"Oh!"

A featureless blue head-shaped blob of ooze popped up out of the top of the cuirass and turned to the sides, looking around. Blue could finally see again. They hadn't even realized their head was gone. To be fair, they didn't use it much, other than to see while they had their armor on. The metal plates blocked all their vision except for the eye slit in their helmet. Oh right, their helmet.

Blue's head grew slightly bigger, just enough that their helmet could emerge from the top of it and fall back over it once they reduced it back to its normal size. They adjusted it, making sure it was in its proper position with their hands. The top of the helmet was a little dented from Astrid's hammer strike, but they'd fix that later along with their cuirass.

"Ooh, is this that one that tastes like fire?" Blue asked as they took the chocolate, but didn't even wait for a response before it sank right into their slimy hand and disappeared. The slime quickly changed hues from a bright blue to a fiery orange that had a slight glow to it like it was burning hot.

They reformed their hands back into the wolfish claws and their armor crackled with electricity again. Two slimy tendrils emerged from under their pauldrons and the plated of their cuirass shifted to open a hole in the back for a long, snake-like tail of glowing orange slime to emerge. Those trees surprised them before, but this time they'd be ready! They weren't going to get the drop on them again!

"Let's eat some trees! Uh, I mean, let's chop some trees!" Blue declared excitedly, slipping into their knightly impression again.

But, Astrid and Blue weren't the only ones more wary now. The two Murkwood Spawn moved more cautiously, no longer assuming a simple ambush would be enough to deal with these two.

---

Lightning Armor
Eldritch Claws
Dancing Chains
Prehensile Tail

Astrid laughs as Blue collects themself and gets back into ship shape, or rather, fighting shape. “There ya go!” she says cheerfully. The fight may have started off badly, but they can turn things around in no time.

Before she has a chance to even explain what the chocolate it, Blue takes it from her hand. “Ah, yeah…” And suddenly, the ooze knight is a glowing orange color. The shift reminds Astrid of the times she switches from the lightning forge to the regular forge. She wonders what other colors Blue might turn and decides that’s an experiment for another day.

With the two of them ready to fight, Astrid rushes off in the direction she saw the Murkwood Spawn slink off to. “Come on out, ya stupid wooden leggy boys!” she goads. As much as she wants to preemptively become a creature of lightning, that might deter them from attacking since she was something that shocked them earlier. It’s hard to tell the difference between the usual trees of the Kingswood and the Murkwood Spawn, but now they have an idea of what to look for.

When she sees a tree that looks like one of the Spawn, Astrid tosses one of the charged rocks to the base of it. The tree doesn’t move, but something about its features look right. Well, might as well give that a try! Astrid detonates the rock with an explosion of flames, and the Spawn, which was actually the tree beside it, gets hit with some of the heated shrapnel. It screeches and starts fleeing.

“There’s one!”

Orange Blue ran past Astrid, at the tree attempting to flee from them. One claw morphed and elongated into a gooey tendril that whipped forward and just managed to wrap around one of the tree's legs. With its leg yanked out from under them, the tree fell forward with a loud crash. Blue cheerily started to reel it in like a fish on a hook.

The tree screeched in pain as electricity travelled up the slimy whip and into its leg. With the lightning burning it, along with the heat of the newly fiery slime, the tree's leg would soon be reduced to charcoal and leave it unable to hide or even walk.

"Ha! No more sneaking up on us now!" They taunted.

Meanwhile, the other tree snuck up behind them.

Just as it had done before, a spindly wooden hand came down and attempted to ambush them. The Murkwood Spawn made to grab Astrid from above, but this time they were far less careful about kidnapping their prey alive. Instead of aiming for the edge of her cuirass, it instead aimed directly at her head with the intention of crushing it or ripping it off her neck.

---

Rubber Whip

Astrid lets out a triumphant laugh as Blue rushes forward to tear into the fleeing Spawn. Where its leg is reduced to cinders, it snaps, sending the creature tumbling forward and making for an easy target to be finished off despite its desperate attempts to lash out from the ground.

With the other Spawn aiming for Astrid in a much more dangerous way, its hand snatches out at her exposed head when suddenly a bolt of lightning crashes down through the trees and strikes at the hand, blocking it and singeing the wooden fingers.^[1] Startled, Astrid whips around and sees the smoking wood retreat into the treetops.

“Oh, no ya don’t!” she cries, throwing the handful of fire-loaded rocks up in that direction. Pushing the activation magic through the air, they all explode in a cacophony of fire and smoke,^[2] blasting the branches away and creating a hole in the canopy above. The Murkwood Spawn falls to the ground and scrambles to get to its feet while flames dance along its surface.

