you could have done that sooner and saved me a lot of trouble,” Florence said.
“They weren’t going to strike while there was a room full of zombies to attack them. They needed to wait until the two mages were alone and distracted. Still, I think that deserves some extra reward, doesn’t it?” Reggie asked.
“I suppose so. I’ll sweeten the deal when I can, but the fight’s just getting started and I need to respawn my defenders,” Florence said. She could hear Patricio and the others talking with the rogues guild mage, but she was focused on two things. First, replacing her losses, and second, figuring out what Berikoz was up to. This here group must not have been part of the dungeon itself, and they sure gave her a big dump of experience. Sadly, not enough for the next level, but she was getting close.
She sensed something near her home. It looked like the other dungeon was tunneling toward her, using the distraction of the attack to try and reach her core room directly. They had almost done it, too, but she should have just enough time to send a tunnel from the front yard to intercept the dungeon that lich controlled.
Chapter 39
“What do you think Berikoz will do?” Doug asked, sharing Florence’s vision as her tunnels moved to intercept the one creeping closer to her core.
“I guess he attacks. His dungeon is likely higher level than ours, and he’ll think that his defenders will outclass our own,” Florence speculated.
“Won’t he just wait for you to make the first move, making your forces fight through his dungeon, depriving you of the mana and gathering it for himself?” Patricio asked.
“I don’t believe so,” George replied. “I think he will press the attack for two reasons. The first reason is that once we have invaders in his dungeon, he can’t respawn anything until we’re gone. Even if his defenders outfight our own, we can keep spawning new units and sending them into the fight, whittling down his army the whole time. Of course, the number we can spawn will be limited by our mana regeneration rate, but mana is flowing into the home at a modest pace, a pace that is slightly improved by the presence of the guild members among us.”
“And the second reason?” Patricio asked.
“I can answer that one,” Florence offered. “We’ve tracked him to his last hidey hole, and Berikoz probably figures that we’re going to sell him out to all of them folks looking to collect for the trouble that he is responsible for. In fact, I’d like Reggie to do just that. If things go sideways, you teleport back home and get your guild to sell this information right quick, before Berikoz can make some kind of escape.”
“I could go do that now,” Reggie suggested.
“Hold your horses. Let us take our shot first. Them adventurers guild people aren’t too happy with us right now, and we’ll probably get wiped out once they’ve dealt with Berikoz. Now, I’m getting close to breaking through into their tunnel, and once that happens, I’ve got a plan.”
“This should be good,” Doug said sarcastically, and his attitude was the exact reason she hadn’t clued him in on the plan earlier. She’d been thinking over the problem of how to get to Berikoz ever since they got here, and she thought she might have a solution.
“Okay, here’s the plan. Once the tunnels are linked, we launch our attack. Berikoz won’t want us to get inside his home, so he likely already has his army in the tunnel or ready to go. Our armies would clash in the no man’s land between the two cores.” Florence paused to see if everyone understood the first part.
“Not much of a plan. Our forces will be pushed back by higher-level troops that Berikoz commands,” Doug said.
“That’s what we want him to think, but I think we’ll do better than you’re figuring. He doesn’t have two core fragments that can summon extra defenders, and both George and Sabrina have separate mana pools, so we should be able to throw greater numbers at him,” Florence said.
“Okay, I buy that, but how do we actually win?” Doug asked.
“That’ll be up to Reggie here, if he’s willing to help and make himself rich at the same time,” Florence said. The guild mage seemed like an okay fella, but he was a rogues guild mage, after all, and the promise of money was always a motivator for those folks. The reality was that Florence could generate an almost limitless stream of funds with her reward chests. Of course, that was limited by her mana, so there was a hard cap on what she could produce every day. Still, giving up a day’s worth of mana to compensate Reggie for his help would be a small price to pay.
“What exactly do you need me to do?” he asked.
