The sign did not lie, walking down the path to 'Exit and Parking' lead them out to the dingy parking lot they started at. It was dark and rainy, no big shocker. Corvayne also wasn't surprised to turn around and see the path had vanished. What was interesting was that Mr I's beat up pick up pulled in right as they were walking out.
Wick looked at her tiny screen and watched as it updated the time, popping backwards two days to read 4:23 AM.
“According to my phone we were only in there a few hours.”
Which meant...
Corvayne dropped the dragon on the gravel and drew his spear. No rest for them: He could see large shapes moving in the trees. Two of the bigfoot emerged. They stopped, looked at the tiny dragon he dropped on the ground, then at Corvayne, who covered in blood, wounds, burns, and was now just waiting for them to make a single move before he turned them into swiss cheese. The creatures turned and looked at each other, and held their hands up and just backed away into the brush.
Corvayne sighed, then hefted the headless half-scaled dragon back over his shoulder and picked up the magic cooler. Wick was behind him. She looked like she had fought off a bear too. Icariii hopped out of the car. “Oh my goodness! You two, what happened? I thought I saw your monster... what is THAT?” the tone of his voice went to concern to childlike excitement. “What is that on your shoulders!? Did you find it in the woods!? Here!” The man nearly fell over himself running to open the back of his truck, laying out a tarp. “What is it? Can I try cooking it?”
Corvayne turned and looked at Wick. She stepped up to the plate. “We had to run from a swarm of bigfoot. Corvayne found a magic staircase and we ran up it, were trapped in a weird dun- place for 2 days but it looks like it was just a few hours. If you help us cook our dead dragon, sure. Uh, we want the scales and heart meat.”
Icariii nodded. “Of course. A dragon heart probably would make a young man very potent.”
“It's not a sex thing.” Wick said firmly.
The monk shrugged in a way that suggested he was thinking 'yeah sure it isn't'. “My apologies. Old monks like me have nothing better to do then encourage young couples.” Corvayne did not react to Wick's sour face but secretly enjoyed it.
Mister I didn't linger on his comment and instead helped Corvayne heft the thing onto the bed of his truck then put another tarp over it and tie it down. The monk then did some basic first aid, cleaning wounds and supplying them with a large number of bandages. Corvayne hadn't brought any spare clothes with him and wasn't up for sewing, so he accepted a spare shirt the monk had with palm trees and surfboards embroidered on it, appreciating that it was a button up as he was terrified taking the wreath off would cause him to pass out again. He took his cloak off his neck and wrapped it around his waist, the fabric pleating and accepting the form of a belt. Wick saw the shirt and laughed at him as they were putting the cooler into the back seat. He sat in the back and Wick joined him.
“You look like a tourist. No self respecting hero would wear that.”
He shrugged. “I was out of torn white shirts and I don't own a cape.” He looked at Mister I in the mirror and bowed as best he could sitting in a seat. “It's very comfy thank you Mister I.” Corvayne said. The monk just nodded in response and started driving.
Wick piped up. “Can we stop at a 24 hour grocery store for... snacks?”
“Oh yes! I will get things to cook that with too. We will have dragon for breakfast!”
Wick grinned. “You can be our official Crypto-Gastromy expert”
“The dungeon gave us mustard.” Corvayne added.
Wick looked up at him. “I thought you told me in the woods you didn't want us to use that word! Also, it was open skies for almost the entire place.”
Corvayne thought. “Fine. How about we call it a Tower? Because it goes up. And there were more floors.”
Mister I looked back. “Ah, well, can you tell me what happened? Oh how rude: I caught a big grouper but let it go.” He used a stop sign on the back road they were on to pull up a picture of the fish on his phone.
“Oh nice.” Corvayne gave him a thumbs up.
“Not as big as your catch!” The monk laughed.
Corvayne didn't know how much to lie. So he prompted Wick to tell the story and she told a mostly straightforward account of getting cornered at the stairs, the ambush and fights up to the third floor, cooking and eating monsters, taking watches while sleeping, crossing the river, and sneaking past a forest of dangerous trees to reach the exit. Then the fight with the dragon, where she didn't mention anything aside from how talented he was with a spear. She mentioned finding a cold cooler full of food.
The monk laughed. “Griffon Sausage! Do you think it's really griffon meat? They are a legendary monster...”
Corvayne popped the cooler open, brought the pack out. Wick used her phone's light to help him read the label.
