I watched as Mortician took one single sip of the facility's waters. It passed their lips in a spray of light and liquid, traveled down their throat in a mess of prismatic fluid, and settled in their stomach like a flashlight inside of a sleeping bag. I raised an eyebrow and waited for their reaction, but… there was none. Absolutely none at all.

They stared at the bottle, raised it to their lips once again, and this time chugged the rest of it. With a gasp of air they unlatched from the metal side, then frowned at the bottle as if they had expected more.

“Well, that was very underwhelming.” They laughed. “We had expected some grandiose melding of ourselves and the Staura spirits remembered by this liquid, but it would seem that–”

Mortician crumpled to the ground in a boneless heap. Light seeped out of every oily pore in their body, and they began to babble in a thousand voices that were barely distinguishable from each other. We all stood as one and stared down at them with varying emotions–from my concern to Okeria’s blatant curiosity, but not one of us moved to actually help them.

Not that we were all horrible bastards, of course. It just looked like Mortician was on the verge of exploding into a billion pieces. Or they were going to get some insane powerup from drinking the water. I gave it a fifty-fifty chance.

They groaned loudly a few minutes later and pulled themselves into a heap. They stared straight into my eyes, and I could swear there was something more behind them than there had been a moment ago. It reminded me of that one moment back in the oilsea, where the Stingprey had spoken using Mortician as a conduit. Their eyes shifted slightly, adding green to the mixture of colours, and then they were Mortician once again.

“We… that was unpleasant.” They chuckled weakly and pulled themselves to their feet. I offered a hand, which they took with a nod, and I felt the change instantly. Their bare hands crushed my armored fingers without any effort at all. “Oh. It would appear that with our connection to the bottomskitter has fully formed, and with it, our physical strength. Furthermore, we are sure that there is another incantation in our book for us to work with. And further furthermore, we can feel that there is another treasure our core is capable of producing!”

“And all it took was the concentrated essence of Rainbow Basin’s history. You’re gonna be one difficult person ta level up fully, ya know that?” Okeria said.

Mortician smiled and steadied themselves on the back of my chair. I could fell them shaking it with anticipation. “We can assure you that we are worth waiting for and investing in.”

Okeria took a drink of own bottle, then unlatched with a gasp. “Never said ya wouldn’t be. Now that that’s all said and done, do ya want ta do a little show of your new abilities? We can spare two more minutes, and ya look like you’re strugglin’ ta hold in all that excitement.”

“Yes, we are. And yes we will, thank you.” Mortician replied quickly before Okeria could change his mind. They held out their hand and summoned the book he’d made for them, cleared their throat, and began to speak. “Verdant love of gods unseen, bless our lives with your bounteous generosity!”

//BUFF GAINED: Heartfelt Prayer to the Undergrowth. As long as the source of this buff perpetuates it, their allies within range of a verdant aura have a greater chance for all luck-based effects to occur. This increases whenever a core-bearing enemy is defeated within the range of the aura.

Luck Modifier: 200%.

Increase: Additive 20%.

Another luck-style thing. We didn’t have any real luck-based functions as far as I knew, but if it counted node and function drops as luck-based, then this aura at least had a reason to exist. Of course it would be a whole lot better if one of us was completely built around rolling dice or flipping coins, but that kind of fighting style was just as likely to get you killed as it was to kill your enemy. And people with that kind of power usually didn’t live long enough to make real good use of it.

“Not quite as useful as our other auras, but if we so wished, we could likely keep it on at all times. The battery drain is so minimal that our passive restoration outpaces it.” Mortician noted with a frown. “Though… why would the incantation we received from the bottomskitter have something to do with luck? Our memories from them do not heavily focus on chance.”

Gloriosa cleared her throat to get everyone’s attention. “You can research it later. Right now, we have to deal with the fact that Okeria just single-handedly gave away some things we were keeping extremely secret then instantly went to destroy his old house. How do we move forward from here?”

“Well, it wasn’t quite single-handedly. Sebastian helped me out.” Okeria argued weakly, but gave up quickly. “Yeah, I know I fanned the flames. But there’s some stuff goin’ on all around the world, and even back home on Sotrien, that we gotta deal at some point. Better ta get it out in the open so people can start seein’ the shadows for what they are, yeah?”

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“You won’t hear any arguing from me.” Thorn chuckled and leaned back in his chair. “I’d be one major hypocrite if I started berating Okeria for what he did after what Scalovera’s people did to me. That mansion deserved to burn, and even better for the fact that you somehow got all of the civilians out.”

“I don’t know, Thorn. There’s a good chance more than a few innocent-adjacent people died in that place, and all the really powerful ones must have survived.” Gloriosa said. She waved her hand through the air, and a medley of strange-looking devices fell onto the table. “Make yourself useful Okeria and study these things. You always wanted to get your hands on Maqdim tech, right?”

