FMH: Everything ~ Thirty-Six

When she was back into a safe location and wasn't in too much danger of dying, Taylor took a more active role in controlling her Spell. She absolutely wanted to maximize her Potentia gains, but it was highly improbable that the massive influx of foreign energy would remain at the same height for very long.

Seeing as how Luke was getting five total Potentia or less per kill, Taylor exulted in the fact that she had gotten fifty per kill for so long. If she had been able to maintain that rapid advancement, she could have used her five thousand bolts of lightning to kill forty-five creatures a pop, bringing in over eleven million Potentia to use as she wished.

Unfortunately, their Sigils thrived on change and new challenges. There was a greater than logarithmic rate of decay, and by the sixth bolt, the increase had dropped down to forty per kill. Then thirty, finally seeming to stabilize around five per kill, like Luke. Still, she had nothing to complain about and took the windfall for what it was. Taylor still had over four thousand, five-hundred bolts of lightning to send out, and she gleefully had the process continue as she worked to study Luke once more.

While her Meta-magic Spell was powerful, the unfortunate drawback of only being able to use it a single time before having to relearn a Spell was something that she had not had to deal with before. It was a standard issue for Mages, and she had to remind herself over and over that this would have been nearly every Spell in her accessible grimoire, were she not a Namer.

It made Taylor wonder if she could take additional time to study the Skill and figure out how to officially name it and keep it permanently; but she tried to remind herself not to be greedy. She was already functioning at a higher level than any other Mage she had read about in the historical records she had studied.

There was the secondary benefit: it gave her something to focus on beyond the pain of having her leg almost entirely severed. Watching Luke intently as he sat down to recover from his extreme injuries was a nice perspective shift for her. He looked like he had come back from an acupuncturist, if the doctor on staff had been a giant. The massive spear-needles had been mostly blocked by his armor, but a few of the enormous weapons had managed to penetrate through. Not to the extent on her own body, of course. Instead, they had landed and stuck within his muscle, shoving flesh to the side but not chunking enormous holes through his body.

She watched his strangely oversized form as he casually gripped the needles and yanked them out, one by one. They clattered to the ground with a strange sound, as if they were bones made of metal. Luke was humming a light tune, incredibly repetitively, as he worked to repair the damage. He splashed water on the open wounds, which released a *hiss* before rapidly sealing up. “Running low on water. Back soon.”

Taylor nodded at him, her eyes tracing over his chest, which moments ago had contained six enormous divots. Perhaps it was because she had learned this Spell once before, but the words were already there, hovering over the still-healing damage. She whispered them to herself, wondering why this Spell was announcing itself in such a strange manner.

Almost everything she had seen since she got this Meta-magic Spell were whispers of words that she needed to carefully parse and study. But these… if she could use this method to advertise some goods for sale in the capital, it would draw attention like nothing else. The words themselves were metallic, bold, and seemed to practically leap off of him as they appeared. “You Need to Stop. I just don't understand why your Skill is named like that.”

Meta-magic has captured a Spell: You Need to Stop.

She skipped over reading the details, moving straight into activating it. The Spell wasn’t as effective as it would have been if she had the liquid mana to enhance it, but it didn't stop until the damage was healed or there was less mana in the air. Seeing as they were in a world that was completely and utterly suffused with energy, it was better to get the process started now. As her flesh slowly began to grow, reattaching the dangling portion of her leg to the core of her body, the pain actually increased. Nerve endings were fixed and rejoined, allowing the dangling chunk of meat to be felt once more.

Taylor breathed through the pain, noticing the vines around her legs undulating at a greater speed as her heart rate increased. In the next few moments, the area went numb once more, and she felt a rush of gratitude toward Andre. Taylor had been expecting an answer from Luke, but when she managed to focus on her surroundings once more, he was already gone. That was slightly frustrating, but the fact that she still had Potentia pouring into her system partially mollified her. She glanced around, finding Andre and Zed nearby, talking to each other, and decided to join in on the conversation.

“They die like real creatures.” Zed was arguing, waving his hands dramatically in the air as he spoke. “I see no reason why they wouldn't react like real creatures as well. If you started growing plants around me, I would either get out of the way or cut them down.”

The Druid was having none of it, whatever ‘it’ was. “I'm telling you that it literally costs me nothing except a tiny amount of time to test it. Why are you being so obstinate about this? All I'm going to do is start growing some entangling vines.”

“Did you not see how they changed their attack patterns as soon as a ranged attack was impacting them?” Zed scoffed incredulously. “What might happen if you managed to get something out there among them, which is able to continuously wipe out a large area of the monsters? Is just having something out there going to let them always maintain their distance attacks, or will something new happen? It might not cost you anything at the start, but what are the hidden costs, or the actual damage that might be done by this venture? All I'm asking you to do is target somewhere closer to the front lines so we can get rid of the plant, if necessary.”

