Patti and Penny's boots crunched against the gravely soil lining the cave floor while enormous stalactites hung from the roof like sharp fangs of rock. Dozens of stalagmites rose up from the ground between spots of gravel, making the cave feel more like walking through a shark's jaw. Lining the ceiling were odd glowing rocks spotting the cave with dim, cool lights. Without them, the girls wouldn't have been able to see two inches before their noses.

"Psst, Penny." Patti whispered.

"Yeah?"

"Listen…the only way I have to defend myself or fight is with Tunes, so I don't think I'd be much of a help on the front lines…But I can keep track of our provisions and stuff." The girl patted the satchel still clinging to her shoulder, filled with a couple of mild coffees and sandwiches. She and Penny had stolen-er, borrowed-supplies from the Hamlin palace's kitchen before their departure.

Penny froze in her tracks and turned around. She held her chin with her right hand. "Right…Okay, then, here's the plan; you hang back with Tunes fighting for you. Coggette and I'll be out in the front dealing some damage with your familiar. If you or me get in bad shape, then we'll count on you to heal us, 'kay?"

Patti blinked. "Wait-you'll be in the front, too?"

"What? I can duke things out myself, too." The tomboy took a wide fighter stance while digging into the back pocket of her plaid skirt. She pulled out a wooden object in the shape of a Y with an elastic orange band stretched between the upper branches.

"A…slingshot?" Patti stared curiously at the weapon in her soulmate's hand.

"Hey, it's not a toy!" The girl barked, mistaking Patti's phrase as doubt. "I'm a dead shot with this thing and my trusty slingshot can really pack a punch!"

"O-oh, I didn't mean it like that, really! I just didn't know you had one…" Patti waved her hands in front of her chest while nodding her head.

Penny stretched the orange band back as she spoke. "Well, I promised Mom and Dad I wouldn't cause any trouble with it, so I didn't pull it out 'till now." She picked a round pebble from the gravel beneath her, pulled it back with the slingshot, and aimed for a far off stalactite. "Watch this, Pat!"

Penny released the rock, and the pebble flew away at lightning speed before hitting the base of the rock formation. After it bounced off and fell to the ground, a crack crawled around the stalactite. The heavy mass of rock fell down and pierced the ground with the fat end in the air like an ice cream cone.

Patti felt her saliva slosh nervously down her throat as she gulped, surprised. Meanwhile Penny spun the slingshot effortlessly around her fingers, grinning.

"What'd I tell ya'?"

"Wow…you're pretty good!"

"Thanks!" The tomboy chirped. She walked up to the broken rock formation and leaned against the end once attached to the ceiling. "Just wait until our 'little friend' gets a taste of it!" Penny winked, but at that exact moment, she pushed her weight too hard against the upside stalactite, and toppled over with it.

"W-whoa!" Thud!

"Penny!" Patti rushed to her soulmate. "Are you okay?!" She offered her hand, which the other girl grabbed as she got back on her feet.

"Yeah, fine," Penny brushed some dirt off her skirt. "Just-"

Before she could speak, a loud, strange echo brushed past the girl's ears. It was a peculiar sound…a noise hard to describe.

"W-what the heck is that?" Growing still, Penny cupped her ear to tune in on the echo, and her partner did the same.

"It…It sounds like…" Patti whispered, letting the sound sink into her ear drum.

Crunch, smap…cmunch, cmuch, cmunch…

"…Bah, just listening isn't gonna get us any answers!" Penny barked impatiently. She grabbed Patti's wrist and dragged her with her.

As the duo marched in the direction of the sound, the shyer girl observed the interior of the cave. Dozens more stalagmites lined the top with matching stalactites below. Every now and then a stray drop of water would run down the smooth rock and drip down, but the water droplet hardly made a sound, just a barely audible plop. It almost felt like a faint, steady heart beat inside a living animal. Where the water came from was a mystery to the young brunette.

But that wasn't the only thing unsettling about the sharp rocks. When Patti looked closer, she found sharp slash marks on several. A couple even had their pointed ends chopped clean off. She gulped, shivering as her mind fantasized how on earth such a thing was possible.

