“Hey Saff, could you let go?” Hazel asked with a nervous laugh. The engineer was blushing a bit. “You’re, uh, going to break a rib or something on me. Lighten up, I’m not going anywhere.”

They all looked down at her, giving light laughs at what they thought was her attempt at making some kind of comedy out of the situation. At least, watching Hazel struggle under Saffron was funny enough to watch.

“Hey, there’s enough Hazel to go around.” Reva assured, prying the scientist off of the gasping woman. “What’s wrong anyway? We all heard that scream.” Everyone nodded.

“It was… a nightmare. But… it felt so real, like I really lived it. ” Saffron recounted, chillingly. “We- We made it to Eden, but there was this angel there…” When she had finished her story, everyone looked at each other, unsure of how to take it. Shiso put a sympathetic and worried hand on her shoulder.

“Kid, we all have bad dreams. You gotta ignore them.” he advised. “You’re stressing too hard about Eden. Come morning, we’ll take off for the place again.”

“But what if it wasn’t a dream?” Saffron asked. “What if the angel is there? What if we are all going to di-”

“Silence, you blockheads!” shouted a shrill voice from inside a tent. Out came Terra in a set of white robes, completed with a black sleeping mask decorated with deep purple diamonds. “I need my beauty sleep to maintain my perfect face. This is all natural; no makeup!”

“Go back to sleep!” roared Shiso. “We have enough of you during the day. Shut it until morning.”

“Don’t wake me again!” she complained. “I have ears everywhere.” She ducked back down to get in the tent, but hit her head on one of the bars giving the tent structure.

“Can we go back to bed?” Gunner asked, sleepily rubbing his eyes. “I’m tired.”

“Yeah, I’m going back.” Selicy said, diving back into her tent.

Everyone slowly slumped back into their sleeping bags, drowsy and restless by Saffron’s incitement in the night. Violette set their tent back up and ducked inside.

“Are you coming?” she asked, beckoning Saffron to follow her into the tent.

“No thanks.” Saffron politely declined. “I want to clear my head after the… nightmare.”

“Alright.” Vio smiled brightly. “Make sure to at least get 40 winks before the sun comes up. Can’t have you with those bags under your eyes.”

“Do I have bags under my eyes?” Saffron asked, self-consciously touching around the bottom of her eyes.

“Not yet, but get back soon!”

“Sure.” the scientist said quietly with a wink.

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Saffron drifted quietly through the forest, focusing on the full moon that shone down on her. Why do full moons always come before horrible events? Such a pretty thing, but its bright light was almost like a warning.

Something poked from the breast pocket on her shirt, and she took it out. Saffron had completely forgotten about it. She twirled and fumbled the card around in her hand.

The front was stark white with a green Sera pattern drawn all over it. It read “Shopkeeper” in fancy gold cursive, faintly glowing in the darkness. The back was the exact same white and Sera pattern, only it instead read “I’m ready to make a bargain” in the same gold cursive.

“Just rip that card and say that line and I will warp to your location to do some business.” echoed the words of Shopkeeper through her head. She shook her head and stared back at the card. She thought about using it for just a moment before disregarded it. Whatever Shopkeeper wanted her to buy, the price probably wasn’t worth it.

Saffron tossed the card aside, turning her back as she heard it gently drift into some bush. She walked away, thinking about what to do, when something got thrown at the back of her head, surprising her. She turned around in a flash only to find nothing but the still night.

The scientist reached into her hair and removed whatever was thrown when her back was turned. It was Shopkeeper’s business card. Saffron didn’t like that one bit.

“Who’s there?” she asked into the darkness. Everything was dead silent and not even a leaf fluttered in the night. The unnerving eeriness of it all made Saffron’s skin crawl. The text on the business card shined brighter than before. She dropped the card at her feet and moved on.

She hadn’t even gone five steps before turning around and catching a projectile. It was the same business card. Shopkeeper gave her a pouty face just a couple feet away.

“You wanted to throw away my precious gift?” the merchant asked with contempt. “I thought we had something!”

“No, we don’t.” Saffron said, rubbing her eyes and turning away. “I thought about it, but there’s no good reason to do any business with you again.” She trotted away, but Shopkeeper trailed behind her.

“What’ve I ever done?”

“Pretty sure you took like two pints of blood from me while I slept.”

“It was only one.” she said defensively. “I’m a changed woman.”

“Fat chance.” Saffron said with an eye roll and a dismissive hand gesture. “Go find someone else to scam.”

“But it’s not a scam!”

“I had a man tell that to me about my extended car warranty once.” She stopped and turned around skeptically. “What makes you think I need something anyway?”

“Everyone’s looking to buy something,” Shopkeeper said, smiling brightly. “But only a few have the guts to pay the price.”

“Well, I don’t have the guts to spare. I’ll keep both my kidneys. Now go away, I’ll handle my problems without whatever ‘help’ you can give.”

