Brian sat on Vincent’s bed inside his room in The Cats’ Cradle. He drank some water while he took deep breaths to calm himself down. Adam was fighting the urge to find out what happened while he instead tried to help tend to Brian and calm him down.
After minutes passed and Brian finally fell into less of an elevated mood he began talking to them.
“I was still resting here, you guys left all of a sudden, I remember drifting in and out of sleep, the recovery from my wounds were still really rough despite Vincent’s amazing healing. Thanks for saving my life.”
Vincent nodded, without saying a word, encouraging him to continue talking.
“Then, several men come into the room, I can’t even remember how many, at least five, maybe more. I woke up to the noise they were making. They took me by force, I tried to fight them but I had nothing, no weapons on me, no energy to fight.” He heaved a heavy sigh as he went back into what happened.
“It was the middle of the night, there was no one downstairs in this inn, everyone was sleeping. They didn’t blindfold me or anything, they just took me straight to. I think it’s a church? A huge building, I’m pretty sure it was something like a church. I met a priest there.”
The group listened intently, all but Tob were there as once he confirmed Brian was safe and sound, said he had other duties to attend to with his work. That’s what he told Adam at the time anyway.
“That would certainly be an interesting place to be taken to by force, taken in the middle of the night.” Vincent stated in a curious tone, stroking his beard, which turned into itching it with both hands scratching his chin.
“His name was Fargo. He… It… I’m getting ahead of myself, let me go back.”
Vincent instantly reacted to the name Fargo, standing up from his chair and raising his voice in a flash “You met Fargo, he’s the one that took you?”
“Yes. When I got there, to the church, they threw me in a prison cell. It was dark and damp, a cold stone floor. I could hardly sleep, even with my remaining exhaustion, luckily I was starting to recover at this point to keep myself alert.”
“The church has prison cells? Where did they take you?” Vincent probed Brian as he tried to explain what happened. He seemed in disbelief at what he was hearing.
“Yeah, well it wasn’t a nice place. I don’t know if you are a worshipper or a big fan of these guys but it’s not a nice place and there aren’t any nice people that I met in there.” He looked at Vincent with sharpened eyes.
“I don’t believe, Hikers don’t tend to get attached to the local customs like that, even if they do settle down somewhere. When did you meet High Priest Fargo?”
“High Priest is he? Is that a high rank? I could tell he was some kind of leader but he didn’t explain too much before I got out.”
“The highest rank! He’s literally the head of the entire operation. The Oaken Protectors.” Vincent shouted, Adam thought he must have forgotten how new they were to this planet and this society but didn’t say anything, it was just a time for listening, at least for right now.
“So.. How did you get out?” Adam interjected before Vincent continued.
“Well, I was checking my wrist menu and-“
“Hiker menu, apparently everyone calls it a hiker menu now.” Matilda said before looking around embarrassed at the fairly irrelevant fact.
Brian laughed for the first since they had met back up “You’re funny Matilda. I’ve grown to like you though, you too, surprisingly Adam. I’m really glad to see you all again”. Adam looked at his team, they seemed to have the same core attitude, it made him very happy.
Brian continued “So I checked my hiker menu after they left and I realised I had become level three at some point, I don’t know how I didn’t do anything.”
“The perks of still being with your original group of three. You share experience gains with your party, we were quite busy ourselves while you were hanging out with Fargo.” Vincent shared some more knowledge of the hiker system, which was unusual, Adam thought.
“Good to know, so yeah once I was alone and found out I was level three, I had the perfect skill to choose next, which I was already eyeing from when I first hit level two. It’s called Explosive Strike and it let me bust right out of there by breaking down the whole brick wall behind my cell. I escaped this morning and have been wandering around ever since.”
“Sounds pretty smooth overall, I’m sure it wasn’t fun to be kidnapped but what else happened, I mean surely something else made you this upset?” Adam asked bluntly, he knew Brian skipped over something, he wouldn’t have cried like that if it was as simple as that.
“Adam, don’t downplay his traumatic experience!” Matilda stood at the height of his chest, looking up at him with very angry eyes.
“Don’t worry Matilda, he’s right. I skipped over the bad part. I’ll tell you all.”