Her quivering spread to her hand as it gripped onto Penny's hand. Pausing in her tracks, the girl in brown turn around to face Patti.

"…Hey, it'll be okay, Pat."

The said girl gasped softly as her mind came back down to earth. Penny went on.

"We've got a killer plan, don't we?" She flashed a grin brazenly.

"…Yeah. And some killer familiars, too, don't we?" Patti chirped back.

"Mm-hmm! Let's go!"

Penny jogged with Patti, keeping up as she ran deeper into the cave. They felt the grey, gravely ground pound against their heels. After galloping like that for five minutes, the duo came face to face to a corner. The bizarre sound cut crisply though the air from that corner.

Patti rooted her feet and pulled her soulmate back. She whispered, "…W-we can't just run in like that. We have to be careful."

Penny nodded, and let the other girl walk slowly in front of her, as quietly as she could. The girl peeked around the bend. She found a large open area of the cave, like a room, with a huge pit in the middle. Patti snuck closer, taking in the fifty yard diameter of the hole. The brunette crept closer with her matching friend behind her. As they took a few more steps, the unnamable sound grew louder and clearer.

Taking a deep breath, Patti took one more step forward before lowering her body to the ground and crawled to the hole's edge. She quietly glanced into the pit, leaning her head over just a smidge.

Her breath froze midway through her throat.

Opposite to her in the hole was the back of a massive creature with unnatural purple fur. From the ground to the shoulder blades it was nine feet tall with the torso of a wild dog. However, instead of paws, this beast had sets of claws akin to a hawk's. And the tail was not something you'd see on an everyday animal. Leathery skin replaced thick fur with a sharp horn at the tip. The bizarre sound echoed from in front of the animal, which was occupied doing something.

"Th…th-that's-!" Penny stuttered before her soulmate gently slapped her palm over the tomboy's mouth.

"Shhh! We shouldn't let it know we're here yet!" She shushed.

"Oh…S-sorry."

"It's okay, we just have to be careful." Patti turned her stare back to the target. "…Now how to attack it…"

As the beast went about its business, oblivious to the girls, Patti took a careful look of her surroundings. Her blue eyes scanned for something-anything-that could be used to her and Penny's advantage. Aside from the great pit before them, this part of the cave shared all of the characteristics of the tunnels the duo had traveled moments before. Hard rock for floor and ceiling, pointy stalagmites for decorations, and curious glowing minerals for light fixtures.

The shy girl snapped out of her trance when her ears picked up Penny's strange breathing. Her eyes were slowly squinting shut and her mouth grew ajar in jerks.

"Ah…ah…ah…"

"…Oh, no, not now!" Patti hissed. She bolted around and reached out her arms to stop the sneeze, but her hands were too late.

"Ah-CHOO!"

Every bone and joint in Patti's body tensed as the sneeze's echo vibrated through the air. Clenching her teeth nervously, she turned back to the hole. The monster's head perked up abruptly and whipped around, revealing its face to the pair.

Crimson red pupils shone their knife sharp glare into the girl's souls. The wolf body had betrayed the mouth, for it was an eagle's beak, not a dog muzzle. Despite that, drool oozed from the corners of the mouth with stray pieces of fresh meat dangling from it. Penny gasped, realizing what the sound from earlier was; the sound of thick, raw meat being torn apart and devoured.

"Oh, man-"

"Penny, stay here!"

"Hey-what?" The tomboy barked as the other girl slid down the side of the pit.

When Patti made it to the bottom, she yelled, "Try to do something with your slingshot from up there! I'm going to distract it!" and headed towards the monster, waving her arms madly. "Hey, you! Over here!"

An ominous growl slid up the beast's throat, showing tiny needle-thin teeth. This creature was an erratic, bizarre hybrid of a wolf and a hawk and rage. He turned to her slowly and lunged forward.

"Aah!" Patti shrieked and ran off to the side. The beast's claws sank into the hard ground where she once stood. With a fierce growl, he chased after the brunette.

