Chapter 210: 211: Afraid together

They run out into the carriage-house, which is full of empty carts and carriages. Thankfully, the other anqas here seem to be asleep in their pens and aren’t looking at Fresh. “Get back on the cart!” barks Jubilee at Basil, who is already untying Thyme from his reins. “We’re leaving. Now!” they say, looking around. “Where is everyone?”

“What’s wrong?” asks Basil. “The fairies left,” she explains.

Fresh blinks, looking around. “Huh? Just like that?” she asks sadly. “They didn’t even say goodbye…” she says, rubbing her arm, a little sad.

“Fuck em! We’re leaving, come on! Chop-chop!” snaps Jubilee, clapping their hands together. “Someone recognized us,” they explain, seeing the priestess’ confusion. “From the north. Let’s go!” Jubilee runs around to the side of the cart, removing the roll-stops from beneath the wheels.

Basil’s face grows pale and she immediately starts hooking the annoyed and curious anqa back up to the cart. Shamrock shifts, sitting upright, his hand grabbing the large sword down at his feet as he eyes the entrances to the stall.

“Where are we gonna go?!” asks Fresh.

“Somewhere else!” snaps Jubilee. “Get on!” They snap their fingers and Fresh listens without arguing, climbing back onto the cart in a hurry. Of course, she had always known that there would be a danger of something like this happening. The world is a small place and they aren’t exactly subtle. She or Basil might be able to blend into a crowd with some effort. But Jubilee and Shamrock are conspicuous, to say the least and neither of them really ever make an effort to alter their appearances. That being said, it’s not like their enterprise is exactly subtle in and of itself, given the many oddities that they craft and their repetitive choice of location and brand-name.

But where is there left to go? Maybe they’re going to have to become traveling merchants after all? Maybe sea-faring merchants? But is there even a dungeon anywhere out on or over the ocean? And who would even buy the things that they’d sell from the…

She blinks.

- Dungeon Item Ship?

Fresh shakes her head, no, that’s a silly idea. Better put it into the category of bad-plans, together with the pirate-thing.

Well. It was a nice city to have stopped off at, she’s glad she was able to see it once in her life. Maybe in her next one, she’ll get to stay longer?

She blinks. That phrase goes through her head again. ‘Her next life’. Fresh looks around the cart at Shamrock, at Basil, at Jubilee. Reincarnation exists in this world, at least according to Basil. Jubilee might not believe it, but Basil certainly does and Shamrock seems to do so as well. She supposes that she herself has a strong tendency towards the belief too, given her direct experience with the matter. But that itself is the root of her question, the one that has found its way to the forefront of her mind in the odd, frantic moment as she watches her friends run around.

Does her soul even belong in this world? If she dies-dies, is she… ‘compatible’ with the reincarnation system here? Or will she simply go back to wherever she was meant to go, after eventually dying in her old world? Or will neither of those things happen?

It’s a sad thought, not because she’s afraid of the afterlife or anything like that, at least not yet. But rather, because one way or the other, one day she isn’t going to see her friends anymore and they’re the only reason she has grown to like this world to begin with. What good would reincarnating in this world be for her, if they aren’t all together?

She really is clingy, realizes Fresh, staring vacantly at the empty seat across from herself.

“Let’s move!” says Jubilee, climbing onto the cart after Basil, hitting her lightly on the back once as a signal.

“Wait!” calls out a voice from the side just as the anqa starts to turn. The barkeeper is standing by the open, giant door of the carriage house. “Don’t go!” says the elf, standing in the way, by the entrance, lifting her hands and waving them both. Without a moment’s hesitation, Basil whips the reins, the cart lurches forward. “I’m not gonna say anything!” exclaims the elf, still standing right in the middle of the only way out and the anqa is heading right for her, picking up speed very quickly. “Please!”

“Basil!” yells Fresh, grabbing the priestess’ arm, foreseeing how horribly this is going to end in only a single instant more. “Stop!” she protests, not sure that Basil has any intention of stopping, even if not doing so means trampling and running the woman over.

There is a crack of leather. The anqa slows down, the cart rolls to a stop.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” barks Jubilee. “GO!”

Basil doesn’t say anything. Fresh blinks, grabbing her shoulder. Basil doesn’t really respond in any way, she’s just kind of staring at the back of the anqa. “Basil?” asks Fresh, rubbing the wet-spot beneath the priestess’ eye that she sees forming. Basil blinks, looking around, a little confused, judging by her expression. “Are you okay?” asks Fresh.

