Anything ~ 45!

Luke turned calmly to meet the raging Druid. Blood was pouring from the Druid’s skin as he ate away at his own flesh to sustain the magic he was casting. “I’ll kill you for this! There’s a reason we put them to sleep first, you monster!”

A glass bottle appeared in Luke's off hand, and he whipped it out with deadly accuracy and pristine balance. The base of the bottle *bonked* the center of Andre’s forehead, and the Druids’ eyes rolled up in his head. Luke flashed over and caught the man as he fell from the pillar of sand he had been standing on. “Funny that using what you made makes me a monster. Oops… I think you’re dying.”

A few minutes later, Luke skid to a stop in front of Zed, kicking up a wave of fresh green earth over the Bard. The man himself sputtered and stuttered as he looked at the deep bruise in the shape of a perfect ring on Andre’s head. “W-what are you after me for?”

“I’m after his portal, and you’re coming with me.” Luke grabbed the Bard and started running even before the man could form a response. “Gotta get him back to his world, there’s something there that keeps him going, right? Plants that heal him?”

“Something like that!” Zed pointed to the east, and they altered directions in the same motion. “He closed it though! There’s not enough mana to sustain anything long term here.”

“My fist doesn’t care.”

“I don’t know what that means!” Zed laughed at his shattered nerves in light amazement as Luke accurately closed in on the exact spot Andre’s portal had stood when he went through to grab some germinating sprouts. “How did you know-?”

Luke lashed out with Cookie, slamming her into the air and directly breaking through the Planar barrier in a single motion. Zed gawked at that, paling as the implications of what Luke might eventually be able to do rolled through his mind. A whisper escaped his lips as they stepped into another world, “No one will ever be able to run from you, huh? Note to self…”

Then they were in the Druid’s Grove, and Luke sighed in relief as Andre’s condition stopped worsening. “Good. Hey. What kind of Mana Channels did he have? How did yours get upgraded, what did Taylor do to you to make it happen?”

By the end of their conversation, Zed was absolutely sweating from how wrung out he felt. Luke wanted to be exact with his next steps; so he made sure he was thorough in his information gathering. When he popped open his satchel and the ambient mana in the area started rushing toward him, he only needed to run his fingers over a few of the individually packaged powders before choosing a mid-level one and pulling off the unicorn-hair string that held the silky bag closed.

Carefully tilting Andre’s head back, Luke poured the mana-catalyzing powder into his sinus and waited. “Zed, tell me any differences or similarities you see. In real time, please.”

“What happened to you?” Zed shook his head in amazement as he looked at the changed man in front of him. “How long were you gone, that you came back to us as a real person instead of a caricature?”

“I just had enough time to find my lost friend. Now I’m trying to rescue my other friends that lost themselves. Wasn’t my fault, so it’s easier to fix. Oh, I also read through the book.” Luke pulled out a ragged, sad-looking tome that had burn marks and blood on it. He tossed it to Zed, then pointed at the Druid. “Tell me if that was enough powder or not. What’s different? Is it good different or bad different?”

“How to Make Friends and Not Burn Down Society. What Bar - Viscount Woodswright gave you?” Zed ignored the Murderhobo as he incredulously read the title. He flipped the book open and read through some of it, then jumped to the back and frowned. Flipping back through the pages slowly, he stopped and tapped a burned page. “Luke… there were two books held in this cover. The first one was what the title said, the second one is something… else. It’s a treatise on subduing individuals that have lived hundreds of years and bringing them under your control. I’ve… I’ve never seen anything like this. The quality of the writing alone…?”

“Zed. Our friend might be dying.” Luke’s tone shifted to a growl as he made the Bard focus. “Did I use the correct amount?”

“That’s…” The Bard looked at the Druid, who was starting to glow from his bones. “It looks like when I did it, but I couldn’t see much, since I kept starting on fire.”

“Say what now?” Luke looked for scarring on the Bard, and did indeed find several areas, especially on his face, that showed signs of deep burns. “Why?”

“Apparently knowing the correct amount to use is hard? Then any impurities in the material burn themselves out of you.” Zed shrugged and pointed in a vague direction. “Go through that long tunnel and move him into a circular room there. If he starts on fire, pull him back until it goes out. Otherwise, you need Taylor for this, because she’s the one with information on how this actually works.”

“Not an option, I dropped her under the desert.” Luke looked at his friend and waved his hand casually. “He’s probably the only person in the Kingdom that can convince the flower to resurface and let her go.”

With that, Luke hefted his friend and ran down the indicated tunnel, leaving Zed looking forlorn at the space where the portal had stood… only for a few seconds before he chased after the other two. The Murderhobo heard something about ‘needing to get the whole story’ before he stopped listening to the Bard. When he reached the room, he walked the Druid around it, but the man failed to catch fire.

