Chapter 101 - A New Plan of Attack

“They’re not after us anymore,” said Abby, materializing out of the brush. Zeke knew she didn’t have anything like a camouflage skill, so her ability to slip in and out of concealment was even more impressive than it seemed at first glance, even if her effort was aided by the evening shadows. “In fact, it looks like the whole of the undead horde are going south.”

“He’s going after Beacon,” asserted Tucker, who sat across the fire from Zeke. They had been traveling for four days since leaving Micayne and his undead army behind, and the rough travel had taken its toll on the big man. Despite being higher leveled than anyone else in the group, he had not focused on his physical stats. So, the journey had been especially difficult for him, and it showed in his slouched posture.

“What? Why?” asked Abby, plopping down on one of the rocking chairs Zeke had brought away from the nearby porch attached to the summoned cottage.  “I thought they were friends.”

Talia snorted derisively, but she didn’t say anything. The undead girl was an enigma for Zeke. He knew she was in a bad place, but he had no idea how to help her. It was all he could do to manage his own psychological health, much less help her figure out how to deal with her transformation. Abby had made an effort to assist, but then again, she’d been a trained professional back on Earth. However, Zeke felt certain that no amount of training could prepare someone to give advice on how to cope with becoming an undead monster.

“Yeah, I don’t think people like Lady Constance have friends, per se,” Tucker pointed out. “Not anymore, at least. She’s too old and too powerful to see people as anything but pieces on a board.”

“Or tools to be used,” interjected Talia. “Even her children. Do you think a former companion would be any different? From her perspective, she gave Micayne a task – resurrect my father – and she was willing to sacrifice me to get it. She already sent my brothers and sisters to their deaths. Do you really believe she’ll let this go?”

“She doesn’t even know what happened, though,” Zeke pointed out. “And not to be insensitive, but what’s one more failure to her?”

“She’ll figure it out,” Abby said. “Silas probably already knows.”

“And you’re underestimating the amount of effort that went into Talia’s development,” Tucker stated, his thick accent all but gone. There was still some twang to it, but the man could clearly change his mannerisms and accent according to the situation. Likely, he used the thick, southern accent to put people at ease so they would underestimate him. “That girl was the culmination of years’ worth of effort. Every skill, every achievement – it was all meant to bring her to this point. And she –”

“Is still sitting right here,” Talia hissed, her jaw flexing and her claws digging into the palms of her hands. “I’m a person, not just another ingredient.”

“Woah,” Tucker said, holding up his hands. “I’m not responsible for what happened to you. I was a prisoner, just like you were.”

“Not just like me,” she growled. Zeke saw her muscles tense, and he was ready to spring across the fire to protect the alchemist. Not because he particularly liked the man; he hadn’t made a judgement on that, yet. But killing one another wouldn’t accomplish anything, and it could be detrimental to Talia’s recovery, such as it was. If she was allowed to indulge her instincts and kill the man, she would doubtless regret it. “You weren’t held in an endless abyss, hovering between life and death, were you? No. You just had to wear a collar. So don’t sit there and act like we had the same experience. We did not.”

“I know that,” the man said, though his voice was quiet as he dropped his hands and stared at the ground. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I just…no, no excuses. I should have been stronger. I shouldn’t have done what he wanted me to do, regardless of the consequences.” He looked up and into Talia’s eyes, the flickering fire between them, and said, “I am sorry. More than you could know.”

A pregnant silence hung in the air for a few more moments before Abby cleared her throat and said, “So, Micayne’s taking his army to Beacon so he can preempt Lady Constance? Would she really come after him?”

“Yes,” both Tucker and Talia said at the same time.

“Well, at least we won’t have to worry about being chased,” Zeke said. “I think we need to talk about how we’re going to do this, then. Talia, a couple of days ago, Abby offered you a chance to come with us. Have you decided what you want to do? I want you to know that even if you don’t go with us, we’ll help you get set up somewhere else. We won’t abandon you.”

