Chapter 1685 – Well Designed

[I’m sure you’ll be able to work something out,] Granin grumbles, clearly irritated. [Can you worry about this later? There are more important–]

[More important? More important?! What are you even saying? There is NOTHING more important than tickle time!]

The golgari shaper rolls his eyes then sighs heavily.

[Anthony, you’ve been asleep for six months. Can you shut up about grubs for five minutes so we can talk about what happened when you evolved?]

[I can’t help but feel like you’re dismissing my suffering, Granin.]

[You poked me like I was an infant a moment ago. You owe me.]

[… Fine. You have five minutes. After that, I want to launch into an in-depth analysis of all the ways I can be made smaller/gentler using multi-dimensional mana techniques. I’m telling you, this is going to be a major feature of the next evolution. Make sure you don’t forget! Grub tickling is what I live for, dammit.]

[Yes, yes, fine. Now shut up. We monitored you as best we could throughout the process, and as far as we can tell, every trace of the toxin was absorbed by your new organs. How are you feeling? Can you sense any traces of contamination?]

Corun and Torrina have joined the conversation, and they look equally concerned, staring up at me with worried faces. Tiny, tiny little faces.

Focus, Anthony. This is serious-ish business.

I perform a thorough internal check, but just as I suspected, there’s nothing there.

[Not a speck of corruption to be found,] I inform the three shapers. [In fact, my organs aren’t anything like what I expected. They’re all ‘purity’ this, and ‘cleansed’ that. What the heck happened?]

[I can still hardly believe what happened myself. Just after the evolution started, the snails appeared and cleansed the corruption right out of you.]

[Uh… what?]

[The chal. They sang at you for a day until the taint of Theorazzn was completely removed.]

I stare at Granin. He stares back at me.

We hold that stance for a moment as I try to determine whether this rock head is pulling on my legs.

[You’re telling me… that baby snails sang the poison of an Ancient out of my body?]

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

[Actually no,] Granin says, and I relax. He had me going there. [They didn’t take it out of you, they cleansed it. Which is much more difficult.]

[That’s insane! Have you lost your mind? Torrina, there’s no way this is true, right?]

She raises her hands in a helpless gesture.

[I’m sorry, Anthony, I saw it happen with my own eyes,] she says. [I can only say it was a miracle.]

Baby snails singing at me might have saved my life? I… really don’t know how to react to this.

[These snails…] I muse, rubbing my antennae together as I think. [Do they look… ticklish?]