"Is that sea monster-"

"Yeah it's eating the dragon," Finley said, grimacing. "Raw. You would think that it would at least cook it a bit."

"Does this lead you believe that the dragon is dead?" Anthony said.

The pair were watching the latest of many developments that had changed the course of their day. Finley had started the day with such hope. Perhaps their worship of this Murphy and his law was something that he might need to consider for the long term.

"One can only deal with being eaten for a little bit," Finley said, as if repeating a mantra. "Of course this is different for me because I didn't actually eat myself."

"Right. That makes total sense. Because otherwise, what would you occupy?"

The elf and the man watched as their entire day changed from bad to somewhat bad. The dragon had either been knocked unconscious or had just succumbed to its injuries. Either way, it wasn't being hooked around anymore, no longer being hit into the ground repeatedly. It just lay there on the shore.

What it was doing was being devoured by a sea monster. Neither Finley or Anthony could have predicted that outcome. Finley was really hoping that the sea monster would take the rest of the day off.

He would too if he had just killed a dragon. In fact, he was thinking about asking Anthony to take a whole week off after this. So long as they removed themselves to an area that would be far enough away from the sea monster's effective range, he didn't see any problem with that.

That is if their next steps went to according to the new plan.

A loud crack shook the city as it split in two, cleaving east from west.

Sonya had finished casting her earthquake spell, pulling Earth from down the center line of the city, in order to divide the black flame from the rest. It had taken her a while and Finley could see that at least a third of the city was now entirely up in flames. This move was only going to save so much.

But if she did it right, they would have a canal going straight through the city where they could jury rig some way to get the ship inland. Then the real work could start.

It was all going according to his evil plan. At least that's how Anthony said that he should refer to his plans from now on. He wasn't sure what exactly Anthony meant by that and it was pretty sure that it was a joke. Finley had a sense of humor as all tinkers needed to be able to tell a joke in order to get out of a tough spot. But this whole evil plan felt less evil and more slapstick.

He watched with bated breath as the cut off down through the city. Continue to race through. Behind it, Sonya had left it so that a large canal of at least two elves width was beginning to fill. Two elves standing on top of each other's heads was a standard measurement for tinkers. It would definitely support a wagon, if one was able to float through it. This by extension was Brandon's cue.

Brandon, the water aspect-ed caster who had up until recently been only a monk was able to move water in large quantities. What they all needed him to do was to stop the black flame from spreading.

He, of course was happy to oblige as they figured out that there was nothing that was going to stop the black flame from spreading, they could just try to stop it from flowing onward. Especially if they wanted to salvage half the city, they were going to need to stop it from burning to the ground.

"Is Brandon surfing on the waves over there?" Someone yelled.

"Yeah he's surfing," Anthony said. "Leave it to the monk to have fun at our expense."

Finley had never seen a humanoid just standing up on the water like that. He was mesmerized by the sight of the man in monk robes who stood on top of a cresting wave. The man looked unflappable with a determination to match. It had taken him less than a minute to use the waves to go from the promontory to the closest of the docks.

Then as he got closer, Brandon used the waves to jump on top of one of the boats.

There was a general shock of alarm but Brandon gave a signal that he was on the correct boat and safe. He held up one of the flags that they had agreed on, this one, a green flag for all clear.

The Orcs paused their playing. Just as quickly, they continued onward restoring his eyesight and now making it even more clear. Not only had Brandon picked the right boat, he had picked a boat that he began to move with water power.

Anthony could make out that three other figures on the deck. He wasn't sure which of the three were Anthony, Iggy or Bob. Until he saw someone almost jump off of the ship, trying to pull a rope up off of the docks and he realized that that was almost certainly Bob because Stella and Iggy had too much sense.

The wave that carried Brandon in initially broke against the midpoint of the town. It extended in a bid to fill the canal. It rose up above the city. As it got closer, he could see that it was not only increasing height but width as well.

This is going to be a massive problem if they got something into the water that could start causing disease. Anthony had lectured them at length about shitting in their own water and how that could be a real problem down the line. Finley did not want to watch this exchange, but something told him that he wasn't going to be seeing a earthquake followed by a tidal wave hitting a zombified city anytime soon, so he forced himself to watch.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Ten seconds after the wave went through town, it broke on the opposite side.

Sonya had done her best to make a straight line, but when that happened Finley could see the water taking a turn. If what he heard was correct, Anthony had asked her to make a small inland lake for them to park the boat at until they were able to kit it up.

He had used the words, 'parking lot'. It was another earth slang that he decided he was better off not asking about. They had so many inside jokes that when he finally got one of them, he was surprised at how little meaning could be behind it.

What else could a parking lot be? People just parked in the middle of the road right? So it must be like a place where you could drive and park your wagon. By that metric, any place that they stopped for the night was a parking lot.

Anthony got his attention.