“Once the battle starts, I need you to sneak outside and find the entrance to the other dungeon. Don’t go in. Just get a good look at it so you can teleport us as close to it as possible. Then hustle your way back here to get ready to send us all to the other dungeon’s entrance. We’ve been here a while now, and I’m sure that by the time we need to move, I can transform us back into our hybrid forms and assault the dungeon while most if not all of its defenders are far away in the tunnels, trying to attack us here.”
“But won’t all our defenders disappear once we change into hybrids?” George asked.
“Yeah, but they won’t know what happened right away, and I’m guessing they’ll still charge into the empty home once the defenders are gone, trying to get their ugly mitts on our cores. Before we teleport out, I’ll summon everything I can to keep up the illusion that we’re still here fighting,” Florence said.
“That’s… Well, it might work. It’s a bit hair-brained and there are far too many moving parts, but I could see it working,” Doug said, looking shocked that he was agreeing with her.
“Don’t sound so surprised, Doug. Now, I’m open to suggestions,” Florence said.
“And I haven’t agreed to any of this yet,” Reggie advised.
“Well, if you don’t want to get rich, I can understand,” Florence said.
“No, I want to get rich, but I want to live long enough to actually collect those riches. If your plan doesn’t work, I’ll have made all that effort for nothing. I may even be on the hit list for that lich, which is something I’d like to avoid.”
“Don’t be a scaredy-cat. All you have to do is teleport us. Then you and the rest of your crew can zap yourselves back home if things go south.”
“And return home empty-handed? Scythe might not like that, and she scares me about as much as the lich does,” Reggie said.
“You got something, about a hundred reward chests worth of stuff and information they can sell for a whole lot more. If we win, you’ll be sitting pretty,” Florence said.
“Okay, you boys willing to take a bit of risk?” Reggie asked the other rogues who had joined them in the core room.
“I’ll help. I like Florence and her kitties,” Hendry offered. The other six wanted to confirm they were getting paid as well, which Florence promised. Then they were all on board.
“I’d like to make one tweak to the plan,” George said. “When we transform into our hybrid forms, don’t burn up your mana to summon defenders. The lich’s army will flood in regardless, and we’d be better served with you having some magic available to help us mop up any defenders that may be left behind in the dungeon.”
“Sounds good to me, if you think it’ll work,” Florence said. George was a right smart guy, so she was inclined to accept his suggestion. “Good, now get moving, Reggie. We don’t know how far away that other dungeon is and you need to make it there and back again.”
“Well, it may not be much of a plan, and the lich might just swat us all down like flies, but we’ll make the best of it,” Doug whined as the rogues left on their mission.
A short while later, Florence finally breached the other tunnel and sent her defenders inside. The lich had made an effort to excavate the tunnels as wide as a football field and as tall as a two-story house. It didn’t take long for her to find out why, as her defenders ran into the first of their opponents. Stomping toward them were a pair of giants, and these guys looked like the real deal, complete with chainmail armor and giant axes to fit their size. Right behind them was a slew of what she could only think of as Vikings. Or at least they looked like Vikings in the old movies. Sure, them historian fellas she caught on a show once debunked the horned helmets and whatnot, but she still thought of that as Viking gear, and these guys sure were decked out with it. Interspersed among the Vikings were a few war dogs or wolves that looked right ornery.
“And now we see the lich’s influence on this core,” Doug said as the two sides grew closer and she got a better look. These weren’t living beings, after all; these here attackers were all undead of some sort. Unlike the dumb zombies they had just fought, these here seemed smart enough to use weapons and work together—or at least not stumble into each other’s way while they marched.
Magic began to stream out from both sides as the undead shamans from Berikoz’s army and the various mage kitties from Florence’s got into the action. She was worried when some of them nasty necromantic clouds appeared, but while they hurt her kitties, these ones didn’t have the same punch as the ones those two brothers had cast in her home. Other than the clouds, they were assaulted with dark beams of necromantic energy as well as spells to sap the energy and strength of her babies.
“They are powerful, but not by as great a margin as I’d feared,” George noted as the fight got underway in earnest. “In fact, I think we may have the advantage when it comes to magic. The variety of magic types in our army are causing them some trouble, whereas the enemy’s casters are all necromancers.”
