56 – We Need to Talk

  When Violet took her hand away from the nexus, Andy asked, “What do you think?”

  She tilted her head, contemplating for a moment before saying, “I think we could rule out Fisher’s Bounty. We’re already catching plenty—”

  “I don’t think so!” Lucy interjected. Andy had told her about the new options while Violet slowly read through them. “Mainly because of the note about stacking its effects with other boons.”

  Violet tilted her head, narrowing her eyes as she turned to Lucy, who sat on her blanket, bow across her knees. “What’s your thinking? I’m not sure some rare specimens justify a Boon Point. I mean, as a biologist, I’m very interested, but when it comes to filling bellies, I’m not sure it matters and, as I said, we’re already pulling plenty of fish from that lake.”

  Andy had his own thoughts about that topic, but he held his tongue, watching Lucy, wondering what her response would be. After a moment, during which Lucy looked up toward the cavern ceiling, clearly trying to formulate the right words, she said, “First off, I think the boon will help ensure we don’t over-fish the lake. Second, if you think about the System and how it categorizes treasure and classes, I think rare specimens might mean a lot more than just pretty or interesting. It might have to do with recipes for food or potions or…who knows what!”

  When she paused, Andy jumped in, adding his thoughts. “I think it’ll help if we discover a class that involves fishing, too. Catching rare fish might earn more experience.”

  “Okay, okay,” Violet nodded. “I think you’ve sold me on that one. Are there any you guys think we can rule out for now?”

  Andy nodded. “The Trade Beacon could take a backseat. We don’t even know anyone to trade with yet.”

  “Hmm, yeah, I suppose we could purchase that later, but you have to consider that it’s an upgrade to our node—it might unlock other System things.”

  Andy frowned. “Shit. I didn’t think of that.”

  “What about the Deep Veins one?” Violet asked. “I know it might prove valuable down the road, but we’d have to mine the ore, and that doesn’t seem like a near-term benefit to us, does it?”

  Andy shrugged. “There’s a lot of iron and steel up in the city, but it’s mundane. It’ll be fine for now, especially if we can enchant it, but we might need something more. I mean, and having a mine would probably open up new class opportunities, and more kinds of ore would help the current crafting classes.” He felt like he’d already had this discussion with himself, and though he realized it wasn’t rational, he felt some irritation—he’d hoped Violet would see an obvious solution.

  “I feel like we should get Hearthflame Ember if we’re going to be hunting ore,” Lucy said. When Andy looked at her, she shrugged. “It says it can enhance a forge, right? If we’re going to mine magical metals, we should make sure our forge can handle it.”

  Andy groaned. “Another thing I didn’t think of.”

  Violet chuckled, shaking her head. “Okay, fair enough. We probably want all these boons eventually, but right now we must choose three. I agree that the Fisher’s Bounty should be one, if for no other reason than it will help ensure we don’t ever starve, even if we have to take shelter underground.”

  “I told you what I think about the Whisperwood Grove,” Andy said.

  “Well,” Violet said, “I’m sure you already considered the flaws with the idea that we could use that wood to appease the Lurikeens.”

  Andy nodded. “The trees might grow too slowly, and the wood might not be what they need.”

  “I mean,” Lucy said, holding up a finger, “even if it doesn’t help with the Lurikeen problem, the grove would be valuable to us.”

  “Yeah.” Andy smiled at her. “Wood is always valuable.”

  “And then there’s the port,” Violet said. “I see that one as a double-edged boon, though.”

  Andy thought he could guess what she was going to say, so he said, “It gives us another way to travel, but it opens us up to other threats.”

  Violet smiled. “Exactly. So, can we agree that one should go on the back burner?”

  Andy was feeling restless and frustrated. The conversation—and the one he’d had in his head prior to it—was circular, and it reminded him of sitting in class, waiting for the professor to dismiss him as other people kept asking the same questions about an assignment. He was tired of going over the options. “Yeah. Let’s just all say which three we think would be best. Can we do that?”

  Violet nodded, holding up three fingers one by one as she listed off her choices, “Fisher’s Bounty, Deep Veins, and Whisperwood Grove.”

  Andy tilted his head but didn’t speak, turning to Lucy.

  She shrugged. “Assuming we’ll earn more Boon Points, I think those three options are fine for now.”

  Andy walked over to the node and put his hand on it. “I don’t have any arguments against those choices, other than I hope we’re not trying to do too much with our boons. Like, I hope the System doesn’t expect us to specialize in one thing—mining or crafting or whatever.”

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  “We’re still a young settlement, Andy, and we’ve already earned quite a few boons. Think about how Improvement Points work,” Lucy said, and he knew she meant what he’d just learned in his Codex entry. The System did seem to encourage multiple paths—diversity of choice. If it were going to make them specialize, it seemed like there’d be some warning, and he doubted they’d be at such a crossroads so early in their development.

  “We could wait until after the meeting,” Violet added. “You know, to see if anyone has any other ideas.”

  Andy shook his head. “Let’s be real; we’ll just talk in circles for an hour or two, and then it’ll be up to us to decide, anyway. I think your choices are fine.” He really couldn’t think of an argument against them, so he selected each of the three boons, purchasing them one by one. Nothing noticeable happened when he bought Whisperwood Grove, but the ground rumbled and shook with each of the other two. “Something’s going on down below,” he muttered. Luckily, the shaking was short-lived, and nothing fell from the ceiling. “Should’ve probably warned people.”

  “Well, that’s on all of us. I didn’t think of it either.” Violet gestured toward the cavern. “We should go reassure folks that it’s not a quake or something.”

  “Um, Vi,” Lucy said, looking up at the other woman, “can you do it? I want to talk to Andy about something.” Andy couldn’t help noticing a nervous quaver in her voice, and it brought a nervous lump to his throat.