His part had been a late addition but he was ready. After he had been bodily shoved into a coma unceremoniously by their last death knight encounter, it had taken him several weeks in order to feel whole again.

With he had the hindsight of knowing that he never wanted to experience a coma again. Combining that with the time that he had to recover, he was almost back to his old self.

His magic had gotten significantly better though in the meantime. There it was being part of a caravan of chosen or just using it, he couldn't say. It hadn't been nearly as strong when he had started out. And it had taken him forever to get this far.

The fact that they chosen around him were jumping up and by leaps and bounds... gave him pause. Just a few would be able to do the work of an entire army if they were trained.

Finley tapped into the green, pushing his energy and focus on the plant life around him. The verdant depths to which he sunk now brought him a clear picture of everything that he touched and everything that touched everything he touched.

There were blind spots, like the maze but despite there being a maze and the land around them, the roots of the long grass ran deep. The connected nature of the long-term growth in the area gave him an insight into where he was and if he closed his eyes, he could see the city.

It wasn't that there was a lot of plant life in the city. It was that there was a distinct absence of deep growth. Both because it was on the edge of a river and, by nature erosion, had decided that it would take that one area.

The dwarves decided that they would spit in the face of nature shoring it up year after year, even though the city itself should have already floated off into the quiet sea decades ago. Curiously enough he also felt the wildlife inside of the white ocean. Seaweed and mussels and clams were all present at the edge of his senses.

Finley found their newest haunt. A clump of seaweed had rushed into the interior of the canal. It hadn't wanted it but through all the commotion it had been to come detached and in a crisis, it had decided that this was a time to make a break for it. These were all things that he was assigning to it as seaweed had no direct consciousness that he could actually query.

Seeing where the seaweed was, he tried to grab it. It felt elusive in his mind as he had grabbed seaweed before but not this amount and not with his druid Powers. He pushed it to go where he wanted to go. It was like trying to move a toddler to someplace on purpose and they wanted anything but that.

It was entirely possible to move the seaweed, but he would have to finesse it. It might take his whole soul to do so

Finley, possessing two souls decided that he could forfeit one if he really needed to. Plus he was doing good in the eyes of the Goat Lord by saving all of these chosen heroes who had just decided to show up on his wagon step.

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The canal was long. It needed shoring up, but it was complete and the boat that they'd wanted to move had moved through it.

Brandon was there putting out fires close to the canal. He was also drawing in water from the quiet sea to pour up the canal towards the little parking lot that he was going to make out of a ton of water.

Stella and Bob were fighting again and he had asked them to please take that to the other side of the boat. He hated it when they fought. Stella was always making up things and he was playing into it, but they never hurt anyone with their banter, so he just kept a safe distance.

Iggy, who was not romantically involved with anybody on the Caravan was steering the ship. He wasn't doing much because Brandon was in control of the water around them, but the little part that he did was enough to make him feel like he was helping out.

They were all chosen, but some of them felt like they had gotten chosen a few extra times, like Bob who had earned Mork's favor by killing a death knight before they had even met him.

Sonya had later revealed that she had killed a death knight. Brandon had never wanted something as much as he had wanted to kill one of them for himself. Because those abilities that Bob and Sonya had gotten had been clutch. In fact, they had probably saved the entire expedition if he was being truthful.

The ability to go back and forth at well to places they've previous gone had changed the game.

It was so overpowered that Brandon could actually take a break. He was already thinking about his dream tropical beach vacation.

Would there be other humans there? He didn't know.

Even if there were only elves there, he would still have a blast. He would show them how to make pina coladas.

Were there even pineapples? He didn't know.

He only knew what druid that could tell him. He resolved to ask. Finley would go from being his guide to the world to his travel agent.

But before all of that it was time to put in work.

First, they were going to have to figure out a way to retrofit this ship, carry all of their wagons and then load up the horses and possibly the goats.

Sophie had just shown up with goats. Like it was the thing she just did. After their encounter but the former orc tribe, there had been a suspicious amount of goats.

There were so many, that Brandon was suspicious that this was some sort of trick that the gods had pulled.

True, the male goats smelled terrible but the female were not that bad.

He could learn to live with it. But on a cramped ship? Everyone would be looking for that person that had the cleanse card to do their best ax body spray impression.

He knew that he was looking for it. When this day was done, he was going to look really carefully about possibly getting his own bath going. However, there was a non-zero number of zombies around them which gave him a predictable amount of pause.

Brandon felt that with his magic, a new sensation that he was really enjoying. They had only had about two weeks to work with this new aspected power since they swapped him around.

He was thriving.

A ship came to an uneasy stop as he pushed the water to seize it up. Ahead of them, what had been a wall was now broken in many pieces.

The ship passed and slowed into the parking lot.

That was when he realized that he was on a boat in a man-made canal in a city full of flaming zombies and it was time for him to douse some of those mother fuckers off.