TINK. TINK. Xander's left eye twitches open as he lets out a breath of air. There's only one person crazy enough to drag him out of bed this early in the morning. TINK. TINK.
He gets up and walks over to his window opening it up. A rock flies into the room smacking him in the forehead and leaving behind a small welt, "Ow! You can stop throwing rocks now! I'm awake."
Shanna stares up at him, "I found us another quest if you're willing to come along."
Xander is a little shocked, he never expected her to come back to him for another quest. Especially not after his lack of performance on their first quest together. "Alright, just give me a minute. I need to put my clothes on and gather my gear. He meets Shanna down below about ten minutes later, "Alright, what's the quest?"
"We can discuss it over breakfast. Don't wanna go on an empty stomach."
Shanna and Xander sit at the table munching on their pancakes and bacon served by the barmaid. "Boy, this is delicious!" Xander compliments her.
The barmaid smiles, the young woman's name is Reyna Loren. An eyepatch covers her left eye. Her hair flows like a waterfall of black curls. Her ruby red lips and mature facial features give off the impression that she's shot a man or two in her day. Though truth be told, she rarely leaves the guild hall. "Why thank you, young man! I appreciate the comment. Now that'll be 10,000 Aris."
Xander drops his fork mid-bite. He wipes his hands with a napkin and places it on top of the plate then stands up and bows toward the woman. "I thank you for the meal."
He tries to run off, but she slams into him with an elbow digging into his back, "Oh no you don't!"
"Help," he cries out as she drags him behind the bar. She taps her elbow and brings it down on his chest, "OOF! Why am I being punished…"
Shanna takes a sip of her drink while looking down at him, "Don't worry, it's the only time she'll price you that high for your food. She's the guild's eternal barmaid and a celestial spirit."
Xander blinks and stares at her, "Re-really?"
The young woman stands back up again with a smile playing across her lips, "You mean you couldn't tell by my radiance, young man?"
"If you're a celestial spirit that means your life force is tied to a celestial body somewhere in the galaxy, right?" Xander asks, "Which one are you connected to?"
Reyna looks down sadly, "Well, time to get back to work." She returns to polishing glasses behind the bar.
Xander stands up and dusts himself off feeling confused. "Come on, I'll explain things on the way," Shanna mumbles as she pulls him along. She pays Reyna for both her and Xander's meals and they hurry off.
As they walk down the road, Shanna explains, "Similar to how our history was lost in the library fire, so were Reyna's memories."
"You mean she was there when the library burned down!?"
"She was in the library at the time. A dragon's fire is very powerful and can even negatively affect powerful beings such as celestial spirits."
A bead of sweat trails down Xander's forehead. He's heard legends and myths about dragons, how fierce and powerful they can be but they're starting to sound ever scarier by the second. "So, what about this quest you picked? What will we be doing?"
Shanna shows him the poster: a logo with a pumpkin and a watermelon growing from two separate places in the ground stands on either side of the title Jenson's Farms in thick dark green letters. The vines sticking out of the two fruits merge into the words of the title. The quest description reads as follows, Sumeone as ben steeling my crops in the nite time. Please cach the theif.
"120,000 Aris. That's a pretty hefty reward for a quest as simple as this."
"Except, the thief may not be as easy as the quest suggests. Our first quest wasn't as simple as we thought."
Xander nods his head and speaks up as they start reaching the outskirts of the town, "Actually about that, I just want to apologize for how little help I was."
Shanna stops walking and turns to Xander, "Xander don't say that. If you didn't tell me what the problem was, I wouldn't have been able to properly cleanse the forest of that contamination."
"Well, it seemed like you already knew what you had to do before hand," he replies.
She shakes her head, "My Regrowth ability can be used in two different ways. Either it can be used to accelerate the succession of natural plant environments until it reaches the climax community stage again or used to revive the life force of the forest itself. If I had accelerated the development of the natural plant environment, I possibly could have destroyed the forest by accelerating the spread of that black substance."
Xander nods his head slowly, "So…your Regrowth ability can manipulate the time of natural environments?"
"In a way…yes. And rather than accelerate time forward for that area, I needed to reverse its time."
"That's amazing."
"But also, very costly. The more I use that spell, the more I…the more magic power I use."
Xander realizes she was about to say something else, but he chooses not to pry, "Looks like we're here."
They approach the small building which stands in front of a massive space where pumpkins, watermelon, and other assortments of vine-based fruits and vegetables grow from the earth. "Wow…this is the first time I've seen a farm this big before."
"Old Man Jenson is the biggest fruit exporter in this part of the world. His crops expand for many miles. He used to grow corn until something…. unexpected happened."
"Interesting, well I can't wait to meet the old man."
As they grow closer to the shabby house, they notice a much older fellow rocking in his chair on the porch. Although he's clearly adding momentum to the chair, one might think he's a corpse sitting up on its own holding a long pipe. Black smoke pumps from the pipe every few seconds and then he huffs a plume of that black smoke forward.
"Hello, Mr. Jenson," Xander says while waving at the old man.
"It's been a long time since I've seen you, pretty little thing," the old man muses. He blows a puff of smoke in Shanna's direction who rolls her eyes in reply.
