Unreachable

~Chapter Ten~

Grian’s POV
Present Time
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It was a significantly shorter time to get Doc, Wels, and Scar all settled than it did with Grian and his crew. No playing cards or torrential rainstorms needed! However, while getting those three to town was easy (it mostly just involved dropping them off with the very-eager Iskall to give a tour), the problem was entirely isolated to the fourth person that arrived with them.

"What! Did! You! Do?!" was Cultie's distressed roar. The volume drew in Pearl, Gem, Joe, and Keralis, who had previously all been chatting about the worlds and all that nonsense. "You just left?! How did you leave? Why? It was nigh imPOSSIBLE to find you again!" He was pacing at incredible speeds, back and forth, back and forth.

Grian hadn't ever really seen Cultie upset before. He was usually calm, if a bit anxious. This was new. And interesting. And a little scary. Still, he grinned and shrugged. "Yeah, I have zero idea how I did that," he admitted freely. This was correct. "I've just learned to accept whatever weird things happen nowadays." This was also correct.

Apparently these blatant facts did not appease Cultie, as he proceeded to pull his hood further over his face and heave a heavy, scratchy sigh of indignance. "For Nether's sake, are you just trying to make things more difficult? You can never just let me do my stuff can you?"

Grian cocked his head. "Never?" That was a bit of an overstatement. "That's not fair, I've been plenty complacent since you dropped into my home and turned my life upside-down! I've been trying to help you, and you're calling me difficult!"

"Oh-" Cultie perked up suddenly, letting go of his hood and taking a step back. "That's not what I- Sorry, I got a bit overwhelmed." He spoke hastily, like a child trying to explain how that lamp got broken (it wasn’t them). There was a chorus of communicator dings. "I had to comb through like three hundred worlds before I found one that even had a trace of you in it. And then it just ended up being one of the ones we were already in and- what are you doing?"

Grian was staring intently at his communicator, as were the four others.

<iskall85> everyone get to my lab
<GoodTimesWithScar> I'm doing magic!
<GoodTimesWithScar> I think

"What are you reading?" Cultie asked. Instead of just looking at his own wrist, he slid behind Grian and peered over his shoulder to stare at his.

"Magic?" All five of them questioned in unison. It was quite impressive, actually. All of the chatter directly after was decidedly not in unison, but the first word was. Grian just frowned slightly. Magic...That was an odd thing to proclaim. Everyone knew about admin magic. Why did he seem so excited about it?

His gaze panned over to where Gem and Pearl were huddled, muttering in hushed voices off to the side. Brushing the frozen Cultie off to the side, he scampered over to the two of them. "Hey, you guys have any idea what the big deal is? We all do magic, right?"

Pearl shook her head. "Sure, but that's just coding and commands," she mused. "It's not really magic. Just Watcher magic---or the weaker admin magic in your cases."

"Ha, 'just coding', you're not giving yourself enough credit, Pearl!" Gem said, giving Pearl a light smack on the shoulder. But, her face solidified slightly as she turned to Grian. "But she's right, we don't have the faintest idea what...ehm-" She looked back at her communicator.

"Scar?"

"Yes, Scar. We have no idea what he's on about." A beat. "Can we go check it out?"

Grian turned back around. "Well, I guess we should ask the others but-" Everyone else was already descending down the spiral staircase to the lab's floor. That settled it, then, he supposed. "Nevermind, let's go!"