  Violet looked from Lucy to Andy, and he could see she was struggling to maintain a neutral expression. “Well, sure, hon.” To Andy, she said, “Wait for me before you go inspect the changes, though!”

  “Yeah, sure.” As she walked away, he looked at Lucy and tried to reduce the tension by tilting his head and smiling as he asked, “We need to talk, huh?”

  Lucy smoothed the blanket beside her. “Can you sit by me for a minute?” Andy felt a flutter in the pit of his stomach, and his face must have betrayed his anxiety because she smiled as he sat and took his hand. “Relax. I’m not, like, upset or anything; I just…”

  When she trailed off, maybe struggling for the right words, Andy’s mouth found a life of its own and he began to babble, “Luce, I know I haven’t exactly been great at showing how I feel about you. I mean, I try, but something’s always going on, and it feels weird when people are fighting and dying for me to even think about something like that. I guess—”

  She squeezed his hand. “Oh, that’s not it, Andy! I know things are weird right now. The world’s changing around us, and, yeah, we’re always hurrying from one crisis to another. I think you’ve been real sweet. It’s something else…” She took a deep, shaky breath, then rushed ahead with more words. “When we finished those couple of settlement quests, I gained level twenty-four, and the System gave me a class quest.”

  Andy’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, and I can’t gain any more Monster Hunter levels until I complete it.”

  “Well, that’s cool. We can do—”

  “No, it’s a, um, solo quest. I have to hunt a certain monster, and the text the System gave me made it sound like it would take a while to track it down. I’m supposed to pack for a long journey and settle my affairs before leaving.”

  Andy frowned, turning her hand in his, so his thumb pressed into her palm, gently massaging as he worried at the problem like a dog with a bone. “I mean, couldn’t I travel with you? When we find the monster, I could hang back, and—”

  She shook her head. “According to the quest text, it’s like a rite of passage for Monster Hunters. I’ll fail if I try to bend the rules.”

  Andy wasn’t dumb; he knew she wouldn’t be acting the way she was if she didn’t want to do the quest. She wasn’t looking for a trick or a way out of it, and she wasn’t looking for help. She wanted to know he understood and that things were going to be okay. So he smiled and tried to give her what she wanted. “Honestly, Luce, I think that sounds pretty exciting. I mean, if it were me, I’d be stoked to go on a quest like that. Do you know what monster you have to hunt?”

  She shook her head, but he could see her tension release as her expression changed from worried to eager. “I have to hunt for monster signs—tracks and whatnot—and when I find an appropriate prey, I’ll know it.”

  Andy inhaled, nodding. “Gonna wait for the storm to die down, at least?”

  “Yes! That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I don’t want to abandon you and everyone when there are threats around. What about the Lurikeens?”

  Andy shrugged, waving a hand dismissively. “We’ll handle them one way or another.” He reached up and gripped the edge of her cloak where it hung around her shoulders, rubbing the magical cloth between his fingers. “Don’t try to fight everything you see out there. Be clever.”

  She grabbed the lapels of his coat, tugging as she leaned forward to kiss him. “I will,” she whispered. “I mean, I’m not leaving right now, so let’s not get all…”

  “Mushy?” Andy asked, grinning.

  She nodded, smiling almost demurely as she looked down and whispered, “You’ll wait for me?”

  He laughed. “I dunno, Luce. I mean, I might have to reactivate my dating apps, and—”

  She punched his shoulder, but not hard. Then she leaned forward and kissed him again. “I wish you could come; you know that, right?”

  “Hmm, I do now,” he said, kissing her again. He felt good—all warm and fuzzy in his chest and stupid in his head, struggling to focus on anything other than Lucy’s bright eyes and her soft lips—and though the kisses were relatively chaste, considering they were sitting out in the open with dozens of people nearby, they were sweet and he could feel the heat of Lucy’s excitement in her breath and the way she slid one hand up behind his neck to pull him into her.

  When she pulled back, her lips moist and her eyes bright with the reflected light of the nearby lantern, she started to say something but paused, glancing over his shoulder toward the tunnel opening. “Omar’s coming over.”

  “We can talk more, but don’t worry; I wouldn’t try to hold you back.”

  She squeezed his arm. “That goes for me, too. I mean, if, you know, something like this comes up for you.”

  Andy grabbed her hand, then stood, pulling her to her feet. By then, Omar was standing at the foot of his sleeping bag, which was kind of the invisible edge of their campsite. “Hey, uh, Andy, some crazy shit just happened down below.”

  Andy chuckled, shaking his head. “Sorry, man. I should’ve warned people; we just selected some new boons.”

  “Yeah, I figured it was something like that. The, uh, main shaft extended, and the stairs go down to the bottom now. Also, some people came running out of the tunnel to the lake—it grew.”

  Andy glanced at Lucy, who smiled and shrugged, then he nodded toward the center of the cavern. “Violet’s spreading the word so people don’t freak out. Let’s find her, and then we can check things out.”

  As they started walking together, passing down the narrow aisle between people’s bedrolls, tents, and camp chairs, Omar said, “I figured the meeting would be soon, right?”

  “Yeah, but just the council. I’ve got some information about Improvement Points we need to discuss—” Andy leaned closer, lowering his voice to a whisper. “—and we need to talk about whether we want to keep it to ourselves.”

  “Yeah? That good?”

  Andy nodded. “Yeah, the more I think about it, the more dangerous I think this information could be. I mean, if we let the wrong kind of people in on it.”

  By then, they’d reached the center of the cavern, where a sizeable square of space had been set aside for folding tables and the “kitchen” of sorts—coolers, camp stoves, and water jugs. Violet was addressing a large crowd, so Andy thumped Omar on the shoulder and said, “We’ll talk later.”