Talia didn’t immediately answer, and Zeke knew why. The young woman had just had her entire life ripped away from her, and on top of that, she’d discovered that her mother saw her only as a means to an end. Zeke could sympathize with that, having lived something similar in his old life back on Earth. His father obviously hadn’t sent him to die, but the man clearly hadn’t really cared about Zeke, either. Not as a person, at least. And certainly not as a son. Lady Constance’s actions were exponentially worse. She’d sent over a dozen of her children to be sacrificed, and just for the chance of resurrecting her husband. A monster in every sense of the word, the woman’s actions far exceeded those of Zeke’s father. But everything in this new world was exaggerated, so why would treachery or evil be any different?

Finally, Talia said, “I think…I think I want to come with you.”

“Are you sure?” asked Abby.

The young, undead woman shrugged. “What else am I supposed to do? If I go back to Beacon, I’ll be hunted down, whether it’s because of my mother or because I’m a monster. I don’t –”

“You’re not a monster,” Abby interrupted. “You’re a person.”

“That’s not how most people would think,” Talia retorted.

“She’s not wrong,” Tucker pointed out. “I’m not saying she is one. I’m just saying that she’d barely get past the outskirts of Beacon before someone decided to kill her for experience. They’d probably think she would give them access to a Framework quest or something.”

“They wouldn’t do that, would they?” Zeke said, though he knew his statement was, at best, naïve. How many monsters had he killed without a second thought? Some of them might’ve even been sapient, but he hadn’t hesitated. Sure, he had his reasons, and usually, they were good ones. But there had been times when he’d acted purely because he wanted to continue to progress. Others would surely have that same attitude.

Abby shook her head, saying, “I think Tucker is probably right. It’s not ideal, but we should probably look into disguises for Talia, just in case. And even then, avoiding towns is our best bet. It’s a good thing we planned to do that anyway, for now.”

“What is your plan, anyway?” asked Tucker. “We’ve been heading in the same direction for the last couple of days, but there’s nothing in that direction but Jotuns.”

“Exactly,” said Zeke, grinning.

“Wait, you’re not going to fight frost giants, are you? Nobody does that,” Tucker said, obviously taken aback.

Abby shrugged. “We’ve got a quest,” was her response. “I think we’ll only need to kill a couple of them, though. And unless we find a cave full of bodies or something, I think we should confine our slaughter to what’s absolutely necessary. The last thing I want to do is to fight a Jotun elite. Or God forbid, the frost giant king.”

Zeke asked, “Are they that bad?”

“They’re giants, you idiot!” Tucker half-shouted. “Of course they’re that bad! I don’t know what kind of monsters you’ve fought so far, but giants are on a different level entirely. You’re strong and tough enough, sure. I saw that back at the tower. But believe me, giants are stronger and tougher, and they’ll squash you like a goddamn worm!”

“So, I shouldn’t let them squash me,” Zeke deadpanned. “Noted.”

“That is not what I meant, and you –”

“We’re going,” Abby cut in. “Regardless of how difficult it is. Or –”

Tucker interrupted her right back, saying, “Suicidal is more like it.”

She shrugged. “We’ve done suicidal before, and we’re still here,” she said. “Besides, nobody even asked you to go.”

“Wait, what?”

“You heard me,” Abby said. She and Zeke had talked about it, and neither really trusted the alchemist. He’d worked under duress, but from what Talia had said, he hadn’t seemed all that broken up about it. Maybe he was just making the best of a bad situation, but they didn’t know one way or the other, so trusting him implicitly was out of the question. “Give me one good reason we should bring you with us?”

“I…I don’t…I mean, you wouldn’t just leave me out here by myself, would you?” he asked, looking around as if some monster was going to jump out at him. Zeke hadn’t told the new arrivals about the cottage’s aura yet, so they had no way of knowing that they were entirely safe from monstrous intrusions.

Zeke shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “Here’s the deal, okay? You were working for Micayne.” The big man started to protest, but Zeke spoke over him, continuing, “I know you were doing so against your will, but I get the feeling that that collar was only nominally necessary. I think you’re the kind of guy who would do whatever he had to do to get what he wanted, including sacrificing somebody like Talia.”

“I didn’t have a choice!”

“We know,” Abby interjected. “But be honest with me – would it have mattered all that much if you did? I’ve known people like you before. People who would sacrifice anything, so long as they got ahead. I used to be married to one. With you, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it has something to do with research, right? You just want to make your potions, and you don’t care what it costs.”

