Homestead Survey

“There certainly are interesting aspects to your powers,” Lord Brighton said once John finished relaying the quest’s information, inquisitive eyes regarding John intensely. “Since I presume you only received this recently, no plans have been made, correct?”

John shook his head. “No. We thought it would be best to hash that out here.”

“Plus, it would have to be after my people had a chance to establish themselves,” Teri added.

“So it would be at least a few days before an attempt is made,” Brighton remarked.

“Most likely,” John said. “That’s not going to be a problem, is it?”

“The Order has many obligations,” the Lord Protector stated. “The opportunity for you to engage in this quest may come at a time when we don’t have appropriate members to spare. Do not take this as a dismissal of invitation, but merely that it may take us some time to have the right personnel available.”

“That is a fair concern,” Verida said, interjecting to play mediator. “While the possible bounty gained from the quest would go a long way into making the settlement of Teri’s people easier, it is not something we need to proceed. The old-fashioned way of things can work until you have someone to spare.”

“Excellent,” Lord Brighton remarked. “Now, shall we get back to our talk about the embassy?”

“Yes,” Verida answered, getting up out of her seat, prompting the rest of the table to follow suit. “Will everyone be in attendance?”

“Actually, I wanted to see the spot you picked out for my people,” Teri interjected.

“Well, it will be easy to find,” the goddess informed her. “I set a path flanked by blue mushrooms.”

“I want to see the spot myself,” John said, wanting to relax a bit. Being under Lord Brighton’s gaze made him feel like a specimen being examined and he wasn’t keen on further study.

“I wouldn’t mind seeing more of the Kingdom,” Moira spoke up for the first time while the rest of the Order’s party followed Verida out of the room. “If you would allow me to accompany you, I would be grateful.”

Interacting with Moira was far less stressful than dealing with her father. Maybe it was because she was roughly his age. Maybe it was because he knew she played Pokemon like a normal person could. Or maybe it was because she was an attractive woman and he was weak to them regardless of what his relationship with them was.

Whatever the reason, John had no problem with her tagging along, but he looked to Teri for final approval. He didn’t want her to feel uncomfortable.

“The more the merrier,” the goblin lass said after a long moment. “It would be in poor taste to snub our allies.”

Despite Teri’s words of acceptance, her tone remained neutral and wary. Something that Moira seemed to pick up on as her expression fell for a moment before her features became a stoic mask again.

“Wouldn’t mind seeing what Verida whipped up for your neighborhood,” Aeolia cut in, landing on John’s shoulder. “She was talking it up earlier. The rest of the girls will probably want to check it out too.”

“Not Vivian,” Kiera suddenly spoke up, causing John to nearly flinch. He hadn’t noticed she was behind them. “Verida asked her to assist with displaying some building models.”

“Guess having her throw up some holograms would be better to get the building ideas across than Verida trying to craft some plants in the shape needed. Less wasteful too,” John muttered as they began to leave the conference room.

As they made their way outside, Beth jogged over to them, separating from Vivian as the redhead walked over to Verida and the Order contingent. She looked over at Moira. “I see we’re trading redheads for a while.”

“It seems that way,” Senka said as she manifested. Her sudden appearance didn’t elicit a reaction from Moira, which disappointed the spirit.

“Not even a flinch,” Beth muttered under her breath.

“If the sudden appearance of an elemental or other unseen entity was enough to rattle me, then I’d need to redouble my training,” Moira remarked before glancing at Senka and John. “Plus, I was expecting you to show up at some point. You don’t seem like the type to pointlessly remain intangible when the need isn’t there.”

“Am I that transparent?” Senka dramatically asked, feigning hurt complete with a hand over her heart.

Moira opened her mouth to say something but closed it suddenly, as if what she was about to say she deemed wrong to utter. After another moment of silence, the Warden said, “You just don’t give me that impression. As the future leader of the Order, I have to be adept at gauging people.”

‘You also have to be adept at not calling an ally out as looking too provocative for your tastes,’ Senka thought.

‘You think that’s what she was going to say?’ John asked.

‘Feels likely,’ the spirit affirmed. ‘Her eyes were lingering on my chest and she had to stop herself from saying the first thing that came to mind. Not an unfair assumption, I say.’

‘At least she’s not going off on you,’ John thought back. ‘If she can keep those thoughts to herself and can work with us without issue, it’s not that much of a problem.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ Senka noted. ‘I don’t think she has a clue just what sort of relationship we all have. That might cause some friction. From what I’ve been able to look up, the Order frowns upon more liberal relationships.’

‘Well, there wasn’t anything in the treaty saying what we could get up to in our personal lives,’ John remarked. ‘So there isn’t anything they can really do about it beyond sticking their noses up at us.’

