12) Lucky lucky worm boy

Time was not on their side, it has clearly been a few days since the two of them have eaten and the rain was unreliable. They had to figure something out quickly. Claire would know that Skye is okay due to the fact that the Flower Boys are still alive and happy but if he took too long she might try to come to his rescue. 

Sure she wouldn't get very far but she would try, bless her cotton socks. 

Skye would have to start exploring the keep in the safest way he knew how, room by room, root by root. It takes Kai a reasonable amount of mana and time to place down his ring of protection so they can move slowly as he explores but they would only be able to do so a few times a day if that, and only moving a few feet at a time.

They needed to either find something useful or a way out, or if they were lucky, maybe both. Kai seemed to have a sword that he was very fond of and spent his time lashing out at the air with it, Ellie has a way to quickly travel short distances so she was helping with the scouting. She would open the door that looked into the distance, and then take a step outside and in a flash end up a good distance away. The space around her would bend and contort like two places were being mashed together. 

Skye put his hand on the crack in the wall behind him in the opposite direction of the courtyard and began. 

I need to get this done fast and get us out of here

He was essentially feeling around blind, hoping if he covers enough space he can piece together what he was touching through context clues. He did it before, discovering the shape of rooms and even the shape of some objects left there. His roots acted like tiny little fingers poking around, giving him information about texture and shape, hardness and temperature. 

They were on the first floor of the keep in the closest room to the courtyard, while it was a good size, it was most likely used as a storage and prepping space between the keep and the servants area. 

The first root entered the room blind, then split and split again. Before long he had the shape of the room mapped out and the exits and entrances, and moved on to the next, focusing on the floors and bits of the walls to make sure he had enough leeway to keep going. 

Once the first few rooms were mapped out for basic size and design Ellie reappeared in the corner of the room, visibly more ragged and out of breath than when she left.

"Are you okay? Did something happen? What's going on out there?"

Skye didn't mean to bomb her with so many questions as she tried to catch her breath, but he was both worried and overly curious. Even Kai stopped swinging his sword with so much force and paid attention.

"The city"

Huff

"Its flooded with those roaches"

Huff Huff

"I could see it from the top of the walls"

She finally took a deep breath and stood upright.

"Sorry moving like this takes a lot out of me. I'm okay. There are a few paths that are less crowded than others but nowhere is clear. I could see them move from building to building. I don't know what they're eating but they're doing so in a hurry."

She paused and looked around the room like she was trying to situate herself, moving her body to face the courtyard and then the back wall with her hands slightly out before continuing.

"We're currently at the very start of the courtyard and the keep seems to go back by the space of three more rooms like this and then to the side by another two, so I'd guess it's 4 deep and 5 wide. At the very far right side I'd bet that those rooms were more of a barracks or used for some type of military reason seeing how close they are to the gate. When I get some mana back I'm going to check it out."

Skye was curious about the extent of her ability. If she was able to teleport around like this, why didn't she just leave Kai here and get out?

"How far can you go with that ability of yours, and can you carry things or.. People?"

"My active ability is to pinch two places together for a split second. I have to physically and mentally pull them together. Smaller objects I can do easier, larger ones like a body not so much. I can only take myself about 10 meters at a time. So if I have to go farther I have to do it multiple times in a row and that gets exhausting quickly. As for my second ability."

She paused and made a circle with her fingers, holding it up to her eye level. With her free hand she picked something out of the middle of it and pulled out an arrow.

"I can use my body to form the shape of an opening and pull things out of the space between existence and the void. I can only store as much mass as my body possesses it seems."

She looked at Skye and his efforts, before putting on a tone that felt like a mixture of asking and directing.

"If you are able, really feel around the stones and floor boards, it's just a hunch but.. If I had a castle, I'd also have a way to escape if something happened."

Kai nodded along in agreement, something he seemed to do often when Ellie spoke. He didn't know what happened between those two in the few days before Skye arrived but he seemed to really respect her opinion. It was contradicting to his appearance and demeanour, but maybe he was secretly a feminist. He added to the conversation

"Yeah worm boy, while i'm keeping you safe just keep sliming around the ground looking for a way out, leave everything else to us"

He gave a proud gesture over to Ellie, involving him in her efforts. From everyone else's point of view he was just some dude with long hair swinging wildly at the air for the last few hours. If this was the Dome, or any city, he'd be shunned for being not right in the head. 

"Right… We have a plan, let's see if it works out."

Ellie added, taking the most neutral stance on what Kai just said, who seemed to take that as confirmation that he was playing a huge role in this. Which to his credit, he really was, even if it wasn't active. 

If he wasn't here they'd have to find another way to defend themselves which would be far more labour intensive. The ring of protection was both a ring and kept them protected. It was a perfectly named spell.

After a bit of rest Ellie peaked out the door and disappeared again. She couldn't just instantly travel anywhere she liked, she had to see the place first to pull it to herself. This made her form of scouting really resource intensive but quicker.. 

Skye on the other hand was slowly losing his mana in drips and drops while pushing out his roots. Normally he'd be able to absorb it from the plants and soil around him, but he was getting nothing back from the stones. 