“Made with griffon, salt, red pepper. Well, that settles it.”
Wick laughed. “Says so on the package! They can't make it up.”
They pulled up to a huge store about thirty minutes out of the park that was seemingly located in the middle of nowhere but lit up like they were afraid the sun was never going to come up again. The parking lot reminded him of the huge flat area they had built the space port on. Mister I sighed “The big guys really squeezed the mom and pop 24 hour mega stores out of business.”
Corvayne looked at the parking lot as they cruised through it. Aside from a handful of orange trucks, there were only maybe five cars in the lot. They grabbed a cart someone had left in front of where the monk had parked them and entered the store, which also was lit for surgery. Corvayne had shopped at tiny corner grocery stores with Grunt, but the difference in size for this store vs one in a place packed with people was hard to wrap his head around. Stepping into the store, Wick turned and looked at him in the florescent light. “I didn't realize how bad that last floor was... You look like you got put through a meat grinder.”
Corvayne shrugged. “You too.”
Wick turned to Icariii, then gestured to their shredded clothing. “We are going to get some new stuff to wear and replace the first aid things we used.”
“Oh. Certainly. It would be nice to not have to explain to the police tonight that you two are not the victims of nor perpetrators of a crime!”
Following her in the store, Corvayne was shocked by how many rows of stuff they had. It was something that was never brought up in his books. There were grand palaces, exotic giant space ports with endless wonders, or ruins stretching under mountains with arcane engines running sinister energies into arrays that spelled doom for the good guy: But he had an image for how stores were. He did not gawk (too much) at the ocean because there was some frame of reference: Some farmer boy with a magic sword sees the sea and says 'What a big lake!' in so many of those books. And now here he was, in the men's clothing section of a store large enough to hold his village and the wall around it squared with Wick handing him clothes and all he could think was 'What a big store!'. It was... too clean: stark whites spotless aside from where he brought mud and crud onto tiles. A little robot was following him cleaning up afterwards he noted. The only disruption were boxes here and there, half full of clothes or other goods. He barely noticed the pile in his arms before she pushed him over to a dressing room.
He balked at a price tag. “Uh, I can't pay for all this...”
“You goofball. First! I ruined your old clothes. Second! You saved my LIFE! Third... If you're around me... I can't have you looking like I just pulled you out of the Wastes! Fourth! I make money I cannot spend. At the very least I can play dress up with you. Hmm... I wanna see you with a real haircut and a suit.”
“No way... I can't fight in a suit!” She ignored his protests and pushed him into the changing room.
Wick was sharp: she had guessed his size pretty well. Most of the clothes fit, though some of the shirts were a little snug. She handed him another set, then set about getting herself new stuff. When he came out of the dressing room, she had new olive slacks, and a new olive jacket with some other stuff in a bag. He looked at his own outfit: tight white t-shirt with no sleeves. Leather vest with fur around the hood. Black pants with all sorts of belt buckles. Cowboy hat which he took off. She had also thrown in socks and a lot of briefs. She picked all black ones.
“Uh, is this my style?”
“No, but we work with what we got. Dump anything that didn't fit in the basket there.”
After he did so she fed a card into a little machine nearby and all the tags fell off the clothes that were left. A little robot started sucking them up. Corvayne wondered what she'd look like in a dress, then squashed the thought and focused on following her to the pharmacy, piles of clothes in hand, where she got pills and first aid supplies forcing him to find a cart. Her buying more bandages reminded him of all the cuts and bruises and mild burns covering him. It was actually weird that he didn't have third degree burns on his stomach now that he thought about it, he had been sure the dragon had cooked his midriff. Then she dragged him over to the camping section, up a flight of concrete stairs with a cart ramp to a second floor that looked like it was just built across shelves rather then a planned section. There were antique rifles gleaming in cases, small arms, and so on.
She only spared them a short glance. “I don't want to buy any of these here, but we will get you a pistol in town.”
He frowned. He should have taken one off those guys who tried to rob the warehouse.