“Well, I'm telling you that, after the seeds leave my hand, I don't have any control over them until they start to grow!” Andre stood up and walked away from the conversation, frustration writ large on his face. “Abyssal Bard. There's literally no reason to have this kind of reaction.”

Taylor opened her mouth to say something, but she paused as she realized that Andre was holding still and focusing on something in his own mind. He muttered under his breath then shook his head. With meticulous care, he opened a small seed sachet, pulling out a pinch of tiny seeds. He rubbed them between his fingers before casting them into the air and letting them settle on the ground directly in front of him. Thorny bushes sprang up then started to expand and extend. After a handful of seconds, they pulled themselves out of the dirt, rolled into tumbleweeds, and moved down the natural downhill slope.

“What a waste,” Andre muttered to himself as the plants reached the edge of the Zone, crossing over with a slight bounce, as if they had hit something right at the edge. As they moved into the air, the needles flashed out, putting dozens of holes through the tumbleweeds. As far as Taylor could tell, Andre didn't seem to mind that. Instead, as the thorns rained down, they burrowed into the ground, and each of the hundreds of small protrusions grew into its own bush. They erupted up out of the ground, entangling the creatures and continually growing. “See? No issues.”

First one, then a handful, then dozens of the strange synthetic creatures were overrun and pulled apart by the thorn bushes that had sprung up. It was interesting to watch; the thorns would pile up over a creature, it would collapse, and a new monster would appear, pristine and clean, on top of the falling thorn bushes. Her eyes narrowed at that as she saw a potential issue. “Andre! Careful, you're starting to give them a height advantage. If they can combine that with their extended range, they might be able to hit us.”

The Druid grunted and made a subtle gesture. Now, instead of growing higher, the plants extended along the ground and pulled the creatures’ legs out. They slowly toppled, torn apart as they fell onto the mat of writhing thorn tendrils. “Everyone has something to say.”

She could tell he was in one of his strange moods, but she didn't know what to say to drag him out of it. Taylor had plenty of experience convincing him to finish tasks for her while he was acting like this, but that had backfired on her in a big way. Looking around, she spotted Zed walking toward her with a grim look on his face.

“You need to tell your boyfriend that it's not his fault he couldn't heal fourth degree burns on your body. He's not a Healer, and he doesn't have access to plants that offer miracle recovery powers.”

“Is that what his issue is right now?” Taylor looked over at the hyper-focused Druid, who was furiously wiggling his fingers and moving small particles that she couldn't see from this distance. He cast his hand forward, and an eruption of bluish greenery spiked upward out of the next Zone, sending dozens of the mechanical automatons across the Zone edge. Every single one of them exploded with the force of a Tier three fireball, sending chunks and shrapnel flying.

Even so, after the initial shock, that wasn't what caught Taylor's attention. There was a huge hole in the enemy line, and for once, it didn't instantly fill back in. Instead of the creatures popping back into position as soon as they had died, now it was taking nearly half a second. Zed had also noticed the discrepancy, and he shoved a finger at the next Zone. “Did you see that? I saw that! We need to tell Luke that they’re slowing down!”

“All we had to do was kill…” Taylor paused as she estimated how many of her lightning bolts had gone out, what Luke had been able to do on his own, and how many creatures were simply slumping over to be replaced moments later, thanks to Andre's small and large plants. “I think we're closing in on ten thousand dead?”

Andre started walking back toward them, a grim smile having replaced the sad puppy dog look that had been on his face since his conversation with the Bard. “Something tells me it's not about how many have been destroyed since we got here. If my hypothesis is correct, it's all about how fast we’ve been managing to kill them. We need to keep it up and figure out how Luke gets information on these things.”

“That's an easy answer.” Taylor was startled, hearing Luke's voice from only a few feet away. She was almost certain he hadn’t been trying to sneak up on them, seeing as how his footfalls wouldn't sound out of place in a menagerie containing exclusively elephants. She cursed this world quietly, knowing that it was working with strange rules that she didn't understand. “All I need to do is get into the next Zone. If I can make it about ten feet in, my Sigil gets a download of information from Murder World.”

“Ten feet in?” Zed groaned as he tried to calculate everything that was going on here. “I saw what happened when you tried to get through the line of these things. You just bounced out. What's going to happen to you if you get in there and can't get out because of the monsters in your way?”

Luke shrugged at that, truly unconcerned. “All I need to do is a full power attack facing the other direction. Then I'll come out of there, whether I want to or not.”

He splashed a bit of water toward Taylor, sprinkling it on her leg. She sucked in a breath at the sudden surge of pain. Her leg fully reattached then started undoing the damage from having no blood flow inflicted on that chunk of meat. His actions, whether inadvertent or intentional, drew all eyes to her as she stood up and tested her leg. They seemed to be waiting for her to weigh in on the situation, and she let out a deep sigh.

Waving her hand forward, she could only nod and say, “You know this world better than we do. You understand the rules. Just… please don't die and trap us here forever.”

Luke grinned and shrugged slightly. “No promises.”