"Just hang in there, Pat'!" Penny snatched a rock besides her boot and pulled it back with the elastic band of the slingshot.

"Eat this, Fido!"

Her fingers let her ammunition fly from her and to the monster. It merely hit 'Fido's' shoulder harmlessly. He didn't even register it as he continued to case after Penny's soulmate.

"Darn it!" She cursed angrily, stomping her foot like a rabbit's.

"Try aiming somewhere else!" Patti shouted as she ran. "Somewhere more vulnerable!"

"Right! Just hang in there while I find a better rock!" The spunky preteen disappeared from the edge, searching for the perfect rock to launch.

Meanwhile the less-rambunctious girl tripped over her feet and fell to the gravely soil. An "Ow!" squeaked past her lips as her face hit the ground. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the enormous monster tower above her head. Any color left in her face was drained out by fear.

"On no, no,no…think, Patti, think! Don't just lay there! You have to do something!"

A growl bubbled up from the monster's throat.

A whimper slipped past Patti's vocal cords.

…and a "Leave her alone!" bombed out of Penny's mouth.

With a sharp snap, the pebble in Penny's weapon was released and zipped through the air right into Fido's beak. The rock hit the sharp bill spot on, sending a quick shot of pain into the monster's body. He grunted and whipped around to the other girl.

Penny tugged her lower eyelids down as her tongue left her mouth. "Nyaaah! Take that, you oversized furball!"

Fido snorted, kneeled to the floor, and jumped effortlessly out of the pit. He bared his unnatural fangs at the now frightened tomboy.

"W-whoa!" she yelped as she galloped away from the hybrid. "No one told me he could jump!"

"P-Penny!" Patti clumsily got to her feet when she felt the hem of her dress catch onto something on the floor. Puzzled, the girl looked down, shocked at the sight of human bones latching onto the robin egg blue fabric.

"A-ah!" She swatted her dress off of the white bones. Patches of dirt sprinkled the skeleton here and there. The bones were definitely not fresh, but not completely ancient. Patti's eyes trailed down the arm bones to the right skeletal hand.

The lanky finger bones curled lifelessly around a foot long stick with an orange orb at the tip. Bronze decorations lined the area connecting the stone with the rod, gleaming faintly in the light. Patti cautiously but curiously reached out and pried the dead hand open, removing the stick.

Her eyes traced over the smooth rod and fire colored gem at the top. Something about it radiated…power? Energy?

…Magic…?

"A-a wand…!" She gasped. Confused, she glared back at the skeleton.

"I guess he-er, or she-was a traveling wizard who ended up as Fido's dinner or something…" she thought, now eyeing the wand in her hands. The question was, did it work? Who knew how old the wand was?

…One way to find out.

"Hey! PATTI!"

Penny's yell snapped Patti back to her senses. She blinked and jerked her line of sight in the direction of her soulmate's distressed voice. The spunky preteen was running in circles around the edge of the pit with the brute animal at her heels, threatening to bite her feet off.

"Don't just stand there!" She barked with fright lining her voice. "Do something before I turn into Fido's next snack!"

Patti's fist tightened around the handle of the wand while she prayed that the wand still had some life left in its runes. She dug into her satchel and pulled out the thick Wizard's Companion. Madly flipping past the aged pages, she scanned for the spell chapter. After a hairy split second, the pages froze and the book floated from her hands.

"Fireball!"

A flickering ball of flames blossomed at the tip of her wand after she drew the rune in the air. Not wasting any time, she aimed her wand and released the sphere of heat towards the venomous monster.

The fireball crashed into Fido's flank like a volley ball coated in hungry flames, sending the hybrid monster flying into the wall with a hard thud. A strange combination of a whimper and an aggressive growl came from him as he got back to his feet. Midway up, a pebble shot out and hit him square on the beak yet again.

"Haha!" Penny boastfully said. "Take that, Fido! You've been one bad b-"

She stopped midsentence as Fido chomped at her leg, nearly succeeding. "Hey, watch it! This is my favorite skirt!"

He snorted, unimpressed, and leaped back into the pit, landing right in front of the wand baring girl.