“Oh. Okay.” Matilda backed off from Adam taking a few steps back towards Vincent who was sitting down again after his last outburst.
“A couple of random guards checked on me every so often but eventually this more official guy came down and talked with me, he told me his name is Fargo. He asked about my business here on Trystoff, which is the first person I have heard that has mentioned the name of the planet that our ship stated as well. He asked what we were doing and said we were quickly becoming a nuisance, he also asked what I knew about Oak and the in his words ‘so called sickness’ it suffered from. He was referring to all three of us by the way, he knows there are two others and myself here.”
“That’s probably not very good” Vincent said rather drily.
“You don’t say. Well, I didn’t tell him a thing. He went off to go fetch something or go prepare something, I could barely hear him. But that’s when I broke out. We have to be careful, if this is the church they should have eyes everywhere right?”.
“Sounds like we need to check out the church.” Adam said.
“What the hell are you talking about Adam?” Vincent demanded answers from him.
“Well, I don’t know how exactly, we aren’t gonna be able to storm in there and demand things from the sounds of it. Especially with Vincent refusing to fight.” The entire team looked at Vincent.
“That’s really not fair, Vincent has saved us multiple times over now, he even explained his side of it, not that he had to.” Matilda spoke up in defence of her healing mentor.
“Regardless, I don’t want to stay here as a sitting duck for the next Fargo visit. I’d rather get out of the city entirely at this point, if that’s all we have.” Adam explained his view of wanting to push forward, he didn’t enjoy the feeling of being captured last time by Abbey.
“You may have a point. I’m probably okay still but you guys won’t do very well staying here based on what Brian is saying. It’s just such a shock, you guys don’t know but the Church has such a good reputation here, seen as pure and benevolent. I was almost buying into it myself, something darker is going on in this city, I should have looked more into this side of things when they were showing me Oak’s sickness. “ Vincent sat, contemplative.
“So you have a plan for us?” Adam grinned at him, he certainly liked being right about things.
“I have a friend a few hours east of the city. Tell him Vincent sent you and told you to use the name Hammy, he’ll know what that means. He has a small home you guys can lay low in, as long as you can get out of the city without being seen that is. I can’t really go missing like that for so long, I get called for help all the time. But it’s probably a good thing we drop our link soon, people will start getting ideas, including the Church.”
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Adam took part in the discussion following this where they planned their route out of the city, they would get out of a side gate Vincent knew about on the eastern wall, walk through some forest and get back on the main road some distance from the main eastern gate to the city.
They waited until the sun began to set before they left the inn, in hopes that it would be dark by the time they got to the gate on the eastern wall and could avoid drawing a lot of attention.
Beginning their journey they headed towards the centre of the city again, this time going through many side streets rather than travelling on the main road. Adam still felt nervous as they went past plenty of people, but these were just civilians rather than officials at least. Most importantly he wanted to avoid anyone from the church who might take drastic measures even in the middle of a busy city, what Adam had not told Matilda or Brian was that he also really wanted to avoid a run in with Tob, he had not told anyone, including Vincent about his suspicious but his gut told him if he saw Tob again it would end badly. On queue with his thoughts, Matilda asked a question.
“Why didn’t we get escorted out by Tob or the city patrol? Too close to the church to not break news about it?” She asked, seeming quite cheery and chirpy despite the overall situation and the events that had taken place over the last day or so. Adam figured she was just happy to have Brian safe and sound again.
“Tob is bad news. You saw the woman at the gate that almost killed us. She talked like she knew Tob, or she at least knew someone else that knew Tob and made some kinda vague threat towards him. If she has influence over him in any way, that means he is involved in something dodgy, that’s how I see it. I think the rest of you let it slip past you but it’s been bothering me since it happened. He acted a little funny when I asked him a bit about it as well.”
“If you had those suspicions, I don’t get why you asked him about it directly. You might have brought something on all of us to be honest.” Brian said, they hadn’t had the chance to talk one on one much since they reconnected, Adam felt a little angry that it was straight back to criticism of his ideas, reflecting on his own emotional reaction to it, he did realise that Brian was actually right in this case though.
“Fair idea, that’s probably why I’m so scared of running into him again.”
