Page 154 of Shroom for Improvement

Sonny side-eyed me, then turned back to Mr Dupont. “I don’t trust you.”

Mrs Ziegler stepped into the room, and everybody’s attention was drawn to her. It was as though the air in the room was being vacuumed out.

“You don’t need to trust him. But I’m asking you to trust me. Jasper... and I have had a chat, and well, it’s my fault. I may have, in the past, asked for things that would affect not only me. That would have a much broader impact...” She looked around the dining room. Her gaze landed on Oggy, and she let out a breath. “I’ve been incredibly selfish. But we’ve made a deal—a soul bond, actually. Jasper and I are now tied as one. If I am destroyed, Jasper will be destroyed along with me.”

Oggy gasped, her eyes bulged. “Woah.”

Sonny’s fingers tightened within mine.

“I get it,” John said. He took out his notepad and scribbled something inside. “Kill the mothership.” Had he had that thing on him the entire time?

Mr Dupont coughed. “Also... pinky promise not to kidnap you.” He held out the baby finger of his right hand.

Sonny peered down at Mr Dupont’s finger as though it were a dead mouse, but eventually he wrapped his own aroundit. He turned to me and shrugged, and in truth, I could not think of an apter response to the happenings of the past twenty-four hours.

“Grubs up!” Willow came into the room holding two plates aloft. They placed them on our usual table-clothed table. Eggs royale and a vegetarian fry-up. Like Oggy’s, only not as well presented.

Oggy retched. “Sorry. Food smells. I need some air.” Then she got up and left us.

Willow brought out another two plates of food, one for John and one for themselves, and plopped them on the table near ours.

“Jasper Dupont, it’s time for your punishment,” Mrs Ziegler said without a shred of emotion. She turned and waltzed out of the room.

Mr Dupont laughed the dirtiest laugh I’d ever heard and ran after her.

Sonny and I sat down.

“She’s not mad he tried to kill her?” he asked, picking up his fork.

I thought about those two. Everything Mrs Ziegler had said to me. She was an immortal prisoner, stuck in this house for the rest of time.

“Once you have seen as many atrocities as I have, you begin to learn who can recover from their actions and whose soul will be permanently maimed.”

She had been talking about herself. By trying to destroy Stinkhorn Manor, Mr Dupont had offered her the only way out. And now he had tied himself to her.

And I felt strangely sad.

“It’s... complicated, I guess,” I said. In the future, we’d discuss the pair of them at length. But now wasn’t the time.

Sonny nodded. He understood. Of course he did. He was fucking brilliant at everything.

I had an idea. “Hey, Sonny?”

He lifted his eyes to me. Butterflies swirled in my stomach.

“Would you like to create some science cultures from my... magic source?”

He dropped his fork. His eyes went so wide I was worried they’d never stop growing. His cheeks flushed all the way to the tops of his ears. “I would love that. Oh, gods, I would love that so much. Claude, I love you. You would jizz in a cup for me? Hey, I can say jizz if it’s not related to therriiiiiicccchhhhaaaahhh.Sort of.”

I leant over the table, seized Sonny’s face in both of my hands, and kissed him. “I would jizz on anything for you.”

The CrossRealm Circular Railway

Two years later

Claude

The entire ceiling was a domed skylight, stretching from one wall to the other, the glass crystal clear. Not a smudge in sight. If we’d been sitting up, we would have seen the tips of the mountains from the East Winterlands region of the Eight and a Half Kingdoms. But since neither of us had the energy to sit, all we saw was the aurora borealis as it decorated the night sky above our heads with pinks and purples and greens.

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