Her mind worked at top speed as she cried, "Tunes! Body blast!"

The purple Shonky Honker emerged swiftly from her chest and slammed his feathery body into the ground, sending strong tremors through the soil. Fido lost his balance and nearly fell to his side with daggers in his eyes. Meanwhile the brunette took the chance to put some distance between the enemy and herself, still cradling the open book in her other arm.

Once again, The Wizard's Companion hovered in front of her as her wand outlined another glowing spell in the air.

"Pulse!"

An invisible blast shot out to the beast in several punches. He grunted loudly in pain, feeling bruises forming beneath his fur. Before he could shake his head to clear his mind, a shrill horn blasted a D-flat right into his eardrum. The monster screeched at the sound and attempted to bite the bell right off of the horn. Tunes back flipped at the last second, avoiding the would-be cruel fate.

At the same time, Penny found another suitable rock to launch, and stretched it back in the slingshot. Sticking the tip of her tongue out of her mouth in concentration, she carefully aimed for Fido's rump, and let go of the slingshot strap.

The rock must have hit a sore spot, for when it pinched the target, he roared out in pain. He pierced his fiery glare at the tomboy as she tensed her body under his gaze. Before she could flee, the monster's horn tipped tail whipped the side of her face, forcing her to lose her balance. Wasting no time, Fido cut his tail into the cliff near Penny. The solid rock grew crumbling cracks and became free to fall into the pit-and sending the girl down with them.

"Aah-ow-eech-ooch-ow-ooh-ack-ow!" She yelped as she fell down into the pit. The girl finally landed on solid ground with her feet in the air a bit comically before they came down and pulled her back upright.

"Hey, what's the big idea, fleabrain!?"

An evil growl slid past Fido's teeth. The angry hybrid sliced his tail against her body like a whip, without mercy or sympathy. She gritted her teeth while the horn pierced her thin skin, leaving bleeding cuts behind.

"Fireball!"

Patti's cry drew the monster's attention from her soulmate as another crackling orb of flame shot out towards him. He hissed sharply as it made contact with his neck. The enraged beast lunged for the girl in blue, but she sidestepped from his grasp.

"Penny! Are you okay?!"

"Y-yeah, fine!" Penny looked gravely at her cuts. Faint blue venom frosted over her blood and sent mild stings into her body. "Just stay away from his tail! It's got poison on it, too!"

Patti sent her familiar to distract Fido while she ran back to her partner's side. "W-what do we do now? We don't have that much time!" She said while eyeing Penny's injuries.

"W-well, the sooner we knock out Fido and get his spit, the better!" She barked. "Don't you have a powerful spell in your book or something?!"

"Uh-I think so…" Patti muttered as she furiously flipped through The Wizard's Companion. Runes of every shape and design flashed in front of her in the form of pages. However, a large beak with fangs suddenly tore the book out of her hands and shook it violently, like a frustrated puppy would with a squeaky toy. The old book was torn to shreds of aged parchment and fluttered to the ground in messy piles.

Patti and Penny stared at the remains of the book with shock and lost hope. The shyer girl raised her hands to her open mouth while the other stood still, agog.

"First Dad's old wand…now this…oh no…"

The hybrid creature was not in the mood to wait for the duo to recover from their shock. He let loose a ferocious roar in their faces, sending their pigtails dancing behind their heads.

"Patti, stand back!" The spunky preteen shoved the other girl back. "Coggette! Sand blast!"

An orange light bounced out of her chest as the Sprog Cog summoned a miniature sandstorm and let the fine grains pelt the monster's eyes. Fido hissed as his vision grew blurry with itchy sand. A golden, glimmering sphere of light floated out from the monster and grew attracted to the mechanical familiar.

"Time to let loose, girl!"

Coggette felt energy surging through her gears and power flowing along her circuits. The energy from the golden glim sent faint sparks of electricity into the air, orbiting around the Sprog Cog. With a high pitched howl, the familiar let the Bolt Shower explode in a storm of strength.