"We're here to execute the quest, Old Man Jenson."
The old man snorts and starts to stand up. Either Xander's ears are playing tricks on him, or he hears so many bones creaking and cracking, the old man sounds off his own ensemble.
The old man grabs his cane and starts walking to the back side of his house. The two follow him in close pursuit.
When they get to the back, they see upturned earth all over the place. There is a massive section missing from Jenson's watermelon farm. Taken straight from the vines. Among this mess there are a multitude of holes, possibly in place where the massive fruit should have been.
"E'ery morning I come out here to check ma farm. E'ery morning, most my melons, missing! I tell ya, if I ever catch the thief 'sponsible for this." The old man drops his cane for a second to mock-strangle somebody but then he cries out in pain, "Oh, my back!"
"Take it easy," Xander says, stepping forward. He picks up the cane and places it under the old man's grasping left hand, "We'll take care of things."
"And who're you?" Old Man Jenson's eyes Xander through his ancient, wrinkled face, "Are you this flower's stamen."
Shanna's cheeks heat up a bright red, but Xander's eyebrow just raises questioningly, "I don't even know what that is."
"Moving on!" Shanna says, "Jenson we'll handle this, go to bed."
"Hmph! Ordering me around. Ye act just like Loretta used'ta."
"You seem to know him already," Xander comments once the old farmer is out of earshot.
"He used to take care of me…him and his wife. But she died years ago."
Shanna walks deeper into the melon farm, possibly to avoid any more questions about the Jensons. She examines the earth by placing a hand on the ground and closing her eyes. She meditates for a moment and tries to feel the magical energy flowing through the ground. She opens her eyes again and shakes her head, "No good. I can't sense the exact location the melons were taken, only traces amount of their energy."
"Fruit can have energy?"
"Anything grown from the natural environment will have energy. Though, natural energy is different from magical energy. I still haven't gotten the hang of telling the difference. So it's difficult to detect the path of a natural object if it was moved a while ago."
"So, what do you suggest we do?"
"It's probably best if we stay overnight and watch what happens ourselves. That section of melons over there will be ripe by the morning time." She points to the section sitting next to the ruined one.
Xander nods his head, "Guess we're having a sleepover. Where will we station ourselves?"
"The roof, it'll give us a clear view of what's going on down on the ground."
"But what if the thief spots us in the moonlight, we'll be too obvious," Xander counters. He takes a moment to look around then points at the shed off to the right side of the house, "How about in there. It looks like there's two stories to it. Not only will we be concealed but we'll also have a good view from up there."
Shanna shakes her head, "The shadows of the shed might distort our vision."
"What if we used a spyglass."
"Where would we get a spyglass?"
Xander holds out a hand and a cylinder crystal quickly forms. Shanna picks it up and wraps it in a thick string-like vine before raising the contraption to her eye. She looks through it and, sure enough, the object acts as a spyglass, zoomed in on a farther distance from where she stands. "How did you manage learning something this precise?" she asks out of curiosity.
"Before I joined the guild I used to work for an eyeglass shop on the far west side of town. Eventually I became so precise that I could create eyeglasses all by myself without all the polishing and grinding."
"That's incredible. If you hone that same level of precision into your other magical techniques, you might be able to perform amazing feats."
Xander blushes a bit from the unexpected compliment, "Thank you, Shanna."
"Come, let's go sit in the shed and wait."
"All day long?!" he says in disbelief.
"We don't know who the thief is, they could come at any point in time to change their methodology. Plus, we got all night long before they show up, might as well get cozy 'till then."
Xander sits in the shed forming a new storage crystal out of boredom while looking through the spyglass at the section Shanna pointed out. Shanna is currently in the house making them lunches to tie them over for the rest of the day.
"Hm. I never thought I'd be having a picnic in an old shed alone with a girl," he says to himself. Suddenly, what Marlo had said starts ringing in his head, "Sounds like she's got a thing for you." Xander throws the thought to the back of his mind and ignores it. Then he reprimands himself, "Come on, focus. You'll take another backseat on this quest if you don't pay attention."
Suddenly, he spots a little bit of movement coming from the melon part of the garden. The ground starts shaking slightly, the vine leaves rustling and the watermelon vibrating while slowly sinking into the ground.
Shanna walks in and notices Xander staring intently through the spyglass. He doesn't move as his attention is fully focused on what he's looking at. "Wait, what's happening?" Shanna asks as she pulls out her own spyglass and looks down at the farm.
The earth starts breaking apart underneath the melon farm, dirt upturning, rocks flying in each direction as something starts sucking the melons down into the earth one by one. FWOOMP. FWOOMP.
Both Xander and Shanna quickly rush outside to catch whoever or whatever is stealing the melons but by the time they reach the patch, all of the melons are already gone. They suddenly hear a very loud and horribly gruff squeal from deep within the earth. Whatever the thing is disappears as its vocalized anger fades into the distance down below.
"What was that…" Xander says already wielding two crystal swords.
"I don't know. But if I were to guess, there's a beast protecting these melons. It seems to have dug its own burrow somewhere deep underground."
"So, what now. Do we go in after it?"
"No. Not until we come up with a proper plan to deal with it. For now, let's eat and think up something."