FMH ~ 47!

Luke paused as he felt something in the air. Something familiar. “I am uncertain what that is. Someone explain this to me.”

“You mean the increased mana density?” Andre stretched into a comfortable pose. “Yeah, that’s pretty high. Feels like going home.”

“Feels like there’s danger.” Luke rebutted with a grimace. “There’s a bug… it’s watching us.”

“Not a bug, it’s a Scar.” Taylor explained to the group. “There’s a portal to another world there, one that has more ambient mana. No one in our Kingdom knows how they are made, but they aren’t like normal portals. These ones are… torn. They are also actively hostile to people. The portal itself is hostile. There is a way to close them, but it’s a suicide mission. They are stabilized on the other side, and closing them means getting trapped as soon as you destroy the stabilizer. Then, there is no guarantee that they won’t get opened again in the future.”

“Why open them, then?” Zed spat at the thought of the people that would make these things, specifically and only to kill people over time.

“There has only been a single coherent statement from the Anarcanists.” Taylor made ‘spooky’ hand gestures with her hands as she stated, “To save the world from devastation, devastation we will wreak! To prevent the powerful, the powerful we will create. Struggle, struggle! You deserve to exist! ”

“That’s the coherent statement?” Zed pulled out a small instrument and started tuning it. “I’d hate to hear the others if that is the best one.”

“The other one that was mostly understandable was ‘fear the caverns, for they too have teeth. The stars are gone when you look away, but they can still see you’.” Taylor chuckled at the odd looks she got in return.

“What’cha got there, friend?” Andre got closer, looking at the small… thing.

“New thing I thought up. I call it a ‘Ukulele’. Really helps to keep my hands busy when I’m nervous. Also, makes telling stories into a kind of singing!” Zed was about to dive into the specifics of his instrument when Taylor turned to face him.

“I do hope that you aren’t planning on letting everyone know our exact position by playing that. I know we made a lot of noise, but this pass widens out to become about a mile wide soon. Letting them know exactly where we are is a bad idea.”

“You worry too much.” Even though he said this, Zed still put the instrument away. “I bet you like violins better anyway, don’t you? You do, I can see it in your eyes. Ugh. Nobility. Also, how did you not see all these creatures the first time you came through here?”

“I like violins, but if you really came up with this… thing, then I have no basis for comparison. I might like this instrument better. As to the creatures,” Taylor vanished from his view, reappearing next to Zed’s side. A glowing spark traced a line of heat across his neck. “You know that I specialize in Senses. If you weren't all lumbering around, those Sentries still would be waiting safely and quietly. I didn't see them because they were rocks. There was literally nothing special about them.”

“That’s not totally accurate.” Andre spoke up to counter her, getting a glare for his trouble. “Luke knew that there was something wrong with the rock back at the fallback point.”

“Oh… yeah, but did he?” Zed tilted his face down and arched an eyebrow to fully express his skepticism. “This is also the man that killed a tree, was suspicious of grass, and punched rain. Could it be that he’s just nuttier than a men’s latrine?”

“The regular rocks in the area are five-a-four-d-four-one. The Scuttler was four-eight-three-e-three-four.” Luke’s voice floated over gently, and a glance told the group that he was crouching and moving softly through the sparse cover that the rock pass allowed. “How are you all so unconcerned about the fact that all these stone creatures are letting us pass them without attacking? I feel like it’s an ambush. Is it just that you’re all used to seeing your enemies coming? Or you just don’t care about the ambush?”

“You saw more of them?” Andre looked around, “Where?”

“This area is stuffed full of rocks.”

“What were those numbers?” Taylor cinched her robe carefully so that it wouldn’t get in her way. Thanks to Luke, she was now expecting a fight at any second.

“Color codes.” Luke blinked twice when Taylor didn’t react. “Really? You’re the Senses specialist. Tell your Sigil to assign everything a color code, then use your Senses to read all the numbers in real time. How do you not know how to do this? I didn’t have a trainer.”

Taylor didn’t answer, she was trying to deal with the influx of data suddenly streaming from her Sigil. Her eyes were watering in seconds, and it felt like she was about to overload her brain. She shut that function off, and looked at Luke while blinking away tears. “How do you… function like this?”