Past the actual weapons were tools that doubled as weapons. She bought him two large hatchets, a machete, a sledgehammer, and a hunting bow and 20 arrows. She also bought a spearfishing spear and went to the garden section and asked him a few questions about what types of weapons he trained with that he lead to her trying to get him to decide which garden tools would line up best with them. She bought him a hand scythe meant to pull weeds. Wick grabbed a broom handle too, why not? On the way she had grabbed another cart and bought a lawn bag and dumped it all into it, buying it and dropping the tags on the floor. The last item was odd: she went into the toy section and bought a plastic wand with a big pink star on it. They met Icariii by the grocery section, and he paid for his food and they walked out of the nearly empty store, never seeing more then a single worker on the way out, who waved then went back to walking down the isles.
Looking over at the monk, he had just bought stuff for seasoning meat and three different mustards as well as normal looking spicy brats and sauerkraut. “I want to compare them to yours. We'll do a taste test together?”
Corvayne rode up front while Wick squeezed in with the stuff they had got. During the ride back, Corvayne discovered that talking about his experience eating giant crickets and worse in the desert was some sort of life-affirming experience for the monk, who it seemed had put all the enjoyment of all the vices he was likely self denied into really loving to find, kill, and eat things that walked around outside. After a more in depth blow-by-blow of skinning and eating three monsters inside the tower and the assurance they were absurdly delicious Mister I had taken to slyly asking if they would consider maybe bringing him, and some of his friends who enjoyed camping and new culinary experiences, samples of the game they had found.
Corvayne agreed and had joked about throwing in a few furry slugs in and the monk was laughing and nodding and slapping the wheel vigorously in a way that made his polite enthusiasm in every other thing he said seem hollow. He had also made his third friend by simply stating that, growing up in the middle of the desert, he hadn't fished. He was worried that the Monk was about to slam on the breaks right before getting back into the city and drive over the median to turn around and drive an hour and change back to the fishing spot, but Wick managed to calmly (by yelling she wanted to get the FUCK out of the woods) convince the distraught Mister I that Corvayne would be OK for a week because he didn't know what he was missing.
It hadn't been raining since they left the store, and the rest of the drive took them to before sunrise. Mister I had a grill in the courtyard behind the community center and they decided to have dragon for breakfast and also the griffon sausages too, with the heart as well. Mister I pulled out some custom mustard sauce and pulled the body with a grunt onto a wood table in the corner by the grill and started butchering the dragon. Once again, Wick pointedly turned around.
“I'll smoke anything I don't use and give you the scales and horns and bones!” Mister I called out. There was a picnic table where Corvayne dropped his pack and the cooler then sat down, resting his chin on his elbows. Wick sat next to him and they watched the monk cook. Corvayne cleared his throat.
“You want to be partners and I'm interested, but I'd like to have an idea of what you have in mind and what we'll be doing.”
Wick nodded at him. “I know I get into conspiracy stuff a lot but I am dead serious that in the upper Collective government have supernatural powers.”
“I honestly don't know what the Collective is. I assume it's interplanetary given our previous conversations.”
Wick had gotten used to him asking questions he was sure outed him as a sheltered weirdo. “It's the interplanetary body that rules over a thousand colonies give or take. That puts it at roughly 90% of the total human colonies.”
“Ok. So they have a lot of power. And they are secret wizards.” Corvayne lowered his voice. “I don't want to jump to conclusions, but I'm guessing now that whatever your background is, you came into contact with them, your family was involved in it, and whatever happen made you run away. It would explain too why you are hiding.”
Wick was silent for a moment. “What?”
Corvayne glanced at her hair, then with his eyes looked down at her lap a moment. “You dye your hair.”
Wick smirked. “Ha! Green, blue, purple, pink hair all occur without dye because they were passed on after genetic modification. My parents were both recessive gene carriers. My hair is natural.”
“I wasn't going off of color. Your hair is a pretty natural shade of green. But you need to make sure to get down to the roots when applying the dye.”
Wick ran a hand through her hair. “Hmmf. I didn't pin you for being stubborn. Look at my roots. I'm a classic mint, I even got the freckles.”
“I mean downstairs.”
She hissed and lowered her voice, face getting red. “How hard were you looking?”
“You laid out ground rules inside and now that we are outside I am trying to work on our business partnership and friendship, so I will not give you a blow by blow. I am explaining to you something that someone else could pick up on. I didn't understand until now that you dying your body hair might be related to hiding, and could be relevant to keeping you safe.”
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Wick buried her head in her hands. Corvayne kept himself neutral and calm despite finding it extremely pleasing.
“No one else is going to-” She groaned and sighed. “Thank you. I'll fix it whenever I go outside our arrangement.”