“Well Adam, I’ll give you one thing, I don’t say this lightly by the way, I’m building a trust for your gut reactions, you do usually seem to be right, you probably just under think and rush into things based on that gut feel. Which, is kind of weird since you overthink just about everything else.” Matilda explained as Brian hummed in support of her statement.
“Preach” Brian said casually, wiping some sweat from his forehead, Adam noticed he definitely wasn’t completely recovered yet, it wasn’t even hot, it was almost dark.
Walking past another inn closer to the middle of the city, they saw some patrol guards in their red and black embellished coats walking in their direction.
“What do we do, boss?” Brian asked him, with some snark.
“Keep walking and act normal, I’ve got it.”
“Okay. Trusting you.” He replied, again with snark.
Focusing his mind on his psychokinesis he created a thick line of force, sharpening it before flinging it through one side of a merchant stall on the other side of the road, the old man selling some bizarre looking fruit, covered in purple spikes yelled out in shock as his stall fell to pieces around him, the admittedly thin beam of wood holding up the stall being cleanly cut through. The guards went running over to assist in the matter.
“Very clever Adam, not having to wave your hands around and creating flashy lights can be a nice perk I suppose.” Matilda puffed out as she struggled to keep up with the boys. Adam had the thought to use his kinesis to help her keep up and walk faster, but it was complicated enough for him to do it for himself like when he dragged Brian’s body all the way to the city from the forest, he would probably just keep tripping her.
They got deeper into some side streets again as they got close to the eastern wall as planned out per Vincent’s directions. They found the gate Vincent mentioned, peeking around the corner of a tall building that looked like a blacksmith on the bottom floor, they looked for a clear coast to rush to the gate and quickly leave without a trace. The dangerous part as Vincent had explained to them, was that this gate was actually getting rather close to the church itself, so the last section of walking before they left the city would be the riskiest.
“It looks clear, we should go right now” Adam paced forward, not running but speed walking.
“Wait!” Matilda tried to whisper in a panic, coming out louder than intended.
“Brian isn’t here” she continued, looking around for a sign of him.
“Oh my god, seriously?” Adam turned his head around looking, what were they going to do now?
“Look guys, free axes”. Brian come out of the blacksmith building holding an axe in each hand with a big grin on his face.
“What?” he uttered defensively “You know my abilities, I’m not much good without weapons. Not like we have the money or time to barter right now.”
“Whatever, good idea Brian. Let’s go.” They paced forward quickly to the gate. Adam reached out to the gate to swing it open as he noticed the large lock hanging around the latch. Thick iron handles connected into a large padlock shape.
“Think fast, I can’t cut through this, I can barely cut through some thin wood or a bit of flesh.”
“I’ve got nothing, my radiant burst won’t do much here.” Matilda hopped from one leg to another, alternating in nervousness.
“That leaves me, EXPLOSIVE STRIKE!” Brian swung one of his axes straight at the lock, it was not a visible explosion at first, the first thing Adam noticed was being knocked on his ass from the shock wave. Then a cloud of smoke, some nearby short grass caught fire. The lock on the gate shattered, the gate flew open, the hinges becoming damaged from the speed and force of the swing.
“Okay Brian, thanks.” Adam returned the snarky tone.
“We go now, run, quick!” Pulling Matilda up with the help of his psychokinesis they ran out of the city.
Running further into the forest and shrubbery, Adam kept them on the planned route, deep into forest before returning to the main road, after this huge commotion Brian just caused they might have to stick to the forest for longer than anticipated.
Thirty minutes of travel through the forest later their hiker menus projected out on their own.
Quest - The Oak Tree
Locate the source of Oak’s sickness.
It said the exact same thing as it had already been saying, why did it light up and alert them without any input?
“Maybe it has something to do with that purple glowing cave over there?” Matilda held her hands on her hips staring off into the distance, facing back towards the city.
“We have a choice, Hammys’ house, which will be either getting back onto the main road now and risking being caught, or travelling blindly through the forest for a bit longer and then trying to find the main road again. Or, we follow the hiker menu and go into the cave.”
“Doesn’t sound like much of a choice to me.” Brian started walking towards the cave, Matilda followed, leaving Adam standing there scared and excited.