Josie looked around the enclosed space. Where would she keep a dangerous plant

and copies of all her notes? She decided to do two spells. One would locate any

paperwork, the other would locate the trees.

She became Zatanna and threw out birds to locate the gardener’s stash. She didn’t

want to leave anything behind that could be used to start up the problem again.

Three birds leaped from her hand. One flew to the book shelf. Fass went to the thing

and started checking the books for notes.

One flew into the floor. Josie frowned before looking for a trap door. She pushed

on the chair and revealed a section of the floor on hinges. She put a barrier up to keep

anything in the hidden cellar down there when she opened the door.

The third bird fizzled out. The target had been destroyed between the time she had

cast the spell and the moment it ended. She was happy about that.

“The original tree is gone,” said Josie.

“What do you mean?,” asked Fass.

“Something came along and did something to it when I cast my spell,” said Josie.

“Maybe Jack decided to pull up every goblin tree he could find.”

“Could he do that with that great honking thing he built?,” asked Fass. He waved

his hands to indicate the size of the flying building he had seen.

“I guess so,” said Josie. “We can ask him when we get back to the quinjet. I need you

to grab the papers and clear out of this building. I don’t know what’s beneath us, but

I am not going to explain why you became a mindless berserker to your wife.”

“I understand,” said Fass. “I do not relish having to explain anything to Jack if

something happened to you. He downplays how he feels but he is obviously angry

about things when he starts making decisions. And he has it under enough control

to be very dangerous to anyone in his way.”

“A distant storm,” said Josie. “Go ahead. I need to make sure no one comes along

to pick up the tree and start everything again. We’re missing something.”

“What do you mean?,” asked Fass. He placed all the notes he could find in his travel

bag. He usually used it for loot they picked up, but the papers were more important

than anything else he had uncovered.

“We haven’t closed the quest yet,” said Josie. “Why? What have we not done? Is the

Lich Queen still back in Kas lurking around the empty space left by Jack pulling up

the town for his ship. And I should have seen that coming too. He was talking about

a flying boat like Peter Pan, but I ignored it as him just putting out the idea.”

“And then he built the quinjet for Emily, and then the Enterprise for this,” said Fass.

“I should have put my foot down,” said Josie. “Go ahead. I need to make sure the

place is safe for others. Then we can leave and try to figure things out. Maybe I need

to send a letter to Elaine, and ask her what the model says.”

Fass backed out of the door. He whistled and gestured for his people to fall back. If

no one had tried to stop them before this, then there was nobody close enough to try.

He directed them back to the quinjet, handing his bag to Budd with the order to guard

it with his life. He took up a spot to watch the front and sides of the house until Josie

came out.

He was not going to explain why he let something hurt Josie to her more dangerous

partner. He had thought she was the more dangerous one, but he saw that was a

mistake in judgement.

Josie was dangerous and ruthless in her own way. She just wasn’t as dangerous as

Jack could be when he put aside the loon he displayed for others.

Josie pushed the cellar into stasis as Zatanna. She asked for anything in the air to light

up for her. She didn’t see anything that might be dangerous to her. She descended

into the cellar, flicking a lantern to light with her finger.

The sample goblin tree rested in a pot of dirt on a pedestal in the middle of a small

pool of water. Growths ran up the sides, attached to the bark by pulsing veins.

A mushroom cap joined the top of the limbs together to the central trunk. An ugly

wooden face regarded her in immobility.

Josie made sure the air was safe to breathe before she switched to Doctor Alchemy.

She raised her hand. There was one way to handle this without the risk of causing a

wild growth in the cellar for others to discover when they came looking for the

gardener. She flexed her fingers. Words wrote themselves in a circle around the tree

and pot of dirt. When the sentence vanished, an ugly tree of gold remained.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

She received a ding.

“So the source of the infection is gone, but not the main user,” said Josie. She needed

to talk to Elaine, and they needed to find the Queen before she came into her power.

Her immediate concern was the golden tree in the golden pile of dirt in a gold pot.

She needed to get it to the quinjet and then come up with a new approach.

She became Zatanna and sent a bird to the quinjet. When it arrived, it would yank the

gold tree to it. She teleported to the main floor of the house. She made sure nothing

else of interest was there before stepping outside. She immediately spotted Fass

standing at the edge of the clearing around the cottage.

She let the persona go. A walk back to their transportation would give her time to

think about what they had learned. Then she could wrangle everyone together for

a planning session.

“We need to call Elaine to see if the circle moved,” said Josie. “Then we need to talk

to Jack and see if he can do anything for us with the Enterprise. I know we missed

something somewhere. We might have to go back to Kas and talk to the soldiers that

remained. Maybe they know something.”

