Even Jack and Reggie didn’t like the pollution of Fry City, and they ended up going back to New Ireland to continue their Sleezenak dinner.


    I helped by tossing Sleezenak out to them. It was kind of strange hurling lizards at them, one after another, like they were bags of potatoes, but I was feeling good. Not only had Opal healed my arm, the spear crystals put her back to 99%. We’d won the war, and now, we were free to search for Holly.


    We were all desperate to get going. Fry City was in complete darkness, and the absence of light was unsettling. New Ireland was much better. Two moons gave us plenty of light. I’d thought about taking the Cadillac in Fry City, but the motorcycles were far better offroad. I was worried that the car didn’t have enough clearance.


    I approached Jack and Reggie as they sucked down all that lizard meat. They ate the whole thing, all the bodies, and didn’t spit out the leather.


    “Are you going to be able to digest the leather clothes?” I asked.


    Jack stopped eating and gave me a long look. Yes, Sid. These bodies are very adept predators. At some point, we might vomit bones and other detritus, and yet the flesh will nourish the bodies of our World Beasts. We thank you.


    “We’re going to leave you, guys,” I said. “We have to find our friend.”


    Reggie didn’t respond. He just pulled off another body off the pile and chomped done on it like it was a big chicken nugget…with a tail.


    Jack gave me a very frowny look. We will be very full of meat when we are finished. We aided you in the destruction of your enemy, and we are grateful that we could help. We would like a favor. Would you take our friend, Green Colony, and find them a true World Beast?


    Reggie finally said something. He will not do it. He does not care about us or our kind. He only used us for his selfish needs. Blessed Thinkers are loathe to help us because they don’t know the Way of Molvo.


    Before I knew it, I lost my temper. I needed to find Holly and arguing with Reggie wasn’t helping us. At the same time, I didn’t just want to abandon the T. rexes. “Fine, Reggie, I know you are never going to trust me, but Jack does. You trust Jack, don’t you?”


    Jack had stopped chewing. It was clear he was waiting for Reggie to answer.


    By that time, Billie and Khanna purred up next to us on their motorcycle, the power crystal gleaming on its gas tanks.


    Billie was pale. “Come on, Sid, let’s go. No need to get all upset. They’re just dinosaurs.” Her laughter came out sad. “Yeah, I can’t believe I just said that.”


    “We have to go,” I told the dinosaurs. “You can stay if you want…”


    Jack glanced over at Reggie with such a hopeful expression. We have eaten enough. Come, Black Colony. Let us go with Sid and his yeasty friends.


    Reggie belched. His breath stank of chewed up lizard bitch. We will trust White Colony. We will go with them while we digest our food. We can come back to this place to eat more later.


    I was kind of surprised by that, but I was glad they were with us.


    We took off from Fry City, though again, the fungasaurs were slowing us down. I was torn. We had headlights on our motorcycles, so we could go faster, but then we wouldn’t have our escort.


    We went back to the hill where we’d had our first battle with the reptilian biker gang, gathered up our stuff, and then followed Holly’s tracks, relatively y fresh in the soft ground of the hilly grasslands.


    We were moving slowly up a hill when Reggie’s voice appeared in my mind. Stickman, I want you to understand me more. I will trust White Colony and Green Colony until the end of the time. I was alone when I first came to K’Shaul, on a very nice World Beast, a Sacred World Beast, what we call the Grand Beast of the Blessed Thinkers. I didn’t know if a predator would find my Grand Beast and kill it, dispersing me to the Great Cloud All Around. On Molvo, the Grand Beasts are raised by the Blessed Thinkers, Servants of Molvo, who understand the Way of Molvo and honor us.


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    I wasn’t sure I was understanding. Luckily, I had an ace in the hole.


    “Opal, can you help me out?”


    Molvo is the name of their world and their deity. The Blessed Thinkers are a sentient race of hominids, not unlike yourself, that realized that the Colorspore Colonies were sentient. They bread the Grand Beasts, which are similar your hippopotamuses. They are very large herbivores, and they are very powerful, with few known predators. The Ravana Storm must’ve captured the Grand Beasts when it took Reggie from Molvo.


    Both Jack and Reggie heard Opal, since we were so connected with each other.


    Jack liked what he heard. Yes, a concise explanation.