He was right. The melee wasn’t going all that well, but they had a few heavy hitters like Crusher that could stand up to the giants, but the Vikings were more than a match for her poor brawler kitties. The commando kitties did what they could, getting in sneak attacks here and there, but once they were spotted, a single swipe of an axe was enough to finish the job. Her mage kitties ran the gamut from fire and water to summoning and enhancement. There was even a necromancer. They poured on the spells, emptying their small mana pools, then moved back to let them slowly replenish.
Her troops were being pushed back, though, and faster than she thought. Florence, George, and Sabrina were working hard to resummon the fallen, but their mana was dropping, and soon, the flood of reinforcements became a trickle. The only thing saving them was that Berikoz had the same trouble. It didn’t matter how many more levels he had over them, and she was willing to bet this other dungeon wasn’t more than two or three higher than her; there was only so much mana a dungeon could absorb from the area around it. Both sides were taking losses faster than they could replenish them.
“They’re getting kind of close,” Doug said, worry seeping into his voice. It was true, and if the enemy got inside their home before Reggie came back, they’d be overwhelmed.
“Come on, boys. We’ve got work to do,” Fizz said.
“Where are you going?” Florence asked as the gnomes started to march out of the core room.
“Getting our stuff and stopping those undead creeps,” Fizz said.
“Hey, you don’t respawn. Be careful,” Doug said.
“We’ll be fine. We got gadgets,” Fizz said with confidence.
“Let them go. It’s their home, too, and they’re willing to risk their safety to defend it. They know the risk,” Florence said, wishing she hadn’t and that she could order them to stay safe, but that wouldn’t be fair to the gnomes. She had allowed them to live in the home, to become dependent on her, but that didn’t give her the right to run their lives or make all the decisions for them.
Gnomes could move surprisingly quick when they set their mind to it, even when hauling around what looked like twice their bodyweight in gear. They gathered well behind the main line of fighting, constructing another of their makeshift barricades. The front line drew closer and closer as the gnomes went back to their home several times for more stuff. With only twenty yards separating them from the battle, Fizz declared they were done. The wall was about shoulder high for the gnomes, enough for them to fire their crossbows over and then duck into cover.
When a fresh undead giant marched up, the four gnomes with the makeshift water guns got into the fight, spraying Sabrina’s slime creatures onto the formidable opponent. The undead behemoth couldn’t feel pain, but it did look kind of worried as it was rapidly dissolved by the slimes. The other attackers might have been smart enough to use weapons, but they weren’t smart enough to realize the threat the slimes represented. The four smallish blobs destroyed four times their number of opponents before one of the undead shamans finally started to pelt them with magic, the only thing they had in their arsenal that could affect a slime.
Fizz and his wall of defenders helped hold back the tide of undead, providing a bulwark for the kitty defenders to rally behind and an obstacle the enemy had a hard time overcoming. They weren’t without losses, though. Sadly, two of their number were struck down by the enemy shaman, and another three were lost when part of the wall was hit by a giant’s axe, crushing that section and the defenders behind it. Still, they were buying time that Florence desperately needed.
The battle dragged on, and even though Reggie had returned and said he was ready, they were waiting for the last of the required twenty-four hours to pass so Florence could transform them back into their hybrid form and they could be teleported out. Fizz had to give up on his defense, pulling back from the front lines with, sadly, only twelve survivors from his clan.
“Thank you, Fizz. You folks sure showed them undead critters how a gnome can fight. Now, everyone, get ready. Fizz helped buy us enough time, and we can transform in a minute. Reggie, as soon as you see us in our hybrid forms, get that portal opened. It sometimes takes us a few minutes to come to after the transformation so go ahead and toss us in if you need to. Everyone ready?” Florence asked. It was go-time, and she was feeling nervous but was also excited to see the end to this. She reverted to her hybrid form, and everything went black around her. The last thing she could see was Reggie opening the portal.
