Anything ~ 47!

Andre explained his new Ability on the way to picking up Taylor. They chewed over the information as a group, then - to the Druid’s delight - started brainstorming. Zed was the first to come up with a good idea for the first beacon. “Why not just get all of those nasty bugs that kill plants all in one area and wipe them out in one go? I think you combined with Luke can take ‘em all in one, maybe two hits?”

“I like that; we can get to it right now.” Luke was quick to jump onboard with this idea, but the Druid shook him off quickly.

“I don’t have fine enough control of the Ability at this level. I’ll need to get it to level nine before I can be certain that I got all of them, and even then, there’s a good shot that they’ll resist or something. It says ‘creatures’, which means I can’t know how monsters will impact the summoning.” Andre rubbed at his chin gently, studying the rapidly darkening sky. “I need to do a lot of testing, hopefully with non-lethal stuff first.”

“Oh. Then bring worms and junk like that.” Luke shrugged as if he hadn’t just made stars appear in Andre’s eyes. “You said this place needs that stuff, right?”

“It’s not just a war Ability.” Andre dropped to his knees and dug his fingers into the sand they were walking over. “It’s the last piece I needed for terraforming! Nature truly does provide what we need! Yes!”

Tears rolled down his face as his laughter spread through the empty, dead desert that had almost broken him. After a few seconds, he heaved in a few breaths and stood. Locking eyes with Luke, he walked over and directly pulled him into a hug.

Andre choked as the Murderhobo whirled him around, his arms snaking under Andre’s, and clasped his hands behind the Druid’s head. “What are you trying to do, Druid? Try a sneak attack on me? I’ll snap your neck in so many places that the powder from those snail shells will look coarse in comparison to what’s left of your spine!”

“Celestial-” Andre choked out, feeling his vision starting to tunnel already. “Just… a hug!”

“Luke, he was trying to show you physical affection,” the Bard pleaded on his friend’s behalf. “Ah… ah… here! Chapter six, ‘physical touch isn’t always for bloodletting’! Remember this chapter from your favorite book?”

Andre sucked in a lungful of air as the Murderhobo released him, thanks to the Bard’s soft cajoling. He whirled around to see a huge smile on Luke’s face. “Yeah. I remember. That’s a good chapter. Forgot about that.”

Then the man pulled out his massive bone weapon and gave it a squeeze, as if he was a proud parent. When the bone started creaking, Andre and Zed shared a nervous look, then silently vowed to never again get in grabbing range of the Murderhobo of their own volition. Andre focused his eyes forward and made plans for what bugs and other small creatures would be the best fit for a healthy area, then scrubbed that from his mind when he remembered that he had a maximum range he could call from. “Taylor should be just ahead. Hold tight.”

He stomped on the ground, sending a disproportionately massive wave of sand crashing away from his foot. A moment later, a Lotus Coffin poked through the earth. It parted slightly to show Taylor’s face, but when Andre directed it to release her… it didn’t. “Huh. It’s… I guess I never actually designed them to let people go. Hang on, I’ll need to-”

“Your plant isn’t listening to you?” Luke’s words made Andre grimace. He knew exactly where that would lead.

“It will, I just need to do some fine-tuning so that-” The Druid was cut off as a splash of liquified plant matter was sent flying by Luke’s club. He sighed as he wiped the goo from his lips. “You abyssal barbarian. Can’t you just give me a moment to fix stuff?”

“Can you be sure you’d have got it before it started sending roots into our awake friend here?” Luke didn’t bother waiting for a reply, simply ripping the rest of the coffin to shreds around the Mage. “How long until she’s mobile again?”

“Ten minutes?” the Druid guessed, shrugging noncommittally. “Again, this isn’t a perfected species, and more and more, I’m liking the idea of abandoning this kind of… horticulture.”

“What did you just call our sleeping beauty?” Zed gasped in fake outrage. “That kind of slander! Shameful!”

“Horticulture is gardening and growing plants, Zed,” Andre deadpanned as Luke was bent over Taylor’s face. “It has nothing to do with the people you spend your evenings with in taverns. Please don’t sully my entire craft in one go like that.”

“Okay, hopefully a single dose is enough to get her mind unstuck,” Luke interrupted as he stood up.

Andre was surprised to see that Taylor’s organs were shining through her skin. He slapped at his long, currently black, hair. “Luke! You can’t just dose people with elixirs like that! What if she lights on fire? We have no safeguards in place!”

“Wasn’t a problem for the two of you.” Luke ignored any further angry noises coming from the Druid. “Think of it like this: twenty minutes in a plant, then she gets her mana channels to go from High-Quality, to Extreme High-Quality, with no side effects. I think that’s a solid deal.”

“Pretty sure she’s gonna try to blast you as soon as she can move again,” Zed called through cupped hands from a surprisingly far distance. Andre hadn’t even seen him start edging away when Taylor got shell powder poured into her dainty nostrils. He shook that thought off with a sigh, muttering, “Should probably let go of that particular childhood fantasy, huh?”