Corvayne was a little confused. “Arrangement?”
“Friends with benefits.”
“Like the business partnership you proposed.” Corvayne nodded.
“Corvayne I can't tell if you're joking when you go poker faced. Crank it back a few notches.”
He eased his control up a little. “I wasn't making a joke. You've said that I am like a flawless killing machine who spends too much time reading pulp novels. That comment hurt me. Really, it did because it's true. The learning everything from books part. I'm hardly flawless. So: I'm poker faced because I am following rules you laid down and I agreed to.”
Wick looked around. “Is... is this a fight? I haven't even told you what we are doing, and you somehow picked a fight over my pussy?”
Corvayne didn't fully understand why she thought it was a fight. “Hunting voices. You just made Mister Icariii laugh.”
Wick took a deep breath. Corvayne felt emotions roiling under him but held firm on his respect for and trust in Wick. She looked annoyed, but lowered her voice. “I really wish you could talk about this shit with Grunt. Friends with benefits is the nice way of saying fuck buddies. As in we have a working friendship and when we are not seeing anyone else, I will sometimes call you over to watch a movie or something then we enjoy each others company... 'Streaming with Chill'.” Wick made finger quotes around the last phrase and stopped and looked for understanding on Corvayne's face. When she didn't find it because Corvayne didn't want to jump to conclusions she rolled her eyes. “We will have sex. And possibly watch a movie together afterwords.”
Corvayne nodded. Oh. Ooooh. Then he felt his cheeks heat up. “I... thought it was a one-time...”
“It will be if you can't shut your trap and listen. You were more or less right: I do not want the Collective's attention. They have, on top of a huge fleet of warships armed with weapons that are able to turn large chunks of a planet into magma, a bunch of cults. Some of them have done impossible things like you can do. I am very concerned that someday I will be at their mercy. Ok? I want you to help me figure out magic. I want to do the same bullshit you do. The thing with... [Backstab]... heh, that's a good start. But I need more. I want our own group or something so when they show up at my door someday I have you and another hundred people like you at my back. I need to think greedy. To be perfectly honest, if I can find a way to get outside their reach, that would be fine too.”
Corvayne couldn't have cared less about fighting wizards for a crazy wizard. But fighting wizards for Wick? Game on. “I'll train you. You help me with, well, figuring out all the stuff I've missed over the years. Maybe help me get a phone so you can call me. I think our goal is to use money from the expeditions into that tower to possibly find other spaces like it.” He lifted the cooler. “The tower, after our trial, gave us things. It had the note and the items with the note that suggested there is an intelligence behind the tower responding to how we handled the climb. And if it gives rewards? It's encouraging it. So I propose you and me recruit Grunt for this and then explore the place. Also, can we get him over here? It's early but he might still be up: I'd like him to get in on this breakfast we are making.”
Wick thought. “Ok. I'll give him a text. It's what, 7? He's going to be working until 8. But the expeditions: I agree that I want to go back with equipment, stuff that measures a whole bunch of physical constants, and study that place. I have a guy who puts them together who's going to be pissed that I lost the stuff in the pack. But money shuts him up.”
He pulled at the clothes she picked out for him. “I got the impression you have a sizable amount to work with from the scene at the store and all.”
“Buying property or a car leaves a bigger paper trail. I want a space ship. That's nearly impossible unless I can make or pay for expertly made credentials that will let me use a loan.”
Corvayne for a moment imagined the pictures of bustling street markets he had seen in art books, imagining a man standing in front of a pile of space ships calling out for someone to buy them. “You can't just give them a pile of money?”
“That makes me look triple suspicious. It's also more money then I expected to make in my lifetime even given my job overpaying me for about three real hours a week.”
“Hmm. I would imagine if magic is rare and precious...” Corvayne mused
“We can charge whatever we want for it.” Wick finished. She had a grin on her face. “It's only worth what someone will pay.”
Corvayne thought. “Maybe ask Dawn for help? She is, after all, in business. Excuse me. Business.”
“I like her but she'd still take a huge cut. I have another idea who we can use as a fence.”
Corvayne trusted her on that. “Ok. So to start, 50/50 on whatever we make after a cut?”
“If we split costs off from that. I'd actually like 40/40 then save the overhead for whatever we need for the group. Possibly as a fund we have for getting off planet. I do more planning and research, your role is to train me and Grunt, if he needs it, on how to operate in the dungeons and act as our leader inside there. Keep in mind bringing him now means that split is on our 2/3rds of the shares unless he buys in, then I don't know, whatever keeps a fifth of our income liquid enough.”