“You know how to find me.” she echoed. Saffron turned back to see only the empty trees, leaves and appendages waving in the wind.

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“Rise and shine.” Shiso loudly grumbled to the entire camp.

Shiso held Gunner in a struggling headlock for waking him up early. Violette poked her head out of their tent, yawning and stretching to the sky. Reva emerged from her tent, dragging a still-sleeping Selicy by her feet. Terra peaked her head out of the tent and let out a giant yawn before getting yanked backwards by her twintails, courtesy of Hazel, who stumbled out with her face completely obscured by hair; she was blindly reaching around for something to tie it back with.

“Why’d you have to get us up so early?” Selicy moaned.

“Because this gremlin decided to wake me up.” Shiso said, letting Gunner go.

“Boo.” Terra said, throwing a pillow at Shiso’s static face. “Go back to bed.”

“It’s already light out though…” Reva lamented. “No way I can go to bed now.”

“Fine…” Selicy mumbled. “Ruin my morning. See if I care…”

The scene was all pretty uncanny to Saffron. It was almost exactly how she remembered waking up before. The déjà vu was hitting her pretty hard right about now.

While everyone packed up and got ready to leave, Terra braided Hazel’s hair back with multiple small stone clasps to hold her hair back. It made her look a bit like a modern-day cavewoman. Hazel liked it quite a lot.

Saffron counted her spell cards, trying to distract herself. She wondered what it was that she was going to do about what was going to happen. It was all so confusing to her.

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“Was Eden under threat by the Mongols?” Hazel asked, looking up at the giant blue wall obstructing them.

“Maybe they don’t like visitors?” Violette asked.

“Let’s knock on their door then.” Gunner said, readying his giant gun.

“How are we supposed to get over that?” Selicy asked.

“I don’t think we can. It’s so tall.” Reva pointed out. “Maybe we can dig under it?”

“Or maybe we could not use a Loony Toons plan?” Shiso sighed. “Can we just blast a giant hole in it or something?”

“Yeah, Saffron’s got all sorts of spells for that!” Hazel said optimistically. “Doesn’t really look like anyone’s watching.”

“There doesn’t need to be.” Saffron warned. She picked a card from her Field Bracer and used it towards the wall. A wide green arrow-shaped wave sped towards the wall and dissipated on the surface, like it was made of air.

All of the wall’s turrets and cannons popped out from its blue circuit-looking surface. Red dots populated the barren ground as they looked for any target. The only victims of the advanced weaponry were the occasional birds soaring peacefully through the sky, and geckos pattering across the ground.

“If this is the guardian you’ve been talking about, I’m not impressed!” Terra cackled. “I’d attach hundreds more weapons than that!”

“That thing already looks like it could kill anything on sight.” Shiso pointed out. “I don’t think you could put any more guns on one thing.”

“No, no. I think you could.” Hazel said, angling her head around as if she was looking for more places to cram a gun into a wall.

“I’ll make quick work of this overbuilt fence!” Terra announced. “Here, hold this.” she said, tossing her staff to Shiso. Saffron snatched it from midair and threw it back to Terra, who angrily caught it with an outstretched arm.

“I think there’s another way.” Saffron insisted.

“Fine. We’ll try it ‘your way’ this time.” Terra grumbled. “But I’m going nuclear as soon as I see we’re losing.”

“What should we do though?” Violette asked.

“Yeah, didn’t we just talk about how unclimbable and dangerous that thing is?” Selicy pointed out.

“If we take out the weapons, isn’t it just a wall?” Gunner asked from the back of the group. They all wanted to point out how dumb that sounded, but he had a point.

“So all we have to do is break the guns and waltz in!” Reva cheered.

“Is it really that easy?” Saffron asked nervously. “I mean, that’s a lot of guns to break anyway, so…”

“I was made for this!” laughed Terra, rolling up her sleeves. “You know, they called me ‘Breaker’ in college.”

“No way you went to college.” Selicy said. “Your reading is worse than Gunner’s.”

“I did go to college!” the cultist screeched. “I graduated top of my class in Hearth Tech. and got a master’s degree in Destructive Magic!”

“Was your minor in losing brain cells?” Selicy grumbled.

“It was in exotic cooking!” she said proudly. “And I’m going to cook up destruction!” Terra started marching towards the Gate. Gunner busted into laughter, thinking it was a joke.

“I don’t think-” Then he realized that she wasn’t joking. “Hey, stop it!” the boy yelled.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?!” Shiso asked, dashing towards the cult leader.

A turret took aim at Shiso while completely disregarding the presence of Terra. He swiftly rolled out of the way of a laser, and had to dance around the Gate’s defense systems.

“Hey rock magician, why won’t they shoot you?!” yelled Gunner from afar.

“Lower machines know their place.” she responded menacingly.