“Well, if she ‘blasts’ me, there’s no way for her to use this stuff to get Forged mana channels. Certainly no way higher, since I killed every instance of ‘unicorn’ I came across.” Luke commented unconcernedly, though Andre noted that he kept an eye on Taylor’s prone form.

“She can just take the bag off your charred corpse, right?” Zed waved at the Murderhobo’s satchel, and Luke surprised the group by tossing the simple bag across the distance to the Bard.

“Open it,” the Murderhobo instructed with a wry grin. Zed raised an eyebrow, then lifted the flap to show him that he could, indeed, open a bag. The Bard’s fingers stopped suddenly, and he frowned at the unopened bag.

“Huh.” Zed yanked on it, then whipped out a dagger from his belt. “You mind?”

“Go for it,” Luke snorted, eyeing the dagger he had never seen the Bard wield. “Won’t help.”

The knife plunged down, stopping as if Zed had hit a wall when the tip tried to part the bag’s material. “Interesting. You’re confident that no one can get into this?”

“No one under level thirty, at least.” Luke took the bag back, strapped it on, and turned around just in time to find a knife pressed against his jugular. He raised an eyebrow. “Glad to see you up and about, Taylor. How’re you feeling?”

Her expressions twisted back and forth before finally settling on pissed. “Andre, do I have any plant matter in my system? Seeds? Spores?”

The Druid was about to rattle off ‘of course not’, then remembered that the plants had been doing things they shouldn't have been able to do. “Perhaps it’s the Murderhobo’s paranoia infecting me, but I’d be happy to check.”

Taylor bobbed her head and her hands shook slightly, sending a trickle of blood down Luke’s neck. “You say you can get me to Forged mana channels?”

“Already got both of them up to it.” Luke didn’t seem to mind the fact that every word he spoke opened a cut on his neck, but as soon as Taylor’s eyes flicked to Andre for confirmation, the Murderhobo vanished and reappeared ten feet away. “Careful, Mage. My attempts at friendship have a limit. That limit is you trying to attack me a single time more.”

“Why is my Sigil upda-?” The Mage’s hands dropped to her side, her blade vanishing somewhere along the way. Her eyes rolled up in her head and she started to topple backward, only to catch herself and stand upright in the next instant. “What’s… happening? I… what have I been doing? Celestial abyss, I’m a monster.”

“Question for the group!” Zed waved at the others. “So, you all got ‘freed’ from a teenager’s mindset now, right? Is it really that bad? Feeling a little, you know, called out over here… as the only real teen still in the group.”

“No. It isn’t,” Luke answered while the other two paused to collect their thoughts. “It’s just simple. You know what you want, you’ll go get it. In many ways, it’s awesome. It'll make you work harder, fight harder, and improve faster. Yet, it’s simple. Depth is lacking. Perspective is lacking. You’re more willing to sacrifice others for your goals. Friendship is less… nuanced.”

“Thank you for reducing everyone my age to a group of shallow brats.” Zed offered a high-five, but Andre stepped in and put a hand on the Bard’s shoulder.

“You’ll understand when you’re older.” The Druid kept a straight face for a long moment, then cracked under the pressure of Zed’s flat stare and began chuckling. “In all seriousness, it’s not something I could explain. When my Sigil got tweaked there, it was like… it was as if all of my years of doing things up to this point had new meaning. I have so many new ideas on how to expand upon all of my work. All my sacrifices, seeing my goals in reach, mean more to me than they ever have before. I feel… calm.”

“Sounds boring.” Zed plucked Andre’s hand off his shoulder and glanced to the side. “Hold on, I’m gonna…”

There was a meaty *squelch*, and Zed stepped out of his body like a snake shedding a skin. The fleshy shell filled in with mana that poured from his body, and in an instant, looked exactly the same as Zed, but naked. “Whoops! See, good thing I’m not trying this in a city.”

“What. Just. Happened.” Taylor took a few deep breaths, trying not to hurl at the nasty sight she had just witnessed.

“Go, be free, me!” Zed waved his hands at himself. His clone reached out and shook hands with him seriously, then they exchanged a wink.

“Can do! Have fun getting sand in your crack every time you sit down.” The second Zed told himself. “I’m off to the coziest tavern I can find, then convince the innkeep to let me stay there for free.”

They all watched the clone stride away, somewhat dazed. Zed glared after himself. “What a jerk.”

“That’s you,” Andre told him pointedly. “How can you not like yourself when you see you?”

Zed shrugged and shook his head. “You wouldn’t get it.”

“Hey.” Luke held up a hand, and the team focused on him with various levels of enthusiasm. “Are you at all worried that your clone will eventually want to be the only Zed, and come after you?”

“…No.” Zed squinted at the Murderhobo, then off into the distance, where his clone was already out of sight. “I shouldn’t need to have to worry about that. Right? Right.”