‘Hopefully that will be enough for them to not meddle,’ Senka thought.

John felt his link to Senka shift slightly, signaling that she was done with complaining about their guest. Which meant it was time to actually interact with Moira in a setting far more casual than their prior interactions. There were no enemies to fight, no pressing issue to keep them on task, and no one to really take the spot as lead conversationalist.

Aeolia still gave off the impression of not wanting the Order up in their business, and Beth wasn’t all that into tact, even with the mellowing of her personality. Kiera looked like she was coming along more because the majority of the people she was comfortable with were going rather than due to any real desire. And Senka felt like the redhead was judging her on her appearance, which didn’t put her in the mood to be social.

That left him and Teri, and while he didn’t have the goblin’s ability to read emotions, he scarcely needed it to see how tense she was in Moira’s presence. She was walking too stiffly, almost like she was actively trying to prevent herself from making any perceived error. So, he decided, it would fall to him to steer the conversation.

He could only hope the increases to his Charisma would be enough to prevent the Abyssal equivalent of an international incident.

“Are you two planning to drop out of the Academy?” Moira asked a short time after they left the meeting hall. They were now just outside of the clearing, following a path marked by blue mushrooms through the trees.

Beth was quicker on the draw than John and answered first, “Probably. I was only there cus of my sister. Not like having a degree will help.”

“While the paper it's printed on isn’t worth any more than others, the knowledge and experience can be useful,” Moira countered. “But I will concede and say that not everyone in our circle would benefit from all aspects of mundane higher education.”

“Well, at least you get that part,” Beth muttered. “Like, is history really going to help me when I’m fighting something?”

“Is that all you want to do in life?” Moira asked. “Just fighting? Nothing else?”

Beth’s steps slowed slightly. It wasn’t the sort of question she expected the redhead to ask. No one had really ever asked her that sort of question in a long time. Her parents had died back when such questions were answered with wild plans of being a hero or going to space or being a rock star. And after their passing, Lynn’s attempts at forcing a mundane life on her made any sort of career there feel like surrendering to her demands.

“You okay, Beth?” John’s concerned voice reached her and Beth realized she’d left Moira’s question unanswered for too long.

“Huh? Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, playing off her silence as nothing big. “And nah, never really put any thought into that.”

Beth didn’t like the look of concern that flashed across John’s face or how Teri’s ears drooped slightly. She could almost hear them start to sound like Lynn and it both ticked her off and made her guts shift uncomfortably.

Thankfully, Moira, much to Beth’s mounting surprise, came to her rescue. Since she was the reason for her jumbled mind, she wasn’t sure if that made them square, but she would take having the attention off her.

“And you, John?” she asked.

John gave Beth one last contemplative look before answering, “Most likely, since I’ll need to help here. Plus, I’ll need to dedicate a lot of time to grind out items. But I guess that taking some online business courses wouldn’t be the worst thing to do. Since we’re going to be selling some of my loot, it’d be smart to know how to do it and not rely on just the highest bidder on the Auction.”

“That’s not a bad plan,” Moira remarked with a nod. “While the Auction is the dominant trading **** in the Abyss and most of its transactions are as its name implies, there are still direct deals done, both with the Auction acting as an intermediary and between two or more parties on their own. The treaty between us is akin to those.”

“I have a question, since we’re on the topic of education,” Senka murmured. “Why exactly are you in a mundane school? Seems like a poor choice, given how you’ve had to navigate around the school’s hours.”

“The Academy has a history of being neutral territory,” Moira answered after a moment. “Not that it means it's perfectly safe. You can attest to that.”

Beth saw Kiera flinch out of the corner of her eyes and her opinion of Moira shifted into the negative again.

“However,” Moira continued without realizing her faux pas, “that history, along with the reputation of those who attend it, means an attack there will be met with the weight of at least one guild. A daunting task many who would try such an underhanded move will be too afraid to do. I believe our foe targeted you mainly because they presumed you to be an unaffiliated newcomer.”

“Y-yeah, that’s why they did it,” Kiera softly confirmed, her voice barely above the volume of their footsteps. Footsteps that became one less as Moira stopped suddenly, a horrified look on her face.

“My apologies,” she blurted out, bowing deeply. “I was careless with my words. I did not mean to cast you in the same light as the rest of our foes.”

“Y-you don’t need to, um…” Kiera mumbled, flustered by the sudden contrition from the paladin.

“Maybe we should just move the conversation along,” Senka swooped in to attempt to salvage things. “No need to think of those dark times. Now’s a time to focus on new beginnings.”