“I’m fine,” says Basil, blinking a few more times, as if she had something in her eye. Squishing them closed a few times like someone who was just waking up first thing in the morning and trying to clear their blurry vision. Fresh looks down at her own finger, seeing the single, black smear on the tip of it. She looks back up towards Basil’s face. There’s nothing there anymore. Basil turns her head around to Jubilee. “I’m stopping.”

“The hell?! SHAMROCK!” barks Jubilee. Shamrock nods, grabbing his sword and getting up.

“STOP!” yells Fresh at him. She is sure that the giant man had no intention of really hurting the elf, at the most ‘moving’ her out of the way. But she’s not going to let him. Shamrock freezes, caught between the smart choice to keep them safe and her pleading command. He’s going to take the smart choice in a moment, as her survival is his primary goal. But she just needs a moment for them all to stop and to breathe.

“You fucks!” barks Jubilee, getting up themselves. Fresh lunges, grabbing them in an open tackle and holding them as tight as she can, pinning both of them down onto the floor of the cart. “Let me go! You idiot!” snaps her friend. As for Jubilee, Fresh is more than certain that they have every intention of killing the elf, if that’s what it’s going to take. But she’s not going to let them.

The bad-part is, she realizes as she holds her violently threatening and squirming friend, who has elbowed her more than once now, costing her several health-points, is that she isn’t even doing it for the barkeeper. She just doesn’t want Jubilee to get any spiritually-heavier than they already are. She really is selfish, notices Fresh as Jubilee elbows her again, very painfully, in the same spot that she is still bruised from Shamrock’s arm-bar.

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“I promise!” repeats the barkeeper, standing there with her hands up. “I won’t say anything. Please!” she pleads, her voice cracking in a way that is unusual for Fresh to hear. She has only ever heard the barkeeper speaking once or twice, when she visited their shop or that one time by the fountain, when she had warned Fresh about the danger they were getting into. But one thing that the barkeeper always had was a strong, collected, calm, professional voice, suited to her trade. “I need your help.”

“Jubilee!” says Fresh. “Please.”

Jubilee shows no signs of relenting, sparing only a single glance up towards her health-points.

One more intentional hit from them like that and she’s probably going to die. “You’re so selfish,” hisses Jubilee at her in a voice she hasn’t heard them use before either.

“Sorry,” apologizes Fresh quietly. She knows that Jubilee has the same exact fear that she has, just with different motivations. The fear of losing each other. Fresh is, however, concerned about the act of spiritually losing one another, while Jubilee is concerned with the physical. “Please?” Jubilee looks up towards Shamrock, waiting to see what his move is going to be, as the only ‘free’ person left. Shamrock hops off of the cart. “Shamrock!” calls Fresh after him. She lets go of Jubilee, scrambling up.

“Wait- I swear I won’t- IAH!”

“SHAMROCK!” cries Fresh, looking up and out of the cart. “DON’T HURT HER!” she calls in distress. Fresh yelps and jumps back in surprise a second later, landing back on top of a complaining Jubilee, as a scarred face suddenly appears before her. The barkeeper is being held aloft by a large, metal hand gripping the back of her, surprisingly sturdy, vest.

“What do you want?” asks Basil cautiously. Fresh gets up, apologizing to a groaning Jubilee who makes a remark about her having secretly eaten some candies during the journey. This may perhaps be true, but Fresh chooses to think that it isn’t relevant to the topic at hand, so she lets it slide. At least she and Jubilee have matching bruises now.

The barkeeper clasps her hands together, lowering her head and closing her eyes fearfully. “Please! Witch of the north, I’ll do anything. Help me,” she asks, with a clear fear to her voice that wasn’t present when she was about to be run over. Fresh blinks, looking at the elf’s shaking hands, made up out of ten very pale, scarred fingers, having lost their color from being squeezed so tightly together. The woman is terrified beyond belief of… her?

She always forgets, spending so much time with her friends, how the people of this world really see her. “I- I need a remedy,” asks the barkeeper, tears running out of her tightly clenched eyes. “Nobody else can help me.”

Fresh stares at the woman. She thinks she knows what the problem is. Though, she personally doesn’t think that the scars really deter the barkeeper’s appeal in any way. But, it is a cruel world after all, people are mean here. Fresh nods, understanding. “Your scars?” she asks the barkeeper from the northern adventurer’s guild, who apparently now works here, in the east. The elf shakes her head.

“I’m barren,” she explains. “Please, help me,” she begs. "Nobody else can do anything. I've been everywhere!"

Fresh blinks, somewhat taken aback. Not sure what to do or how to process this, she looks to her friends for guidance. But they seem to have none to offer themselves, staring just as blankly as she likely is.

Razmatazz

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