Old Scars

They were still at it with the mushrooms after half an hour, despite having found a thinking cap in about 10 minutes. The main reason why was that Qhila insisted on picking apart a particular, fairly common type to check it for minerals. Apparently, while the shroom itself was useless it had a tendency to absorb useful minerals and deposit them in a hollow in the center of the stem.

They hadn’t found anything besides duds yet though. At least the bag with other mushrooms of value was starting to fill out a bit, and a few plastic bags and some reshuffling had done wonders for his inventory management.

“Got something.” John looked over to see Qhila brush fungus bits and grey dust off a needle-like, dark red crystal about the length of John’s thumb. “Hmm, adonite… I guess that means it’s yours then.”

“I mean, you can kee-” John was interrupted by her just handing it to him. So he shrugged and put it in his inventory, next to the boar tusk. He had taken it because not looting something from the boar had felt wrong, and the tusk was small enough that he could dunk it in hand sanitizer to deal with any spores.

John went back to picking apart mushrooms, but it didn’t take long before Qhila sighed, got up and swept the worst dirt off her pants. “We might as well stop. If that’s all we’ve found by now, this must be a bad area for it. A shame, but it is what it is. We should get back to Molly.”

John looked between Qhila, the pile of ruined mushroom bits, and the patch of more of the same they were three quarters of the way through in mild confusion. She had already begun walking, though, so he just put the shroom bag into his inventory and hurried to tag along.

“So… I know that we’ve got a- something important to do here but… if it’s safe to talk while we head back to Molly… I looked up a bit about local guilds and stuff, and I’d like to ask a few things about it?”

Qhila was silent for just long enough for John to figure that was a ‘no’ before she responded, “Go ahead.”

"Okay. I guess the first one would be the Order of the Golden Rose. I read about the Springfield Accord and apparently I live in their territory and need to register with them or something. I think I’m supposed to get a recruitment offer when I do, and from what I could find, they seemed okay-ish. But there’s a lot of blanks left so I wondered what you know about them…” That got a little long and rambly, but hopefully the context gave Qhila a better idea about how to answer or something…

Qhila sighed heavily before answering, “I… Part of me wants to say that joining them would be a terrible choice, but the truth is you could definitely do a lot worse. I still think, and hope, that you wouldn’t fit in with them very well though…”

John raised an eyebrow at that. “Really? Adjusting to the whole religious order thing is going to take some time, but their cause seems like a good o-”

“They’re human supremacists, John,” Qhila cut him off grimly. “They’ll likely welcome you with open arms, but you associating with me will probably be tolerated at best, and only as long as the association is useful…”

“Oh…” John went quiet for a bit as he mulled that one over. He couldn’t really picture Marisa at a KKK meeting or a Nazi rally, neo or otherwise. That just didn’t fit in his head. Granted, he didn’t know her that well and hadn’t seen her with, or even heard her talk about, non-humans so it could’ve flown under the radar. But it still felt off.

Moira was a bit easier, but only because he knew basically nothing about her personality beyond her reputation for strictness. But it felt off for Gaia to label someone like that a paladin when the goddess had also heavily rewarded John for coming to Qhila’s rescue.

All in all, it wasn’t a concern John could take lightly, but he still felt that he should try to look into it more instead of dismissing the Order immediately. At the very least, he should keep an open mind about it until he had asked Marisa.

“The only other Accord groups I can easily get in touch with at school are the Moon Clan and the Scarlet Witch, a-”

“Pyrite!!” While he hadn’t been consciously aware, John’s Low Draconic knowledge told him that this mineral, also known as Fool’s Gold, doubled as an expletive roughly comparable to ‘shit’. He suppressed a chuckle as she continued apologetically, “I didn’t realize you could be going to her academy. I am very sorry. If I did, I would have told you to keep your distance, avoid her wrath at all costs and ideally not to even let her discover that you’re an Abyssal.”

John rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, the ship’s sailed on the last one, but she just asked some questions and told me not to get in her way and not to do anything to Vanessa. Well, that and she scared the crap out of me…” After a moment he hurriedly added, “I tried not to tell her anything that would lead to you. And, uh, she didn’t really seem interested in that anyway.”

“As long as we don’t get in her way, you’re probably beneath her notice for now. But seriously, keep your distance. She is extremely dangerous. The only reason the Order tolerates her presence at all is because they would probably need all three Wardens together and at full strength to take her down.”

“Got it. She kinda drove the point home herself while questioning me…” An involuntary shiver ran through John from thinking about the glare she had affixed him with yesterday.

They walked in silence for a bit before John spoke up again, “Anyway, the Moon Clan. As far as I could find, they’re some sort of martial arts school that also hunts **** cultists? And, uh, regular monsters when none of the cultists are available.”

“Outsiders. It’s a whole thing, except it probably isn’t. Supposedly, Outsiders are beings of unimaginable power from outside existence and the reach of Bahamut that seek to destroy all that is for some reason or other. Most people have heard of them, and consider the story a falsehood. If they exist at all, they’re probably just regular deities from some isolated Kingdom. Or maybe there is just one. In any case, the dubious nature of the claims of those cults hasn’t stopped Outsider cultists from forming some of the most vile guilds in Abyssal history, and that is saying something.”