Okeria’s hands snapped forward like twin snakes. “Trying ta make allies outside of the Staura now, are we.” He smiled and clicked his tongue. “That’s probably a very good idea now that we don’t know who we can trust. Or who’d turn on us the second their Embodiment decides they want ta come frolic with Endra.”

Gloriosa shook her head. “This deal was in the works for almost two years, and Scalovera was this close to putting a stop to it.” She ran a hand through her plant-like hair and blew out a frustrated breath. “There was supposed to be a hundred times more than this, and much more… impactful tech alongside it. But with all I could scrounge from under Scalovera’s clutches, this is what we get. Oh, and don’t ask where some of your collection went. It isn’t coming back.”

“So that’s where all that went. Good. Ta. Know.” Okeria said through clenched teeth and a tight, thin line of a mouth. He took a deep breath to steady himself, then refocused on the things he’d grabbed. “It’s all for the greater good. It’s all for the greaaater good. Let’s change the topic, please. Thorn, how ya doin’? Any lastin’ effects from bein’ ripped and kept in half?”

Thorn snorted. “Unless you count the mental trauma my armor’s going to have to deal with for the rest of my life, no. The water from this place is amazing, but I can’t help but feel a little wrong when I drink it.”

“Mm.” Jun agreed through a mouthful of water. “It’s weird, but don’t feel too bad about it. We actually met the woman who built this place, and she’s the one that gave us access. Well, we only have access to one facility right now, but there are more. And they’ll definitely help us if we make Rainbow Basin our base of operations for this war we’re inevitably walking into.”

There was a collective murmur of agreement at Jun’s statement, but I really wished there wasn’t. I had still yet to experience an all-out war on the all-world, but from the few high-level fights I’d seen, it wouldn’t be pretty. And it wouldn’t be quick.

On that cheery note, I decided I needed to get us going. “Okay, we need to get ready for this then. If Scalovera isn’t already on the warpath, he will be once we actually start attacking him. Okeria, can we count on the guards to at least help us with the civilians?”

Okeria nodded. “It’s a good excuse ta get ‘em outta the city, too. But that’s Thorn’s area of expertise–ask him how he’s gonna do it.”

I turned to Thorn, and before I could even pose the same question, he wiped his arm across the section of the table before him and summoned a simple model of the city. He summoned a few figures to his hand, which were painted to look exactly like Okeria, Ambus, Gloriosa and himself. Then he summoned three more unfinished figures that bore a striking resemblance to Jun, Mortician, and I.

With trembling fingers, he placed all of the figures at different entrances to the city. It didn’t seem like he put a lot of thought into who went where, but I didn’t know how his brain worked. Especially not after all the torture.

“Our best shot is to evacuate everyone in groups while we cause a distraction in another part of the city. Depending on how Scalovera takes the attacks, we can distinguish if he would use the civilians as hostages when the real battle begins.” Thorn said and set two figures inside of the city, then bunched the rest up in another part on the opposite side of the others. “If he doesn’t care about hurting civilians, then that’s actually something we can work with. Because then he won’t actively seek out people to hurt, and we can group everyone together on the opposite side of the city from where we’re going to mount our offensive proper in a few days’ time.”

Thorn repeated the motion a few times, then nodded to himself. “The real problem comes with if we need to go a full-blown city-wide evacuation. We can’t count on Keratily to help us, and I’m willing to bet Scaolvera’s calling in all of his favours as we speak. So it could be more dangerous for people to be outside of the city than inside.”

With a snap of Thorn’s fingers, the city became surrounded by spikes. He grimaced as he surveyed the self-made landscape, then turned to me with a grim frown. “I’m sorry, but I can’t think of any way to safely shelter the tens of thousands of people that live here. Even the facilities, from what I’ve seen, can only hold a few thousand at most.”

“And Scalovera will scour every inch of the city if he decides he wants ta go scorched earth.” Okeria added. “Our old hidin’ places won’t last long, and that ain’t the least of it.”

I found myself agreeing with both of them. We weren’t in a good spot–we were both the attackers and the defenders for this one, and we were in a serious time crunch to get everything moving. There was no more time for meticulous planning. I needed to make a decision, and we needed to go by it.

How could I save all the people in this city, get rid of Endra’s foothold, and somehow retake the city all at the same time? They seemed like the same goal if I looked from a distance, but the closer I got, I noticed that they all required different things of me if things went wrong.

To save the people, I might have to destroy the city.

To oust Endra, I might have to kill far too many civilians.

And to retake the city, I might have to let some of Endra’s brood slip through the cracks.