Anything ~ 48!

- Luke -

“So what now?” Taylor’s voice caused Luke to blink and lose sight of a ripple in the sand that he was almost positive was a root system coming to try to wrap him up.

He decided that perhaps he should just move to a new spot, instead of being forced to splatter the viney growth and upset the Druid. Again. He moved five feet to the left, then eight feet backward. His muttering went unheard by the others. “Those plants wouldn’t be expecting this. Unless they’ve been studying my behavior…?”

“First, we have a long conversation with Luke about boundaries and talking instead of hitting, and then we make a plan. How about that?” Andre offered to the others. Luke noticed Taylor look at his satchel and clench her fists in her robes, but she quietly agreed after a moment.

It was good to really, really be told—in excruciating detail—where they all stood as a team, Luke decided as the moon came up and his team finally stopped blathering at him about how they expected to be treated in the future. Taylor got in the last word, “I understand that you were trying to help, and you thought you were… rescuing some of us from ourselves. If I didn’t, you’d never sleep safely again. If you ever do something like that to me again, you’d better make sure I’m dead, because otherwise, I’ll never stop until you are.”

“I will make sure you’re dead. I understand.” Luke nodded obligingly and dusted off his legs. Yes, it was good to know where they all stood. The sand that had been blown onto him by the wind would hide any roots creeping up on him; he couldn’t allow them to have a hiding space on his own body. “Great. Now that everyone has had a chance to talk, I’ll say what I think about our friendship, and then we can plan out our next mission.”

“Go for it, buddy.” Andre leaned forward on his staff and nodded encouragingly.

“Okay.” Luke hopped to his feet and stretched. “If you ever need it, I’ll repeat everything I just did. That and more, all over again, and abyss the consequences. I was trapped for almost half a century before I found a way out, and I wished for decades that I had someone who would come to rescue me. If I ever need to be saved again, I hope you’d do for me what I did for all of you today.”

The group was silent, so Luke pointed at Taylor. “I’m done. You want to tell us what we’re gonna do, or should I make the plan?”

“N-no.” The Mage was startled out of her thoughts and took a deep breath, letting go of whatever else she was going to say. “Frankly, the plan doesn’t change. Only the way we carry it out does.”

“Uh, well, the plan was to grow the desert into not a wasteland, and the Inquisitors kinda put the ol’ kibosh on that, no?” Zed offered with a smile and head-scratch. “You know, the whole ‘no more growing things allowed’ rule they made for us?”

“Is that what they said?” Taylor showed a smile with too many perfect teeth and a dark glint in her eye. “Because I’m pretty sure they said no growing plants ‘until those creatures are proven to no longer be an issue for the Hollow Kingdom’.”

“Somehow that isn’t what I just said.” Zed nodded sagely along with her. “Yes, I see the error in my thinking.”

“She means that if we can take out the bugs, I can get back to growing plants however we want,” Andre explained for the perplexed Bard. He turned toward the Mage, “But there’s a problem with that, Taylor. No one has ever survived going to the deepest parts of the desert since this happened. The land is said to have been twisted by the previous Druid, and some of the Kingdom’s strongest people have failed. How will we get through? I’m pretty sure Zed is only level eight, and the rest of us haven’t exactly been gaining barrels of Potentia.”

“First, the other groups didn’t have a Druid. Second, if the Kingdom sent them, they weren’t the best. Just expendable. Thirdly, no one ever said they didn’t survive, they just never came back.” Taylor tapped a fourth finger, and looked over at Luke. “Lastly… who said that the land was twisted? Where are those stories coming from, if no one ever returned? What I think… I think that people found the issue and couldn’t do anything about it. You know what that means to me?”

“An open Scar.” Zed was the one to speak up, surprising the others by making the connection before they did. “We have someone that can fix the problem. I see where you’re going with this. I’m in, but I have some stipulations.”

“Um…” Taylor paused, getting shrugs from the others. “What’s on your mind?”

“When we fix whatever this is… I want a break from the Kingdom.” Zed looked around at the others hopefully. “I want a few years to myself for honing my Masteries and getting stronger, earning Potentia, before I need to go back to… servitude.”

“I want that, too.” Luke slapped his hand onto Cookie to emphasize his point. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do, and I need to delve into less potent Scars, since I’m locked out of my world for the next month. Apparently, my Sigil is punishing me for deactivating my Skill and extending my stay in Murder World; I should have been able to go back already, and it isn’t letting me.”

Taylor shot a look at the Druid, who shrugged and grinned sheepishly. “Wouldn’t hurt to build up a super-oasis in the center of this place, then generate the resources to terraform the whole desert in one big push. I doubt they'd find us if we stayed deep enough; it’s not exactly an often-explored area.”

“I…” The Mage was clearly hesitant, but her pleading glances were met with a triplet of stony stares. “Can we at least hide our identities and feed anyone along the border? If we can do anything that is helpful for the Kingdom in that time, I’m fine with pretending we died for a while.”

“Ten years,” Zed opened negotiations immediately.

“Six months,” Taylor growled at him.

“Ten years.” Andre stood next to Zed, and Luke nodded along with them.

“Do you have any idea how our political climate will shift over ten years?” Taylor snapped at the three of them. “What could happen to our families if we vanish?”

“One of the Zeds will keep an eye on them.” Andre jerked his thumb into the distance where the clone had walked away. “Right, Zed?”

“I can make a clone per week,” Zed agreed right away. “They last until killed, I cancel them, or they self-destruct. Anything big goes down, I’ll have the network of Zed—which I plan to set up—reach out and get us.”

Everyone went silent as Taylor chewed her lip and tried to get them to change their minds. “It’ll never last. They’ll want us for something, and they’ll find anything they can come up with to make us come back. They might even kick off the war and haul us back in to fight for them.”

“Everything the King said in private makes me inclined to believe that us vanishing for a good long time was part of his plan the whole time, right?” Andre explained with sweeping motions. “They even made it impossible to fix the problem, after we were told to come here and work on it!”

“You guys really just want to be… done?” Taylor shook her head at the thought. “I can’t believe it.”

“As done as we can be before level twenty,” Zed demanded firmly. “For the first time in a couple years, I have a shot at not being hunted like an animal for a while. I have the King’s permission to relax and hide from his hired muscle. Why would I give that up, just because we could complete a mission a little faster?”

Taylor finally caved, throwing her hands in the air. “Fine! You want to hide like criminals for a decade? Fine! So long as we actually fix whatever the issue in the desert is, so the Kingdom stops wasting away!”

“Deal.” Andre and Zed bumped their fists together and grinned.

The Murderhobo punched the ground, grabbed a root, and yanked a struggling, overgrown flower into the open air. “I knew this thing was coming after me!”

“Luke…” Andre groaned in a distraught tone. “Please stop killing my plants. I can’t make new ones, so I’m spending way too much blood and mana to expand the ones I have. If they reproduce on their own, I’m not breaking any rules imposed on me.”

“You don’t want me killin’ them? Don’t let them keep coming after me!” Luke tossed the wilted flower to the side, and he would have sworn it whimpered when it landed. “Make them less intelligent, would you? Smart plants are downright creepy.”

The Druid picked up the flower and whispered to it before planting it back in the sand and helping it become healthy again. Then he turned his head and shot a glare at Luke. “Big words coming from a guy that was singing to his bone club not five minutes ago.”

Luke returned the glare, glanced at Cookie, then back to Andre. “I did what now?”