Qhila shuddered at the end of that, which spoke volumes in itself considering she hadn’t done so when talking about enslaving and brainwashing people when she explained ‘Latebloomers’. After a moment of silence she continued, “The Moon Clan themselves are locally significant to Springfield, but they don’t have the kind of global renown that the GROies and the Witch has.”

“GROies?” John asked, despite having a context based guess that he felt was pretty good. Better to know than to assume, after all.

“Slang for the Order of the Golden Rose. G-R-O is an abbreviation of some other iteration of their name. Might be Gaelic Elven, I’m not sure. In any case, it’s a play on that and some mundane thing about law enforcement, I think. It’s best not to use it when the GROies can hear, though, they tend to not like it.”

John nodded in understanding, and after a moment Qhila resumed talking about the Moon Clan, “I don’t know that much about the Moon Clan. They are close allies with the local GROies, probably because Outsider cults tend to target mundanes as much as they do Abyssals, but they’re less draconian about law enforcement. And on the few occasions I’ve been near their dojo, I’ve caught the scent of a draconic demihuman so they may be more accepting of my presence as well… Though if there's a True Dragon involved and not just a dragonewt or some humanoid lesser draconid, it comes with another set of problems…”

She was quiet for a while until John finally asked, “Is… is it okay to ask what they are? Or would you rather we just move on from that?”

It took another few seconds before she answered. “Kobolds are a **** species. According to legend, we were a reward to dragonkind from Bahamut for helping to create the world. I don’t think that’s true, but either way, we have a powerful, instinctive compulsion to obey True Dragons. Even worship them. It… it took years of being nearly continually forgotten, neglected or punished with being banned from his presence to even be able to think about leaving. And another year of concerted effort and alchemical assistance to be able to actually defy the implied, second-hand order that I was to return from gathering ingredients...”

Qhila’s tone grew distant as she recounted that, and for a long moment after she was finished, John felt numb, dumbstruck by the revelation. Then the fury stirred into a blaze. “That is insanely fucked up. If you ever get caught in something like that again, I’m going to get you out. Even if the compulsion means I have to drag you the entire fucking way!”

John wasn’t sure if Qhila nodded once in indication of having heard him or just hung her head low for a moment. In either case, she sniffled quietly and dried her eyes with the back of her hand as she walked on in silence.

John wasn’t sure how long they walked in silence. All the while, his attention was consumed by watching Qhila and trying to figure out what to say to her to help her deal with the emotions and memories that plagued her.

His first instinct had been to hug her like he did on Monday, but the still unresolved question of whether his powers had done the same thing to her, albeit on a smaller scale, gave him pause. On top of that, his intuition told him that she felt a need to keep moving though he wasn’t sure why. As a result, he simply walked on in heavy silence while failing to find words that felt like they might be of help.

Along the way, he had noticed through peripheral vision that the shifting RS above her head now only showed positive numbers with 2 or 3 digits. Had Qhila not been in obvious mental anguish all the while, he would probably have been over the moon about that. As it was, the realization was just kind of there, but didn’t feel all that important.

The Gamer and the kobold were both torn from their respective thoughts by an unpleasantly familiar roar of anger up ahead, followed by Molly shouting something. He couldn’t quite make out the words, nor was he sure he’d understand them anyway, but the tone was one of aggressive defiance.

The duo glanced at each other, then broke into a jog to get there sooner. John’s first instinct was to go directly to sprinting, but that had sounded like a rat ogre and he didn’t want to leave Qhila behind either in case there were more. Besides, lacking an Enhance Muscle Buff against the boar had kinda already made the point about the importance of preparations.

In short order, they got close enough to see movement in the foliage up ahead, accompanied by more angry vocalizations from the rat ogre. Qhila started to slow down enough to step around fallen branches and other potential sources of noise. John followed her lead and began buffing his leg strength. Fighting Frank yesterday had made the importance of that over other targets for the spell clear.

They emerged into the tree cluster where they had met Molly and found her facing down two Level 15 lesser rat ogres. The space between the creatures and her tree was overgrown with thistle-like plants that hadn’t been there earlier, thistles with 2-3 cm long spines.

Molly herself was in a fighting stance beside the trunk of her tree, which would have seemed a lot less threatening if not for the 10 ft. tall copy of her formed out of the tree’s leaves and branches that mirrored her movements. The spines of her leaf-skin stood even straighter and pricklier than when she had addressed John before.

While reaching into her bag for something, Qhila opened her mouth, presumably to strategize. Before she got the chance, however, Molly had noticed their presence and called out, “Help me get rid of these pests and the leaves are yours!”

“Deal!” Qhila responded before John had any time to weigh in, not that he had any objections really. Except maybe to note that he would’ve tried to help anyway.

Predictably, the exchange drew the rat ogres’ attention towards John and Qhila so that was that for preparation. Thankfully, he had succeeded in casting Enhance Muscle while approaching.

Both rat ogres started moving towards Qhila and John, but the furthest away made it a single step before Molly lunged her leaf clone forward and blocked it with a spiny fist, swinging to drive it further away instead. “Oh no, you don’t, I’m not done with you yet.”