The Oasis

[greatcleavage]

What the heck was he doing here?

Beneath the shade of the palm fronds, Roy stared out at the desert that stretched out in every direction. Somehow he'd found himself here, against all logic. A weird sidequest? A dream? Maybe he was dead again and his spirit had been hijacked.

Well, what could he do but wait and see what came along? The oasis showed signs of being used by travelers, so he wouldn't be stuck here forever anyway...

Comments

[greatcleavage]

"Hold on. I want to actually hear this story with context." It sounded almost interesting, if he could manage to get a solid answer out of them.

[najaran]

Najaran grinned. "Okay, but it's a bit of a long one," she warned. "So, remember how I said one time I was arrested for being a Cepter and Alta had to bust me out?"

[greatcleavage]

"Yes, I remember you'd mentioned that." Which it and of itself was another story to hear, but never mind that now.

CW: gore/bodyhorror

[najaran]

"So Alta and her crew, which was at that point herself. Ganz, and Joaquin. They were actually really scary when we first met," she said with a laugh. Joaquin knocked out a bunch of guards with he chemicals and stuff and Alta got into my jail cell without me even noticing her touch the lock, and Ganz was surrounded by people on the ground with a huge double sided axe. I know now that they didn't kill anyone, but at the time Gooligan and I were terrified."

She stroked Thunderbeak's head as she spoke, remembering. "They wanted to get into the legendary city of Bisteam. They needed help getting past the nymph, Kigi who guarded the gate. Just getting to the gate was something though. Like this one time Alta asked me to get firewood, and what I thought were just stumps turned out to be Treefolk, or when we ran into that mantrap that Joaquin was so excited to catalogue that he almost let us get eaten while he studied it, and even getting attacked by another Searcher team! But actually, Kigi helped us out of that one. She summoned her Gargoyle to chase all of us away, but Ganz already had Dumdum's troops freaked out and so most of them just cut and ran. The rest tried to fight her, but her Cepter power was at least 4 thousand."

"FOURTY" Goolligan corrected.

"Right, forty thousand. So they were no match. There were reasons I was taught never to use my cards against Non-Cepters, the normal people wouldn't stand a chance. But I understand now why Kigi was doing it. She was the last one left to defend her home, after all," she said, sadly. "Dumdum left his wounded and called everyone else to retreat. So I got my cards back from Alta and used a Tower Shield to defend the wounded soldiers. Kigi was really upset, because she said we humans worry so much for each other but don't hear the pain of the forest." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, subdued as she nodded. "She was right, I didn't pay enough attention to the world, none of us did. But for some reason, she let us challenge the gates anyway. Probably because of the deep spawn that was spying on us. She.. She was trying to fight a horrible corruption I didn't know about at the time." She swallowed a bit. "I know about it now, though, and have been fighting," she assured him before resuming the story.

"We passed through a stone gate that just looked like three stones, one on top of the other two, but when we went through we were in this weird room made up of square stone blocks. It was filled with skeletons all over the ground, except where we entered. Their torsos were all twisted around. Most of the jaws were broken. And the old skeletons were mixed with the newer bodies, like someone had jumbled them all together." Oddly, she was lighter and more her usual self talking about this than about Kigi. "And then these weird looking mushrooms started sprouting out of the bodies. I thought the corpses were coming to life and laughed. Then Joaquin started laughing. Soon we all thought everything was hilarious. Joaquin looked them up in his book, and apparently they're a kind of poisonous mushrooms that make people laugh themselves to death and multiply tons when attacked. I tried not to laugh. I thought of scary things, but then Gooligan sprouted a bunch on his head and said he had grown hair and I just lost it. Joaquin attacked them, which was when he found the entry about them reproducing. And it was all just so funny, but then I started wondering if they tasted as funny as the smelled..."

[greatcleavage]

"So you ate the mushrooms that you'd just been told were poisonous."

Just to be clear. That was what she'd said. It wasn't the worst plan in the world... if you had a Fortitude save that was much, much higher than he expected hers could possibly be.

[najaran]

"They looked yummy," she said with a shrug. "And there were tons of them. And we were going to die anyway, so why die hungry right?"

[greatcleavage]

"Well, that's certainly logic." By some definitions of the word, in any case. What a weird and disturbing ending to what had shaped up to be an interesting if painful adventure.

[najaran]

"Anyway, it all worked out. I ate so fast that they grew until there was no more space, then they vanished and we were through.

[greatcleavage]

"I want to question that, but I'm afraid to." Namely, how that was even physically possible for her.

[najaran]

"Why?" she asked, innocently.

[greatcleavage]

Trying to put it delicately, Roy finally settled on, "You don't look like someone who could routinely devour a room full of food, of any sort."

[najaran]

"You don't think I could manage?"

"Any other woman would be thrilled at the complement that you look thin, you know, Najaran."

"Thin?" now she was honestly confused. "I mean it helps buy me a few extra seconds when something is trying to impale me, but other than that... why would that be a compliment?"

[greatcleavage]

"A lack of excess weight correlates to perceived attractiveness in many cultures," Roy explained.

[najaran]

"....Why....?" she asked, puzzled.

[greatcleavage]

"It correlates to fitness and health, which are good indicators of reproductive viability, which are what people are basically designed to find attractive."

[najaran]

"Yeah, not exactly looking to settle down and have kids any time soon, Najaran said.

[greatcleavage]

"Oh, I understand. I was just explaining the reason, not implying anything."

[najaran]

"Oh. Okay. I guess. Think we're almost there? I'm starving."

[greatcleavage]

"Probably a few more minutes' flight. Hmm. I wonder what the best way to approach would be." Shading his eyes with his hand, Roy peered ahead. No walls, at least, so they weren't likely to get shot at just for venturing near.

[najaran]

"Circle around from the other way and walk up the road?" she suggested.

[greatcleavage]

"That might be wise," Roy admitted. "I'm getting the impression that your particular power set is not always welcomed?"

[najaran]

She nodded. "Like I said, I met Alta when she busted me out."

[greatcleavage]

"If there's trouble, are you prepared to trust me on handling it unless it becomes obvious I can't? That might save us a lot of grief in the long run." Unless she had spells or powers that didn't revolve around cards, and Roy hadn't seen any reason to believe that.

[najaran]

She shrugged. "Sure, why not?"

[greatcleavage]

"All right. That will help." If they could handle trouble without Najaran calling on something overt and unsubtle, so much the better.