Gripping her hammer, Astrid dashes forward^[3] and runs her hammer along the ground, bringing it up on the underside of the Spawn and sending it into the air.^[4] Her free hand reaches out to the air beneath the Spawn with her fingers poised to snap, the moment she can gather enough mana to convert magic to fire again for one nippy final blow.

---

1. Dancing Chain
2. Thunder Bomb activation (but fire)
3. Bullet Dash
4. Rising Strike
(Prepping Energy Transformation for Frost Flash but ET has a 3 post cycle)

Blue was about to charge forward and continue attacking the tree that was now one-legged and struggling to try to crawl away, but they were distracted by the sound and flash of lightning behind them. Looking back, they saw the other tree had gotten the drop on them from behind, but Astrid had handled it this time without a problem.

The one-legged tree was scrambling across the ground as fast as it could, forced to perform a jerky, three legged crawl on its hands, but it wasn't very fast. The plates in the front of Blue's armor opened up and they spat out a large glob of goo that splattered on top of the fleeing monster and sizzled. The monster let out a shriek of pain and fell, its hands slipping in the slime around it before it suddenly felt itself being jerked backwards.

Behind it, a long blue tendril of ooze connected the creature's remaining leg with Blue's faceless blob of a head, their helmet gone. The tree grabbed at whatever it could to try and attempt to keep itself from being dragged toward the ooze, rocks, low tree branches, exposed roots, but nothing stopped it from approaching its doom.

Blue leaned forward to line up the hole in the top of their cuirass with the approaching long slender form of the tree creature and with one final strong tug from the slimy tendril around its leg, the creature was pulled straight into the ooze without a trace.

Blue stood back up with a small burp and a hand on their stomach. There was no time to have much after meal relaxation though, as Astrid was still locked in combat with the other tree. They turned around to see how she was handling it and saw the other tree in the air, on fire, while Astrid was charging a spell.

---

Acid Bubble
Tongue Lash

The moment the Murkwood Spawn falls back into range, Astrid feels a surge of magical energy. Twisting it from ice to fire,^[1] she snaps her fingers and brings down a hail of fiery wind down on the Spawn.^[2] Flames and heat eat away at the Spawn while it shrieks in pain until the wood making up its body carbonizes into charcoal and can no longer move without breaking.

Her hair and face singed from the heat, Astrid looks over to see the last seconds of Blue dragging the other defeated Spawn towards themselves in some attempt to satisfy their endless hunger. In no time at all, it’s gone, so she turns to look at them fully and motions to the crispy wooden mess of mangled limbs on the ground. “Got a snack fer ya!” she says chipperly. "Ya made sure ta kill that one before eatin' it, right?" Gods she hopes so. She really hopes so. They just talked about it.

Thinking back to their purpose here, she nods with satisfaction. “The reports were only about two a’ these thin’s, so I think we’re finished here. Job well done, Blue!” Astrid says, holding a hand up for a triumphant high five. “How’s yer head blob? Feelin’ alright? I really didn’t mean ta smack ya, but if ya need some healin’, I can help ya out with that. Maybe da’ll make us a snack when we get back home as a reward!”

As she speaks, she fishes out her House Key. The only problem is they need a door to go through that’ll take them home. Well, luckily there isn’t a village too far from here since that’s where they started their trip.

---

1. Energy Transformation
2. Frost Flash - but fire

Astrid had the other tree handled, and even cooked it to, in Blue's opinion, perfection. Any cooking was perfect to Blue though, including reducing it to charcoal. The ooze walked over to the twisted mess of burnt branches, sat down, and happily started breaking off bits and pieces and munching away. They only paused for a moment as Astrid asked if the other one they'd made sure the other one was dead when they ate it.

"Uhhhhhhhhh... Yyyyyyyyyeah! Definitely dead!" Blue gave a thumbs up as they lied extremely unconvincingly and went back to eating the other one more quickly, eager to finish it off so they could leave this place and not think about the fact they'd forgotten to do the one thing they'd just spoken about before this, not eating the Murkwood Spawn alive because it might not be a good idea.

When the last of the burnt wood that used to be a Murkwood Spawn was shoveled into the ooze, they stood back up quickly.

"My head blob's fine, but..." Blue started saying and stopped as they pulled their helmet out. The thing looked almost turned inside out as they held it in front of them, the horns broken. That hammer had really packed quite the punch. If Blue was human, their head at least would have been changed back into ooze in that moment.

