Young Writers Society

"This bunker must have been left alone for awhile," Ryder guessed, joining the others in peering through the glass. He should have acted at least a little fazed by Briar's assertion, but he was too focused on the plants inside. If he remembered right, he had some of the fertilizer they used in the base in his pocket - just a little bone meal in case he ever needed something to grow.

"We need more food," he commented. He pointed at the glass. "There's food in there. It's dead now, but I think I know a way of getting it."

Lasan took a step back, scratching his head. "I'm not sure there's anything alive, mold or otherwise," he said. "Which is a little weird, because it looks like there's plenty of light and water. Shouldn't the plants have soaked in all the water before they died off?"

"And how do we get that food?" the leopard said, looking over at Ryder. Someone clearly had one or two tricks up his sleeve. "Lasan knows some healing magic, but it's not like he can raise things from the dead. Can you?"

"I can't," he confirmed. "But dead plants might have seeds, and I have something that can help those seeds grow quickly."

Briar turned her attention away from the plants and back to the group as a whole. She thought for a moment.

They had quite a bit of food as it was, but Gluttony had an appetite to be reckoned with. There was no telling when they’d run out.

“If you have something like that, and it works in this world, then it would be wise to use it. Though checking if the soil is infected with something dangerous may be necessary. As was pointed out, there is no obvious cause of death for the plants or the scientists. For all we know they were poisoned by their own crop.”

Pulling his sword out from its scabbard, Nubes nodded. "If that were the case, I feel like we would've found bodies by now," the leopard said, taking a step closer to the window. "But it's worth checking. Poisons were never my specialty, but I could probably identify a few."

"I agree," Ryder said. Though, like most in the base, he knew how to use bone meal, he had no idea if poisoned soil would be cured by it - he just knew that it would help the plants sprout and grow in an incredibly short amount of time.

"I'm practiced in biochemistry, and poisons are my specialty. If we can find a lab, I could get the basic tests done in an hour. If you have a faster way, though, please use it."

She looked back at the plants. The only reasons she could think of for why they should be dead involved a very unfortunate accident or deliberate sabotage. But maybe she was too suspicious to see it as anything else.

A couple deep breaths later, Nubes swung his sword at the glass. The glass fractured against the blade, which made a jagged line through the middle of the pane. With the next swing, shards of glass rained down from a few small holes.

Before Nubes could try a third swing, Lasan raised a foot and kicked at the pane. It shattered inwards, spilling glass over the plants and mud.

"Be careful," Lasan said as he stepped back from the large hole he'd created in the glass pane, gesturing for the others to head over to the plants.

Nubes glanced down at Lasan's foot. Sure enough, there was a bunch of cuts over one of his sandals. And those cuts were now miraculously patching themselves up. The leopard quietly snorted - he'd suspected Mal was hiding in Lasan's coat, hard as it had been to pick up the scent of lion past the metal walls.

"Thanks," Ryder said, carefully slipping inside through the hole.

He took a deep breath.

He didn't feel anything odd, so that had to be a good sign. His biology wasn't exactly the same as the others, but he should have felt something if there was anything wrong with the air.

He let his gaze travel around the room.

Then he picked out the remains of the first plant he wanted to grow. Most of it was wilted, but he was still able to find some seeds among the remains. Pocketing the seeds, he began the tedious task of clearing away the old plant to make room for the new.

He dug some holes with his hand - using darkness to aid him when his hand was deep enough in the dirt that no one could see it - and put the seeds in.

Then he sprinkled the bone meal on them.

A second later, they grew.

Their growth wasn't slow - it sprouted up incredibly fast. It wasn't long before there were several perfectly healthy plants sitting before him; it had only taken a minute.

Briar blinked. It didn't matter how much impossible she saw, she could still get caught off guard.

She adjusted her world view and moved on. They didn't have time for confusion.

"That's incredible!" Lasan said, clapping as he saw tall, healthy plants sprouting out of the ground. "What did you do? I haven't seen magic quite like that before!"

If it wasn't for the faint chill that settled in the air, Nubes would've said something similar. Instead, he watched as the plants started to wilt. Leaves fell, stems turned brown and crooked, the fruit splatted onto the ground. Almost as quickly as Ryder had grown the plants, they were dead.

"Erm, I assume that wasn't on purpose?" Nubes said, voice a little faint as he stared down at the dead plants.

"I used bone meal," Ryder managed to get out, gaze traveling around the room. He had felt the chill right before the plants died - that wasn't because the soil was poisoned before he tried growing them.

It was something else.

"That wasn't on purpose," he said. "It only grows plants. It's a magical, fast fertilizer. It stops growing them once they reach maturity."

He glanced back at them.

"Something else caused that," he said.

Briar looked around. Her usual course of action would be to find hints in her environment as to what had caused the plants to die. She believed Ryder, that wasn't natural, but whatever it was appeared to be something she couldn't help with. She was unprepared.

She took a shaky breath.

"Is there anything from either of your worlds that would have that effect?" she asked.

Lasan and Nubes shook their heads.

"I don't know anything that can do that," the leopard said, looking around. He couldn't catch sight of anything suspicious, but, if he had to guess, something was nearby. Maybe whatever Lasan had seen.

The lizard clearly thought as much; he'd started shaking, and the lion who was definitely not hiding in his coat was now mumbling what Nubes assumed were curses.

Ryder held out his knife.

Magic was threatening to burst from the tips of his fingers. He wasn't weak, and wasn't mortal - far from it. But the feeling combined with the sight gave him a bad feeling, and all he could think was that Notch had something to do with this entire situation.

Had he said too much? Had he accidentally given too much away?

...If it was Notch, did he know who he had really caught, or did he just think he had caught the leader of the resistance who always seemed to be a step ahead of him?