Lighting bolts flashed about the hybrid as their electrified edges cut past his body. He jerked erratically as every nerve in his body was electrocuted by the miniscule familiar's miracle move. Even after the familiar was done with her move, the brute's fur still tickled with charged electrons.

Before he could glare at the responsible Sprog Cog, she was summoned back into her master's chest, exhausted. Penny stared at the bizarre monster with a rock hard emotion in her eyes.

"Whatcha think of that, Fido?"

His response was his claws slapping across her body and shoving her to the wall, letting more venomous fluids sink into her bloodstream.

"Uugh!" Penny spat, tasting her own blood.

"Penny!" The other girl shrieked. "Tunes, distract Fido!"

Tunes nodded with resolution and ran towards the target. He jumped on his back and parped his horn rudely while Patti dashed to her soulmate, who had collapsed to the ground. She bent over and lifted the girl off the earth, pulling her away from the occupied monster.

"Penny, are you okay?!"

The tomboy winced before speaking. "Y-yeah, just a scratch!" Her eyes suddenly widened. "…Wait, are you okay?"

"Huh…? Um, I think so…?" Patti said, rubbing her neck. She had to admit her head and legs did feel a bit light…but it couldn't have been anything life threatening, right?

"Don't you remember our moms?!"

…The girl nearly dropped her wand as the light bulb went off in her head. Esther, Penny's mother, was heavily poisoned by life draining venom from the enraged monster…and Myrtle, her own mother, not sporting even the slightest scratch yet slowly dying…

It didn't take a rocket scientist to put two and two together.

"If you're hurt, then I'm-cough, cough!" Patti's throat became seized with a gravely cough. A sick feeling began to bubble in her gut.

Before they could question their conditions any further, a distressed musical note resonated through the air. The monster swatted the Shonky Honker away, and the brave little familiar tumbled weakly towards the girl's feet. A squeaky E-sharp blew past his beak.

"T-Tunes!"

Patti scooped the shivering bird into her thin arms, trying to warm his feathers. Her blue eyes grew worried as they stared at the feathery bundle she held. She felt his life as if it was her own; weak, tired, and quivering with pain.

The girl shut her eyes and let the musical bird disappear into her heart. After the familiar vanished, she reached into her satchel, pulled out a pair of triangular sandwiches, and held out one to Penny.

"Here, eat this. After you do, stand back."

"W-why?" Penny asked, accepting the sandwich and taking a large bite out of it.

"I…" She bit into her own sandwich quickly and chewed before finishing. "I'm going to try something."

"…'Kay." The tomboy mumbled with a half full mouth, feeling a bit of life return to her. "I trust ya'." Penny brushed the bread crumbs from her fingers and began to jog behind Patti, saying, "But if you need my trusty slingshot, just say the word; I'll be ready!"

Her optimistic voice betrayed how her body felt, however. The preteen plucked a rock from the ground sluggishly, feeling as if someone had injected a gallon of lead into her blood. As she straightened back up, a swimming sensation prickled in front of her eyeballs. Fido's venom was starting to take its full toll on the girl.

Her feet, drowsy with poison, clumsily ran into each other. "Whoa-OWCH!" Penny collapsed to the hard earth. As her head knocked against the ground, the impact sounded like a supernova bomb going off in her brain, leaving her dazed.

Patti whipped around, noticing her soulmate's trip. "Penny!"

The monster took this lapse in Patti's concentration to strike her. He promptly shoved her to the side, sinking the tips of his claws into her skin.

"Oof!" She fell to the rough soil. Her hand nearly let go of her newfound wand. Loose dirt brushed onto the side of her face while she struggled to reopen her eyes. The beating her familiar had undergone earlier left its fingerprints on the girl's health.

As the young wizard slowly pushed her torso up with her arms, the grotesque monster approached the other girl, who stubbornly glared back at the face of death with her slingshot in her hand.

"D-don't even think about laying a single claw on me…F-Fido…" She spat. Gritting her white teeth, she gradually made the band grow tight, loaded with three small pebbles. When the brute responded with a defiant snort, she narrowed her eyes.

"Fine. You asked for it."