“That’s not true,” Tucker protested. But the words clearly hadn’t been far off the mark, and they’d cut through some of his bluster. “I didn’t want to hurt anybody. I just…you don’t know what kind of an opportunity it was for me. I’ve been on the precipice of evolving my path for years now, and I made more progress in the few years I spent in that tower than I did in the previous decade before. All because Micayne gave me anything I needed. So long as I kept researching his project, I was free to follow my own path. No traipsing around and gathering ingredients. No haggling with merchants for the right glassware. No more waiting. Just pure progress. Any artisan would give anything for that kind of opportunity.”

“And all it cost was my siblings’ lives,” Talia said. “Or my humanity.”

“I…I’m sorry,” he said again. “I didn’t have a choice, but I didn’t really fight it, either. I should have.”

“Yes,” said Abby. “You should have.”

The man sighed, the weight of his actions catching up to him. He’d been tired before, but the admission of his portion of guilt further deflated him. After a few moments, he asked, “What are you going to do with me, then?”

Zeke answered, “That depends. What do you want? What will you do when we go our separate ways?”

Tucker shrugged. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Go back to Salvation, probably. There’s a good market for alchemy there. I’ll re-open my shop, sell potions to entitled elites, then hopefully make enough money to continue my research. After that…I don’t know.”

Zeke glanced at Abby, who gave him a nod. “And if we allowed you to come with us, what do you bring to the table?” Zeke asked. “I’ve already seen those healing potions you gave out after the fight at the tower. Do you have more of those? And you’re level twenty, right? You must have some combat skills.”

“Uh…not really,” Tucker answered. “Not direct combat skills, at least. My entire development since being reborn into this world has been about alchemy. Every skill is to help me in that pursuit.”

“Well, that’s incredibly stupid,” Abby said. “How did you get to level twenty, anyway? Did you hire some mercenaries to level you or something?”

“Preparation,” Tucker said, and a glass globe suddenly appeared in his hand. A bright, red liquid sloshed inside. “This is a grenade. It isn’t infused right now, but once it is, I can throw it at monsters. This one will produce a conflagration on par with a level fifteen fire skill, but if I over infuse it, I can increase the yield by about ten percent.”

“How many of those do you have?” Zeke asked, already eyeing the runes on the glass. They were rudimentary, but even from a distance, he could tell their purpose was to provide stability. Likely, the process of infusing mana into the grenade made it volatile. Without those runes, it would probably explode from the stress.

“Enough,” Tucker answered. “And I have a bunch with more specialized ingredients. Like those Blessed Grenades I used back at the tower. I only had two of them, but they’re made to kill undead. Micayne refused to hand over the ingredients used in their construction, though. Something about not giving me the means to destroy his whole army.”

“So, as long as you know what you’re going to fight, and you’ve got enough time, you could theoretically make grenades tailored to your enemies’ weaknesses,” Abby reasoned.

“Fire works pretty well on most things, I’ve found,” Tucker pointed out. “But yeah. That seems about right.”

It didn’t take a genius to figure out how powerful such abilities were. However, even if Abby and Zeke were willing to let the man come along, there was still the question of Talia’s opinion hanging over them. So, Zeke said, “It’s not really us you need to convince, though. Talia’s a part of the team, now, so if she doesn’t want you around…”

“What? Really?” asked Talia, obviously surprised. “Do you know how rare a talented alchemist is? You’d just send him on his way if I say so?”

“Yes,” Zeke stated without a hint of hesitation. He knew how useful a man like Tucker could be, but he and Abby had agreed to help Talia in any way they could. And if she couldn’t bear to be around the big man, then they wouldn’t force the issue.

Talia took a long couple of minutes to think about it, during which time the other three sat silently. Abby’s hand soon found Zeke’s, which made the wait a little better. At some point, Pudge found his way out of the brush, his snout covered in blood and a sense of accomplishment hanging over his thoughts. He’d had a successful hunt, then. That was good. The bear became insufferable when he was hungry.

Finally, Talia spoke up. “I’m okay with him coming along if you are,” she said. “He was a prisoner, and I want to believe that he wouldn’t have done what he did if he had a choice.”

Tucker let out an audible sigh of relief. Then, as if he’d suddenly remembered something, he asked, “So…now that that’s taken care of, do you two really intend to go hunt frost giants?”