Ellie returned just as Skye was starting on the last room. He could feel himself getting close to the end of his tether, having to reduce the coverage of the other rooms to be able to map out the last one. He retracted his roots from the other rooms, losing the details and focusing on just having the paths from each room mapped out.

Ellie collapsed to a seated position against the wall as soon as she got there, gasping for air with her face covered in sweat. Her curly hair seemed more a mess than before and stuck to her forehead and cheeks. It was only about shoulder length and as dark as the room around them, but it was easy to see how messy it became. 

She reached out to the bucket

"Do we…. Have any more….. Water"

Kai stopped mid swing and walked over to the bucket then looked back at Ellie.

"We have a few more mouth fulls, they're all yours"

He brought it over to her and let her finish off the last of it. Skye could only imagine how foul it tasted out of that old bucket, but he was starting to feel thirsty enough himself to not care, he couldn't imagine how they felt. If anyone deserved the last of the water, it was her.

She pulled herself together and asked

"Any luck?"

Skye replied with closing his eyes and really focusing.

"I think you were right, I can feel a strange draft on the floor though the stones, the air is colder and moving more than it should. I'm going to start looking around now but I can't be sure."

She nodded as if she knew it all along, completely confident in her ideas. 

"Good news on my end too, it was a military storage building, I got close enough to look inside an opening in the wall but had to move on foot to do so, as soon as I did I got charged from all directions. When I recover I'm going to try and grab what I can and take them with me."

The more Skye found out about Ellie and her abilities the more he felt a ping of jealousy. He was really happy with how useful his roots turned out to be, from creating rope to scouting spaces, even giving him an increase in mana replenishment, but she was something else. 

He would have traded it all to be teleporting around and having a way to store things. Though he really didn't have many things. 

Ellie looked like she was deep in thought for a second, like she spoke her plan out to the universe and was now just figuring out how to do it, willing her ideas into reality. She looked over at Skye with his eyes closed.

"Hey… How many of those seeds do you have left?"

Skye did some mental calculations on how many he used and how many he had originally created.

"About half a dozen give or take, why?"

"Give me what you have and try to create more before tomorrow, I have an idea"

As the words left her mouth she had a smirk on her exhausted face. Skye didn't know what type of plan she had, but something told him he would rather watch from the sidelines. He reached into his back pocket and gave them all willingly either way.

"Give me some time, I'll need a couple hours before I can make the journey again."

She said while closing her eyes and resting her head against the wall. Just like that she was out, her breathing becoming more shallow and slow paced. 

"She has the right idea you know"

Kai said, no longer swinging his sword, but still messing with the sharp blade in some fashion, twirling it around in his hands. 

"Once the night hits, no one is going to be able to sleep for long. So if you're tired go ahead and sleep now. Nothing is getting in here."

It was almost considerate of him, maybe Skye had the wrong idea about him. First feminism and now comradery? This was a downright cool dude. That thought lasted only a second.

"But only after your worms find what they have to, you still have a job to do"

He stabbed the sword into the ground and sat against the wall himself, crossing his arms and tucking his chin. It was time for everyone's midday nap it seemed. He was right, not about the worms part, but Skye still had a job to do. 

Me and MY ROOTS

He screamed in his head, not wanting to wake Ellie or Kai with something so petty. Petty and important. 

He closed his eyes as well, focusing on the feelings traveling through the roots into his brain. They wiggled around the floor, covering every inch of it like little…. Roots. No other comparison could be made. 

He whispered as softly as he could.

"Hey.. Dubs.. Can you just fly in there and see what's about?"

Dubs replied confidently.

"Yeah give me a second, I'm surprised you didn't ask before."

A swirl of excitement started to build in Skye, why didn't he think of this before? Of course he just had to ask. That was like his whole thing. He waited for Dubs to return with a weird nervousness. If this worked out, he would seem really useful to these people.

Dubs returned after a few moments. 

"Skye, you're not going to believe this."

"What is it? Did you find a way out?"

He said almost too loudly.

"No it turns out I don't have eyes, I couldn't see shit. Now get back to work."

That nervous energy in his body turned to rage really quickly, shooting darts out of his eyes at the floating ball. He wanted to yell, but didn't want to explain why when he woke up Kai and Elli. He was going to get back to work, but he was going to do so with his eyes closed now that he knew Dubs relied on his eyesight to see. 

Flicking around the floor and up the wall, prying at the edge of every floorboard and stone, pressing down to see if there was any give, something finally caught his attention. He could feel the breeze coming up between the cracks of the floorboards, so damp and thick that he thought he felt the roots delivering the liquid to his body. Wait.

Can his roots do that? Is he really turning into a tree man? 

Tree man or not, he found their hope for escaping. He contracted all the roots from around the room back into the main line and then pushed it under the floorboard and into the cavern, spreading out from there. The stairs were slick with condensation and drops fell from the ceiling causing small vibrations to ripple outwards. He would go as far as he could and report it to the group when they woke up. 

As tired as he was, he and his roots really did have work to do. He could sleep tonight while they stand guard.