She let the ammunition fly out of the slingshot and straight into his eyes. The beast reared his head, leaning on his hind legs in agony. Patti knew this was it; her chance to turn the tide for good, now or never in a million years. Mustering all of the strength she could from her weakening muscles, she scrambled over in front of her soulmate and wildly waved her wand in the air.

"Please be right, please be right, please be the right rune…"

"Thunderstorm!"

The shimmering stone outlined a jagged line followed by a crisp horizontal slash. Patti prayed with every fiber in her body as the rune remained stiff for a moment before glittering with electric sparks.

"It…It worked-? W-whoa!"

She didn't have any time to think over her success of conjuring up a spell strictly from her fuzzy memory; the magic surged through the short wand like a strong current, sending it jerking all over the place to the point that the brunette needed both hands to keep it from slipping out of her grasp.

That same tameless energy flowed out in rough pulses of charged electrons, infecting the air. Somber black clouds magically grew along the ceiling of the dim cave and circled around the mammoth sized monster. Before Fido could register what was transpiring about him, the sparks ignited and conjured deadly blades of lighting in midair, piercing him in every single nerve of his being.

Meanwhile, the preteen still struggled to keep her wand in her hands. She bit her lip in frustration, feeling her stamina grow short.

"J-just hold still, please!"

A second pair of familiar hands came over her shoulders and clasped around her own fingers. She didn't need to peek over her shoulder to know they were Penny's. Patti could feel her soulmate's presence behind her, lending every bit of strength she could.

"J-jeez louise! Did you put this wand on a caffeine high or what?!" The tomboy said through a toothy grimace.

"I-I don't know! But just hang on!"

The lightening show intensified, pumping more electricity into the monster's body. With a final, blinding flash of light accompanied with Fido's screeching cry of agony, the spell electrocuted the animal to a crisp. He stood still for a second before faintly coughing and collapsing under his own weight.

The wand grew as still as a boulder, no longer commanding magic to pour out. Patti and Penny relaxed their grips and fell to the ground; Patti on her knees and Penny on her bottom.

"Whew…" Huffing a sigh, the spunky girl wiped her forehead, icing the back of her palm with sweat. She sarcastically added, "Well, that was easy."

"Y-yeah…" Patti pulled out a glass bottle from her bag, feeling as if she barely had a drop of energy left in her.

"But I have to do it…this is the reason we came here and fought for. For mom, and Esther…and now us…"

Too tired to walk, she chose to crawl towards Fido instead. She approached his head, and gazed curiously at his beak. For a brief moment she pondered on how it was possible that a beast with such a mouth produced spit; birds didn't drool, did they? But then again, this guy was a mix of a mammal and a bird…or at least looked like it was.

She poked the tip of her wand at the beak, trying to find a suitable way to safely obtain the antitoxin drool. There was already a bit of poison in her bloodstream, and Penny had suffered from some deep, venomous cuts. The last thing everybody needed was a dose of infection.

A throbbing pain suddenly pulsed through her head. Her eyes became heavy as a whine of objection squeezed out of her lungs. Everything in her head and around her felt fuzzy and out of focus. Not even her senses wanted to function properly anymore as her weight slipped to her left, pulling her body down with it. From head to toe, she thought her body was filled with two tons of cement.

"…Patti…!"

Someone called out her name; her ears seamed to at least work in a low gear. Or maybe it was just her worn out imagination… but then it came again, with more voices…low, adult voices. Of course, they sounded muffled through her exhausted eardrum. Her body didn't even fully register that she was now held in a pair of strong arms.

"Patti! Patti, say something! Patti! Wake up!"

"Penny! PENNY!...No…n-no, this can't-! Penny, open your eyes, damn it!"

"Oliver, Swaine, be careful! We shouldn't move them-"

"Patti, just wake up! PATTI!"

…anything else the strangers said was lost on the girl's ears as she became lost in her blank unconscious.

AN: Ah, finally, a nice chapter with more meat on the bones! I feel like all the other chapters were too short, but this one really has some more detail. Tune in next time for the grand finale of this tale! :3