They really liked their helmet. They liked all of their armor. It had been made especially for them by Astrid. But, the rest of their armor was made to have replacement plates. This was the first time their helmet had been more than just a little dented. There was no way even Astrid could fix this. They'd have to make a whole new one. They felt the broken nubs that used to be the horns they'd asked Astrid to add so they could feel like more a part of their family with Cantio and Astrid.

As unconvincing as Blue is, Astrid is certainly not convinced. Rather than rag on them though, she just offers a long stare of disappointment with a touch of exasperation. She, of course, is well aware that Blue’s memory is about as good as that of a goldfish. Scolding them won’t really do any good in this situation. With a raised eyebrow, she says, “Alright, well, just let me know if anythin’ weird happens inside yer stomach. I’ve got more than enough stuff ta take down a gooey undead.”

At least they have one definitely dead snack.

When Blue pulls out their helmet, Astrid gets her first good look at it, and her face immediately looks pained. On one hand, it withstood an attack from her pretty effectively. (Well, sort of. Blue managed to be knocked out, but they’re otherwise uninjured, so that’s considered a win.) On the other hand, it is in rough shape. With one hand, she takes the helmet then holds it between both hands to fully examine it. Pulling a bit of mending magic from Cantio might do a little to help here, but not a whole lot. One glance up at Blue’s formless head gives her enough information to figure out that Blue’s really pretty saddened by this development.

“Well, it ain’t somethin’ we can’t fix,” Astrid says. She hands the helmet back and digs into her bag for a special item she saves for emergencies: a wishbone.^[1] With it procured, she presents it proudly to Blue. “Put yer helmet on. We’re gonna make a wish!” Holding one side of the wishbone between two fingers, she offers them the other side. “Just take that side and pull it apart with me, an’ wish fer yer helmet ta be fixed! Supposedly, this belonged ta one a’ the greatest smiths who ever lived, so if ya break it, their spirit should come fix it – good as new! On three, ready? One, two, three!”

---

1. Blacksmith's wishbone

Blue eagerly took their half of the wishbone and nodded, their broken helmet sitting on top of their head and looking more like an upside-down tricorn hat than a helmet. They thought the helmet was too broken to repair, but if Astrid said this bone thing could do it, then they believed it even though they were sure Astrid was a better smith than whoever's spirit it summoned.

With a snap, the two halves of the wishbone broke apart, the larger piece ending up in Blue's hand. Blue looked at the piece of bone in their hand expectantly. What they were expecting, they really didn't know. Astrid said it would summon a spirit right? Did it work like Melioda? They looked around for a floating ghost with a hammer, but didn't see one.

After a moment, Blue thought the wishbone might not have worked, until they heard a barely audible whisper on the wind of a gruff, exasperated Dwarven voice.

_{"SHEEESH, what happened to this thing?"} 

The helmet on their head suddenly felt warm, not burning as if it was heated in a forge, but a gentle warmth. It started to pop back into its proper shape a little at a time, as if it was being hammered back into shape by unseen hands and tools. A barely audible sound of annoyed grumbling could be heard on the wind until the helmet was finally looking as good as new, any sign of damage completely gone.

_"There!" The exasperated Dwarven voice huffed with an air of satisfaction.

Blue felt the helmet covering their head once again and reached their hands up to feel it. It was in perfect condition. Even the horns had been reattached perfectly. They picked up Astrid into a hug that threatened to damage the front of their cuirass if they'd squeezed her any tighter.

"It worked!"

Just as expected, the wishbone snapped, and after some time, Blue’s helmet slowly worked its way back into shape. Usually, when Astrid makes use of the wishbone, she’s wearing the armor piece that’s broken, and she thinks this is the first time Blue gets to experience the strange way the magic of the bone (which also oddly enough fuses itself back together the next day) fixes any damage done. It even manages to correct the broken horns!

Suddenly, Blue’s arms are around Astrid, threatening to crush her and her armor against their armor plates. Without her cuirass, she might struggle to breathe. “Aye, Blue!” she giggles. “I told ya it would!” Somehow, she wiggles her arms free to roughly hug them around the neck rather than being pressed into her sides. “Good as new an’ perfect fer you.”

With all the other crazy and heavy things going on for Astrid, it’s been really refreshing to go on a simple adventure with her best friend, and honestly, she needed the back-breaking hug they have to offer. “This was a good day, I think,” she says. “What’d ya say we get back home an’ have ourselves a snack ta top it all off?”

Finally getting out of Blue’s grip, Astrid hops down and heads back to town, ready to find the first door with a keyhole and take them home to Dragon’s Cradle where Cantio can inevitably dote on them both and maybe make some hot chocolate.