“They are probably not going to want to talk to us after the display Jack put on,” said

Fass. “If they are smart, the commanders sent a messenger back to the central

command, and pulled out.”

“I didn’t see any horses,” said Josie. “How do they retreat without something to lift

their burdens?”

“I didn’t see any either,” said Fass. “Do you think there was a place there we

missed?”

“It’s an idea,” said Josie. “I sent your payment back to the quinjet. Lou might have

jumped out of his skin when he saw it.”

“All right,” said Fass. “They might have buried the real Queen underground. Jack

only ripped up the surface buildings where they were trying to produce their army.”

“I’m worried that’s what happened,” said Josie. “We ran the army out of there, ripped

up their bases, and took all the implanted women we could find. If there is a hidden

spot, the Queen could be waiting to emerge and start spreading her baby army.”

“Everything depends on if they went back to keep her locked up,” said Fass.

“A lot more depends on whether she was able to infect any of them and make one of

them her first soldier, and what he would do to grow the seed inside of him,” said

Josie.

“How do we kill these things?,” asked Fass.

“We are going to need to set them on fire from a distance,” said Josie. “The ones I

saw were tough enough to take multiple sword attacks.”

“You saw them?,” said Fass.

“When I dropped off our gardener friend in the future, this place had become a

battlefield between soldiers and goblin tree people,” said Josie. “Those soldiers were

being eaten alive on the ground. Cuts from swords and axes barely slowed the goblin

tree people down. Burning them had an effect, but the fire has to be hotter than what

I saw being used. To change that future, we have to make sure this doesn’t spread out

of control now.”

“All right,” said Fass. “If fire is the only thing that can hurt them, we might need to

stock up on oil and use that. It’s something the Adventurers’ Guild will have to

consider if we fail.”

“We could lose the city if one of those things gets inside the wall,” said Josie. “The

rest of the country would provide the numbers to destroy every country on the

continent. There is also something worse in a way.”

“I can’t wait to hear the worse possible outcome that we might be facing,” said Fass.

“We just assumed the seed can be grown in humans,” said Josie. “What if it can be

introduced into animals?”

“I don’t like that thought at all,” said Fass. “Anything living could be the Queen.”

“And anything could be spreading it around like rabies,” said Josie. “We might have

left too soon.”

“We have to go back and make sure,” said Fass. “We could have let something out

when Jack destroyed the town.”

“How many knew about anything like that and had the thought to move it?,” said

Josie. “We might get lucky and find what we are looking for before anyone gets it

together enough to move everything.”

“I have never been so lucky,” said Fass. He frowned at the silver skin of the quinjet

coming into view.

“Show him, Lou,” said Budd. He made a gesture with a finger.

Lou struggled to carry the miniature gold tree into sight. He placed it at the top of the

stairs. He stepped back.

“What is that?,” asked Fass. He held his hand to his head as he examined the thing

with his eyes.

“Your payment,” said Josie. “It’s solid gold through and through.”

“We’re rich,” said Budd. “I think this is excessive for the service we have done so

far.”

“Shut up,” said one of the others. Josie hadn’t sorted them out yet in her brain.

“If Madam Witch wishes to pay us in a solid gold statue that will set us up for

life, I say we should take the pay in the generosity it was given.”

“You can’t even spell generosity,” said Budd.

“Strap the gold statue down,” said Fass. “Our problem is still ongoing. We need

to solve that before we think about how we are going to split and spend our newfound

wealth. We’re going to need a tactic that will work against something that can’t

be cut, but can be set on fire. We’re going to have to go back to Kas and look

around for anything that might be ready to spread the goblin trees around. We

are definitely talking to the Guild and making them aware that such a tactic is

necessary if we lose here. Am I missing something?”

“We can use the Enterprise to catch anything we have to hunt,” said Josie. “So I need

to talk to Elaine and ask her about the Queen. Then I need to call Jack back and see

if the Enterprise can see anything we can’t.”

“Ask Elaine to mark any infected that might have already been sent back over the

border,” said Fass. “We might have been too late and only caught the middle of their

operation instead of the start.”

Josie frowned, but nodded. She didn’t like the fact that she might have to chase down

people already trying to get back to normal to make sure they didn’t start eating

their neighbors. She was definitely going to talk to the planners of this thing.

They deserved whatever she could think of to give to them so they never did anything

like this again.

She started up the stairs, heading for the pilot seat to write her letters. She paused just

long enough to help Lou and a couple of his friends move the tree against the back

wall of the cargo deck before she went upstairs.

She hoped she hadn’t given them all gold fever.