“Zed! It’s not working!” Luke shouted at the out-of-breath man as he came into the room a short while later. “Do I need to light him on fire? I have some oil, give me that fire stone thing-”

“No! Stop that thought before you act on it!” The Bard managed to gasp out. “Look at him, the horn is clearly working. Is there something different about what you used on him compared to what I got?”

“It’s purified and portion-controlled.” Luke rattled off the disparities, but had no more information to give. “You got raw snail shell, not this stuff.”

“Seriously, if there was a metric for luck, I’d be in the negatives.” Zed grumbled momentarily before his eyes flashed with excitement. “Wait! I know! I have… Common, Strong, High-quality… so, three ranks lower of Mana Channels than he does! So, if you use that on me, and it was the correct amount, we know that he’s just out of it due to his head wound, and not because his body is trying not to explode into chunks!”

“Can you use more?” Luke looked at the man dubiously for a moment before shaking his head and pulling out a small sachet. “Nevermind, I remember now. You can use this over and over again. Maybe I shouldn’t have killed all of them…? Nahh, it was worth it.”

Zed laid down, and Luke poured the shell into his nose. “Feel anything?”

“Yeah, but…” The Bard’s response was hesitant and slowly shifting to dreamy. “It feels totally different to last time. This is kinda nice. Like sitting near a hot fire on a warm night? Sipping tea? Kissing a tavern maid on the - there’s the pain! Woo! Okay, it passed real quick. So, uh, two questions for you. First one. Why’d you beat Andre up and bring him here only to make him stronger?”

“Upgrading your Mana Channel makes your Sigil work more efficiently, and I’m pretty sure that can force your mental state to let go of whatever the baseline was for the majority of the time it’s been working. I figured if I knocked him out and pumped up his Sigil, he’d wake up in a good place and his brain would let him live more comfortably as an adult.”

“Oh. I didn’t know you were a follower of the Divine I.T.” Zed shook his head as he thought about the strange cultists that tried to live by the words of powerful Ascenders. “The golden rule ‘turn it off and on again, to function better than it has been’? I guess, who am I to judge your beliefs?”

“I have not even a small idea what you’re talking about.” Luke kept his eyes on the Druid as he continued to breathe regularly.

“Great. Good. Yeah, prolly for the best that you don’t think about that sort of thing.” Zed laughed heartily as he felt each of his internal organs getting tickled at the same time. “Second question then. Your book? You've read all of that?”

“Yes. I want to be a whole person so that those that rely on me are not disappointed.” Luke’s hand gripped Cookie’s handle as he said this. “That begins with mindful behaviors, and continues with being there for the people that were there for me, and finally beating the ever-lovin’ crap outta them if they lose their minds.”

“Uh… huh.” Zed nodded slowly as he processed Luke’s words. “So in the first part of what you read, did it tell you to beat sense into your friends, or was that the second half of the book?”

“The second half. Funny enough, I hadn’t even seen that section until recently, but it makes really good sense. ‘Victorious people win first and then go to war, while defeated people go to war first and then seek to win.’ This section was a clear explanation that you need to do whatever you can for your friends, even go to war with them, to make sure they are able to stay on the correct path.” Luke’s words had Zed furiously flipping through the book a few moments later, and he found the passage the Murderhobo was talking about.

“Pretty sure this is on how to keep a war mentality. So that you don’t slip into despair during huge amounts of bloodshed.” Zed muttered softly as his fingers traced the raised text. “I’m… honestly kinda impressed on how you managed to twist that into maintaining friendships. Also, I just got a notification… yes! My Mana Channels went from ‘Common’ to ‘Strong’! The things I’ll be able to do!”

“If you’re done, Andre should be done by now.” Luke looked over at the fitfully sleeping Druid.

“He’s either upgraded, or the powder was wasted!” Zed gave a cheerful thumbs-up. “Hey, wanna take me from ‘Strong’ to ‘High-quality’?”

“Sure. This stuff is useless to me anyway, and if I don’t give it to you, it’ll just go to whatever Taylor wants to do with it.” Luke poured another set of shell powder into his giddy friend’s nose, and watched as the glow reappeared in his bones, highlighting his organs as well.

“So cool.” Zed whispered as he felt the beginning stages of runes being carved  along the entirety of his Mana Channels. “Did you know that you can pass on Mana Channels over ‘Strong’ to your offspring? That’s one of the ways royalty stays in power over the years. Pretty sure that after today, I’m about to have to fend off the advances of a whole new subset of women. Ah… the constant struggles of a True Bard.”

Luke ignored the man’s inane rambling - Andre’s eyes were opening.