Luke continued scanning the area, his eyes resting on certain spots regularly. “It turned on one day, and it took me five years to figure out how to shut it off. By then I was pretty used to it. Works pretty well in the dark when there is no light. Follow the moving numbers to find what is coming at you. Different colors of dark. Dark doesn’t move by itself.”

Taylor looked at Zed with a grimace. “Yup. He’s even more insane than we thought he was. In a useful way, though.”

“I’m fully sane.” Luke had finally had enough of the talking down. “I don’t need to conform to your weak social norms. You need to get stronger. I’ve tasted insanity before… it needed salt.”

“Everyone stop.” Taylor knelt and started drawing on the ground. “Once we crest this ridge, we are going to run into the first wave of defenders. I’m sure you could all feel the hostility increasing as we got closer, well… we are just about to the point of no return. Whatever intelligence that Scar has or doesn’t have, it most certainly has self-preservation. This is not a battle to destroy it, or even fight at all. This is us attempting to determine the likelihood of an attack on the Hollow Kingdom. We make an assessment, we run. Understood?”

The others nodded, and they took extra care from then on to go unnoticed. Upon arriving at the crest of the pass, they peeked over and felt their hearts tremble. It was clear that this pass had once contained a forest, but it had been stripped to the bedrock to provide fires and… defenses? Andre tried not to get too mad about the loss of yet another old-growth forested area in his Kingdom; at least he hadn’t bonded to this area yet. 

There was an utterly massive monster hoard in the area. Thousands upon thousands of Scuttlers, but most concerning were all the humanoids that were walking around the area, or were on horseback. Humanoid typically meant sentient, and if the monsters weren’t attacking them… then it must be because they were being controlled by the humanoids. The idea of ‘Humanoid’ didn’t mean human, only that they could pass as human from a causal glance. In fact, all of the ones walking around wore thick cloaks, blocking the sight of them and leaving their true identity a mystery.

All off this paled into nigh-insignificance at the sight of the Scar. The pulsing reddish-purple opening between dimensions drew the eye and the mind, inflicting an instinctive fear. Taylor lightly paled, then spoke softly to the others, “It’s bigger than it was yesterday.”

“That’s what she said.” Zed whispered back. Luke nodded, though he wasn’t sure why Zed had said that. It was clear that Taylor had just spoken, there was no need to explain this to him.

Taylor ignored the commentary and continued, “It has to be at least one hundred and thirty feet tall, and forty wide. Yesterday it was one fifteen, and thirty-four.”

“What does that mean?” Andre was the only one to engage properly.

“There’s only two reasons that a Scar would keep growing. Allowing a more powerful creature through, or to begin terraforming on the area around it. This is either going to become an incredibly potent enemy, or a country-scale invasion at the minimum.” Taylor took a deep breath. “At the rate it’s growing, there’s no way an army could get here soon enough to make a difference. We need to shut this thing down.”

“Didn’t you just tell us about how closing a Scar is a suicide mission? That there’s no guarantee that it will stay closed?” Andre spoke up indignantly. 

“It is. But I’ll gladly do the right thing so that I can save countless people that are counting on us to protect them. This thing…” Taylor waved at the Scar, “is death. Not just for us. Not even just for the Hollow Kingdom. It might release enough forces to swallow the whole continent. Listen, I’d never sacrifice someone else, or make you sacrifice yourselves, but I’ll happily be the one to close it. I just need you all to keep me safe while I figure out how to do it.”

“We also need to get close enough to get into that thing.” Zed pointed out bleakly.

“All I hear is that there’s killing to be done.” Luke stood up and cracked his knuckles. His team looked at him with white faces as he stood silhouetted against the skyline for their enemy to see. “I could go for some killing. Plus… the quest says that the reward will be proportional to the risk. I feel like stopping a world-scale invasion is pretty risky.”

The others could only scramble to their feet and run after him as Luke activated Bum Rush and turned a Scuttler into paste a hundred feet away. 

Potentia gained!

“I miss Cookie.”