“It's a little over 25 percent each. I think that's a good breakdown. But I'm not a leader.”
“You did fine leading me. You really felt... in your element. I think you actually were kind of happy?”
Corvayne thought about it. He did have squad leadership training. Whatever else his failings, he was good at keeping a calm head under pressure. Correction: When not faced with Wick related stress. She was also right: there were a few moments when he had been happy. Alive. The difference in facing a life and death situation with people who hated you vs doing it with someone like Wick? It was night and day.
“Very well. I'll draw something up for standard procedures, what we do with things we find in the dungeon, how we make decisions on what the value of things are before they are sold. If we are exploring rather then simply trying to escape, it's more likely there will be a point when we disagree on who should get an item, or perhaps even if we should consume a non-renewable resource that might be sold instead.”
Wick smiled. “You go from mister humble to mercenary captain pretty fast.”
Corvayne scratched his cheek. Was that a compliment or an insult? He was starting to think Wick's favorite thing was to combine them.
“So You lead outside. I lead inside. Going in means training. We are all on various night schedules, right? I think we stick with sleeping during the day, Train in the evening, work at night. When we go explore, we aim for early morning. The rate of time in there seemed slower.”
Wick smiled and nodded. “You got this all figured out Corvayne! I can't promise I'll like exercising every night.”
Sorting that out, Wick sent Grunt a text that there was a breakfast barbeque at the community center. True to form, Grunt just sent a thumbs up. He did show up a few minutes after his shift right as Mister I said everything was ready and the four of them sat and ate. Wick and Corvayne split the heart which was chewy and tasted like high quality jerky with a hint of sweetness like strawberry. It was one of the best things he had ever had in his life. The other meat off the dragon was amazing too, strips of muscle somehow turning from incredibly tough when alive to being succulent and soft and juicy with a hint of something sweet that Corvayne wanted to say tasted like teriyaki peanut butter.
The lemonade was also peerless: each sip reminded him of a rare good village moment: sitting on a dock on the oasis in palm shade with a cold drink, feet in the cool water, a breeze carrying away the oppressive desert heat while he just stared at the water and sky. It was sweet and clean.
The regular sausages that Mister I got were good too, but the Griffon ones had a strange heat to them that, merging with the honey mustard that the monk had supplied with them along with the sauerkraut: Corvayne ate the first one in probably three huge bites and got the monk telling him to slow down and savor the food. The second one he took the time to chew and discovered that in addition to the odd spices griffon tasted like freedom... somehow. The second sausage put him at comfortably full.
While Corvayne was finishing his meal Wick was retelling the story to Grunt. Grunt raised an eyebrow at first but didn't seem to question what he was told, just shrugged and nodded that yes, next time? He was in.
Mister I laughed “If I was younger I would go too! But if you're selling the meat I'll buy it...”
Corvayne looked over at Wick. She thought about it and nodded. “We'll need money for stuff. Our own car eventually. Anyone who wants to try it pays oh... say... twenty times the value of similar cuts of meat. If you want to give people a sample to get them hooked, go for it. Any leftovers, same.”
The monk nodded. “If you bring out another dragon like this, the meat would buy you a house.”
Wick and the monk got into details on the monk's hunting buddies and how he was also a member of The Order of the Grill. Grunt spun around to put his back to them on the bench and gave Corvayne a look and a head tilt to follow him: Quick huddle.
Corvayne nodded, then got up and they walked a little bit away from the table. Did Grunt want him to confirm what Wick told them?
Grunt made a goalpost with his fingers, then mimed one finger kicking a ball, then darted his eyes back to the two arguing about how much beef should be: How did it go with Wick?
Corvayne gave him a blank look, then looked both ways, and smiled with a single thumbs up: Oh it went. Then he held up a fist, and Grunt bumped it: My MAN!
Corvayne offered to help Mister I clean up. Grunt waved and vanished before Wick could rope him into helping. Wick stayed as they still had some things in the cooler to check, namely the daggers, then deciding who got the cooler itself. There were a few bowls and pots to wash. Mister I got the rest of the scales off and offered to have his buddy taxidermy the head in exchange for dragon jerky. Corvayne was a little confused on that deal.