Kiera nodded at the spirit’s words, clearly wanting to just ignore the whole situation.

Moira lifted her head, a hard expression on her face. “I cannot, as a servant of the Lady and Warden of the Golden Rose, just allow this careless slight to go without redress.”

“You don’t need to do anything,” Kiera uttered in a small, quiet voice. “It was an h-honest mistake.”

Moira looked like she was about to protest but Teri interjected, “I don’t think arguing about recompenses is going to get us anywhere. How about we just let bygones be bygones and get back to visiting the homestead?”

Moira regarded Teri for a moment then shifted her attention to Kiera, the bluenette shyly looking away from the redhead’s intense gaze.

“If that is your wish, then I shall abide,” she relented. “I have no desire to make you uncomfortable.”

“Great!” Beth said, a touch louder than was needed. “Now that we’ve got that settled, how about we get this road trip back on track?”

“We probably should hurry,” John added. “I don’t know how long Verida and Vivian can keep your dad entertained with building schematics. Plus, we need to start getting ready to actually receive Teri’s people.”

“That will be an interesting task,” Senka remarked, doing her best to move on from the awkward air that surrounded them.

“Not like we haven’t done it before,” Aeolia said before she looked at Teri. “Your folks are going to be just as excited as they were when we gave them the old HQ.”

“They certainly are,” Teri replied as they began along the path again. “It will be good for the little ones to be able to safely play under the sun again.”

“Bet it’ll feel better for you too,” Beth said.

Teri nodded with a hum. “Being around happy people is better than sad ones,” she muttered.

“Well, looks like there’ll be plenty of space for running around,” John said as they reached the edge of the forest. The landscape gently dipped down a hill into a large section of flat grassland. A small number of trees broke apart the field’s uniformity, none more impressively than the four that seemed to mark the cardinal points of the area.

Those had to be the ones Verida mentioned, as they weren’t in any way normal to Beth’s eyes. They towered over the scenery like those supertrees out in California with wide cavernous openings stretching from ground level up around two stories. From where they stood, Beth could make out the interior of one, filled with subdivisions like a honeycomb, breaking the cavernous space up into sections.

Everyone stood upon the hill in silence as they took in the sight. Aeolia was the first to break the silence, letting out a whistle.

“Verida didn’t hold anything back, did she?” she remarked, hopping over to Teri’s shoulder and lightly poking her cheek. “That should be more than enough space, yeah?”

“Way more than enough,” the goblin answered in a stunned tone. “She really didn’t need to do all this.”

She threw her arms out in a sweeping motion. “This is just so much room. I didn’t think she’d give us this much.”

“Did you think Verida would give you some small strip of land and call it a day?” John asked.

“No, but,” Teri answered, her voice brimming with emotions. “I… I don’t know what to say.”

“I think,” Kiera said softly, “that Verida wanted to make sure there was more than enough room for everyone. And those trees are so you have some shelter while you work on building your own houses since you insisted on her just giving you the land.”

“Why do I get the feeling she started to make tree houses, then remembered that detail and stopped with what’s here?” Teri said in a watery tone. She shook her head in an attempt to regain control of her emotions.

“Want to go down there and get a closer look?” John asked after a moment.

“As much as I want to,” Teri replied, looking longingly at the grass swaying in the light breeze, “I think we should head back. Lots of stuff we need to do before we can start putting down roots. And I think I’d like to experience going down there with everyone.”

“I think that’s a wonderful idea,” Moira spoke up, her voice soft, though a frown marred her features. “I do wish we could be more proactive with that ‘shopping’ quest you spoke of.”

“Is it really that hard to round up two people?” Aeolia pressed. “You didn’t have any issue yesterday.”

“That was because it fell under the purview of our negotiations,” Moira explained. “Learning what sort of things your barriers could do directly affected the final terms. While we want to aid you, the rather informal nature of this request makes providing aid something harder to provide. It would not do to send someone under-trained and those that are authorized for such missions are not always available.”

“Sounds like you and Rowan aren’t going to be the ‘go to’ team for dealing with us then,” John said.

“Sadly, I have many duties and cannot be tied up with something seen as ‘non-essential’,” Moira answered, the regret in her voice making Beth believe she really was unhappy with that arrangement. “And Rowan is currently engaged in some remedial training.”

Beth bit her lip, holding herself back from blurting out an accusation that they were unfairly punishing the squire. If Moira hadn’t seemed sincere in her lament, she might not have held her tongue.

“Hopefully her training is fruitful,” Senka said.

“I have high hopes it will be,” Moira replied. “Now, I believe we were to depart?”

John and Teri nodded in sync, and the goblin gave one last longing look at the grassy expanse below them before they turned around and headed back.