“I think it’s magic.” Reva whispered, pointing out Terra’s staff glowing purple.

From atop the wall, something jumped down and landed with a large tremor and sending a giant wave of dust cascading. The lasers on the Gate stopped firing when the hulking mass landed, switching off and slumping down like a set of security cameras.

Machinery clicked and whirled as the settling dust revealed a colossal white and black robot. It held a sledgehammer about the length of a couple small cars back-to-back. Its shape was humanoid enough, with the only thing keeping it from a true human shape being the missing head. Nonetheless, it pivoted around as if searching for something. It locked on to Terra and raised its hammer at her. She looked back at the rest.

“Hazel, is this one of your children?” she asked before the automaton made it’s attempt to putt her halfway to Timbuktu. The cult leader soared through the air and was out of their sight before she hit the ground.

“Is she alright?” Violette asked, covering her mouth.

“Nah, she always needs the last laugh.” Gunner said. “She’ll probably be back with a nuke or something.”

“I hope you’re right.” the songstress said.

“KNOW YOUR PLACE, AUTOMATION!” roared Terra in the distance.

“I don’t think she’s the one who needs the prayer.” Reva remarked, seeing Terra charge up a spell.

“Holy Ground!” she shouted, casting a giant wave of magic at the robot.

The ground around it started to shake as cracks and fissures appeared. Reva grabbed Shiso as one appeared under him. The robot stuttered as it sank into the ground, flailing it’s limbs as it dropped it’s hammer and got stuck from the waist-down in a crack.

“Inferior being!” Terra laughed, flying over and kicking the machine’s body.

Yo, can you give me a lift?” Hazel asked Terra. The engineer grabbed the bottom of her white dress as Terra flew overhead, and gently landed next to the wall.

“You’re paying for that taxi service later.” Terra demanded.

“Bill it to Saff.”

Hazel landed next to the Gate and scanned along its smooth surface before yanking at a panel off and peering underneath. It was a mess of interfaces and wires, which not even Hazel would quickly make sense of.

“Hey, Zel, you found what you’re looking for?” Saffron shouted.

“I probably would’ve if I could understand it!” she fussed. The interface said that it apparently ran on ‘Eden Vista’. It was horribly ugly and not very straightforward; Hazel’s worst enemy. She turned to Terra. “Can you just bust the thing down?” she asked. Terra’s eyes looked like she had just walked downstairs on Christmas morning.

By the time Saffron had turned around and noticed Terrable, it was too late. She demolished a hole in the side of the gate, leaving everyone star-struck. Then before they knew it, a divine light shined from inside the city. Saffron knew what it was. Who it was. She knew how it was fated to end.

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Saffron woke up with a jolt in the middle of the night, but was careful to not make a noise. She controlled her breathing and looked at Violette next to her. She was sleeping soundly, her chest heaving up and down in her slumber. Saff slowly crawled out of the tent, careful not to disturb the songstress in her exit. She looked back just in time to see her hugging her pillow.

She shakily exited the little campsite and went deep into some foliage. When she was sure she was far enough, Saffron puked into a bush. That was twice that she had to watch all her friends die in front of her. Twice that she had failed the one thing she set out to do.

“You’ve looked better.” Behind her hunched-over figure, Shopkeeper was picking at her nails while staring condescendingly at Saffron.

“I don’t remember asking.”

“Come on, you know you need to take my hand.” she said, stretching out her hand again. Saffron swatted it away.

“Go find someone else to scam.”

“Yeah, you told me that last time.”

“Huh?” Saffron asked. “You remember last time?”

“You don’t really seem surprised.”

“Is anything supposed to surprise me anymore?” Saffron asked, laughing. “I live in a world where I can use this,” She took out her Explosion spell. “And I can just level a city! It’s a world where angels can guard cities with futuristic walls! A world where I can end the world again if I so wished! So I ask again, is anything supposed to surprise me anymore? And I can’t even make it into one city to save what’s left of the world!”

“Is that a no?”

Saffron stormed off, and Shopkeeper didn’t even bother following. She was angry and frustrated and scared and sad and everything all rolled up into one. By the time she got back to their campsite, she didn’t even see Shiso leaning against the tree. She didn’t know why she felt so much anger, but it was suffocating.

“Where were you, kid?” he asked.

“None of your business.” she snapped. Shiso narrowed his eyes.

“Yeah, no. What’s that about?”

“What’s what about?” she asked, the edge in her voice growing.

“You know what.”

“Leave me alone.” she warned. She walked up right beside him to pass by. She was mere inches away from him.

“Kid, I know this mission’s stressful and all, but you gotta calm down and-”

Quicker than Shiso could react, Saffron reached down and pulled his gun from its holster. She didn’t even think twice about it. She was willing to try anything but what that woman--what those women--wanted her to do. Saff was about to save what remained of the Earth, even if she had to go through what was left to save it. She had lost it.