“What if he needs more then just meat to pay-”
“He is like me.”
Oh, well that clears it up. Onwards: the remaining items were the pack of napkins, the bread, and slices of cheese, as well as paper plates, the two daggers, and four condoms.
Corvayne looked at the remaining items. “We ate the rolls and they were pretty good... all the food that came in it was extra good.”
Wick picked up a dagger and pointed it away from anything important, then swung it to no effect, then squeezed the hilt. The weapon shot out a jet of yellow flame, with little red tinges. It lasted a second then Wick nearly collapsed onto the park bench. “That... really winds you.”
Corvayne grabbed one and pointed it into the sky then triggered a red flame with sparks of blue in it for a solid five seconds before he willed it to stop, cutting the fire off. “It's not that bad. Let's take one each. I bet they run off your endurance... I'm going to really recommend jogging every day.”
Wick gestured around herself. “Oh yeah. Jogging here in Old Town! That's a good way to break both legs tripping over something.”
“I just run laps around the warehouse.” Corvayne realized after saying it that he was inviting her over and was about to think of how to explain himself but Wick didn't seem to mind.
“OK! I'll come by in the afternoon and we'll jog then.” She smiled at him. He felt his cheeks warm.
“So as I was saying, the food was extra good. I'd like the paper plates to see if things taste better when eating from a paper plate. Maybe the napkins clean better.” He really wanted to see what kind of boots the place might spit out. Or an enchanted version of his cloak.
“Let's have the cooler be communal, we take it with us on expeditions so we have say, stuff to cook inside the tower with.” Wick looked at it. “I'll keep it with me, be in charge of stocking it, we'll hash out what to put in it after I get you a phone.”
Corvayne nodded. “I'm ok with that. Leave the mustard and cheese in then.”
“That leaves...” Wick looked at Corvayne, perhaps testing him for any signs of enthusiasm.
“The fair party way would be to split them 2 and 2.” he said maybe a little too evenly.
“Test the plates and napkins. If they also have enhanced effects, I'll make a call about splitting the last thing either 2 for each of us or if we BOTH feel like it, 4 for each of us.”
“But there's only... oh yeah.” He let himself smile. “Agreed.”
They split the napkins and plates, then Wick closed up the cooler. Corvayne still needed to get his bag out of the truck, and the clothes they bought, and they needed to put the other things they had piled into the truck somewhere too... He'd do that later. He wanted to go shopping again, it had been fun watching Wick sort of just steamroll through the store.
It had been fun being stuck in a dungeon with her.
Corvayne stretched then laid himself down on the bench. The sun was shining orange on the apartments flanking the community center. Wick did the same. He looked over at her, then back up at the sky and breathed in and sighed. He had a big problem. His eyes narrowed as he looked up at the sky. Make that two problems. Suddenly having a new one must have let his poker face slip because Wick dropped some of the scratch out of her voice to try to be encouraging. She was looking at him.
“Hey, our first adventure...” She said. “We won.”
“We didn't get a bigfoot.” That was the original goal.
“We'll go back for one. We got a dragon, that's way better.”
“We ate it.” It was good though.
“We'll get another one. What's bothering you?”
Corvayne wanted... he wanted to take Wick out for ice cream. Kiss her. Carry her around like a princess. Go for walks in the park without monsters. Definitely see her in a dress with her hair down and no glasses. Kiss her again. She did not want that, and the irony that he had no idea that how bad he wanted before she no to it wasn't lost on him. He might have said no, refused any deal, told her he wanted it all, gotten dumped, and gone on with life. Now he had set himself up the same as how he got out of bed every day where he willingly walked into it. No, this was different: the possibility of sex was like a nuclear bomb tossed into his thoughts to stir things up. The entire situation was already too complicated for him! He really needed a third party to talk to. Maybe Grunt? The thought of navigating the conversation... maybe yes no questions? The only other person who fit the bill was Icariii. He wondered then if Spaces-Torn-Asunder gave good relationship advice. Crap. He needed more friends. He decided then to address his lesser problem to Wick.
“Well, it's going to seem really silly.”
“Try me.”
Corvayne pointed up at a pair of orbs in the sky, faint against the rising sun. “Has this planet always had two moons?”
“Yeah, why?”
Corvayne stared up at them, comparing it to the lone moon he had grown up with.
“Fuck.” he muttered to himself. Where the hell was he?