    Reggie, though, sounded pissed off. That is what I said. I was very clear. I was on K’Shaul a long time, alone, but then I met White Colony, whom I did not know on Molvo. Here, we became comrades. We were being hunted by large canine predators, and we ran from sector to sector, and we feared we would lose our World Beasts before we found replacements. In the rainforest, where it is warm and wet and nice, we found a home. There, we found new World Beasts, beasts savage enough to kill anything that tried to harm us. Green Colony had already found his new World Beast. He greeted us. He helped us with the very difficult rituals of World Migration. We have strayed some from the Way of Molzo. That shames me.


    Jack’s huge footsteps came down next to us, smashing down, over and over, boom, boom, boom. Jack snorted. Now, Reggie, we will tell Sid the Way of Molvo. He is our friend. Do you agree?


    Reggie sighed. We agree. We are not happy. But we understand.


    Jack continued. The Way of Molvo is to honor life. The Way of Molvo means we only use the Blessed Ignorant for our World Beasts. It is against the Way of Molvo to use a Blessed Thinker as a World Beast no matter the size. The Way of Molvo dictates that the ideal World Beast do not eat other beasts but eat of the plants of the World. However, predators can be used as long as Blessed Thinkers are not devoured.


    Reggie disagreed. No, White Colony. The Way of Molvo says only the planteaters should be World Beasts. We are breaking the rule by using predators as our World Beasts, but we have no choice. We ate of the Sleezenak, and they are of the Blessed Thinkers.


    And suddenly the two were in a theological debate.


    Jack had a counter argument. Not Blessed Thinkers. They are Hateful Thinkers. They violate the Way of Molvo by eating the flesh of the sentient. We are in alignment with the Way of Molvo if we embrace a more liberal view of the doctrine.


    Reggie grumbled, I find your justifications troubling. Yet, I agree. We had little choice in the matter. The Way of Molvo does say that life is better than death, though death is important. We can learn much from death.


    Jack continued that line of thought. That is why, when Blessed Thinkers die, we visit their flesh and watch, learn, and experience the passing of their flesh as the death spores and other bacteria feast. In the end, all will die. There are important lessons to be learned from that.


    I thought about our conversation. Like us, the Colorspore Colonies had been caught by the Ravana Storm and brought to K’Shaul. And like us, they were just trying to survive any way they could.


    They didn’t know any more about K’Shaul than I did.


    Finally, Billie yelled at me. “What are you and Jack and Reggie talking about? I’m hoping it’s a way to find Holly faster because going this slow is killing me.”


    “This is what we’re going to do,” I said to her over the purr of my engine. “When we hit Lava World, we’re going to split up. Jack will walk north of us, by a thousand meters, and Reggie will talk south. We’ll keep an eye out for any sign of Holly. In the end, we can cover more territory that way.”


    Billie threw me a kiss. “You’re so smart.”


    Khanna looked confused, so I told her the plan.


    She nodded. “Many eyes are better. Khanna also know your spirit will look. Khanna is learning to trust your spirit.”


    “Good, because Opal is very useful.”


    It wasn’t long until we hit the lava fields. By that time, I’d explained the Way of Molvo to Billie and Khanna, in two languages.


    Khanna just assumed the spirits were lying.


    Billie, on the other hand, got a goofy look on her face. “Now I feel bad for throwing all the moldy things away in my mom’s refrigerator. They might have been the Blessed Thinkers.”


    “No, I think if the refrigerator mold were sentient, it would be a Colorspore Colony. We’re the Blessed Thinkers because we’re sentient. It’s a whole thing.”


    Billie smiled. She looked like she was in better spirits, but she was still so tired. The day had felt like it had lasted a week, and it wasn’t over just yet.


    The sky above Lava World was completely dark, the stars blocked out by the thick atmosphere. At least there was a good amount of oxygen there now. Standing on the hill, we saw that the black plain was lit up here and there by pools of glowing lava. Here and there, a few fountains of liquid rock went splashing across the dark ground. Most of the liquid rock had cooled, however, and we found a path through the fountains and pools.


    Jack and Reggie understood their assignments. Jack angled toward the north while Reggie walked the southern route. The two T. rexes still had their armored feet from the battle with the Sleezenak.


    Opal continued to scan for Holly. She also kept us on the right path, avoiding any places where the crust of cooled rock was too thin. We didn’t want to end up wading through lava.


    Not walking with our T. rex friends felt strange, but I could reach out to them at any time. Opal made sure to check on them to make sure they were okay. If they did get into trouble, there weren’t any World Beasts, not a single mouse, on Lava World that they could escape to.


    We just had to hope for the best. Finding Holly was our number one goal.