When they made it inside the small building, everyone needed some rest before they would discuss their next steps. Jotem pulled water from the well and offered them all patties made of Ara Fruitmeal. Everyone but Randidly declined, and Randidly wished he had as soon as he had taken a bite. The nuts had a very pungent taste, something almost like citrus, that refused to leave his mouth even after washing it out thoroughly with water.

On a more positive note, Jotem’s farmhouse was relatively spacious. He took his own bedroom, laid Armel upon the kitchen table, led Demetrius and Bogart to his study, and finally brought Randidly around to what he called his ‘spare bedroom’ but was definitely a dusty and empty storeroom with a small pallet. Still, it was enough for everyone to have their own rooms.

Everyone separated to consider their own troubles. Finally alone, Randidly meditated. He allowed his mind to go black, for the churning awarenesses to go slack.

Gradually the shaking of the memory stopped. His Nether Core continued to rev in fixed intervals, giving him access to marginally more of his energies. He hummed tunelessly, inspecting his inner situation. He retreated into his mental area and physically hacked his way through more Grey Creature clones that had been steadily building up over the past few days.

Compared to fighting one of the cores of emotion, his efforts rewarded him with very little emotional potency. But it did prevent a new core from forming, like the self-pity one had. At the moment, he didn’t feel prepared to face one of the true sources of emotional chaos in his body. So he came out of the meditation and stretched.

It’s strange to think, but I do need to be aware of my presence here possibly affecting the memory. Especially saving these individuals. Obviously they seem relatively unimportant on the grand scale, but it would probably be best if I can keep them here, on the farm, to not affect the memory in unexpected ways…

He went to Jotem’s bedroom and knocked. After getting permission, Randidly entered the room and found Jotem rather frantically looking through stacks of paper. Seeing Randidly, he gave an exaggerated sigh and collapsed on a nearby love seat. “Tragically, this decision to come to the farm has led us to a new kind of slow death. Obviously, I never put much stock in this place, perhaps even acknowledged it failed as an investment, but… I must confess to you, if we remain here, we are doomed.”

“Why?” Randidly asked.

“The well of lucre has run dry. At this rate… hahh. We will be naught but paupers.” Jotem shook his body in a form deflated of air and good cheer, causing his skin to flap around him in a mournful way. “The particulars of which are, I assume, of little interest in a man of your station and regal bearing. Yet the yoke of the common man is ever-present-”

“Actually, I’d like to hear a little about the farm,” Randidly said. Personally, he couldn’t decide if Jotem was just a fool for trying to set up a farm in a location with such inclement weather or there was no arable land not stricken by a near-constant hurricane.

“Well, I suppose if you are curious, we have no option but to grant you satisfaction,” Jotem sighed, but not in an antagonistic way. He gestured. “Come. See my plight.”

As they left the small cabin, they passed the room of the Nether individuals. Randidly gave the door a single glance; within, he could tell they were engaging in some recovery Nether Ritual. Considering the size and delicate care with which it was made, it could have only been made by the Nether Herald. Randidly’s estimation of the frail old man rose by another few pegs.

Before they even crossed the threshold into the outside world, Randidly had begun moving small pinches of Nether to corral the energy. By the time they stepped outside, the rain and wind had lessened considerably around them. Jotem looked up and sniffed. “Huh, perhaps my fortunes are not so universally poisonous, after all. This way, Nether King.”

They crossed out between the two mounds of stone that provided shelter for the house. Behind the construction were a series of smaller mounds, these covered with a strange vine. The lumps stretched back behind the compounds for quite a distance. It looked like a maze of vine-covered bulges, stretching out in the surrounding kilometer.

“We grow two marketable products in this sad corner of the farming world,” Jotem said. As before, he took the rapidly improving environmental conditions in stride, while around him the fines clinging to the mounds shook wildly. “First, the Ara fruit, which you ate a bit of earlier. At the time, it was a sound investment: Hobfootie was exploding in popularity, and obviously, Arakis Beasts crave nothing more than the Ara Fruit-”

“Wait.” Randidly held up a hand. “This fruit… is primarily used for feed? For a beast involved in Hobfootie?”

What the hell sort of rules does this game have?!? And no wonder no one else wanted to try the food.

“Yes. And I believed I had revolutionized the industry. Usually, The Ara fruit creeps along the ground. Its fruit is covered with a hard exterior, the wind needs to seize the fruit just right and smash it upon the packed dirt, revealing the valuable treasure within. But examine, Nether King. See, I have grown them vertically, along these mounds I painstakingly created myself. Yet only one of two unsatisfactory fates await my carefully chosen fruit.”

Jotem floated forward, again not noticing as Randidly spread the controlled environment to cover the fruit and the rustling stopped immediately. He reached within the leafy vines and pulled some of the leaves back, revealing a purple pumpkin screened by the foliage. “About half of the fruits grow fat, hidden in the lee side of the mounds. The other half- because of the swift, concentrated wind between the pillars, rather than in an open area-”

Randidly suddenly noticed the stains along the ground, forming a purple path that wound between the mounds. “The fruit gets smashed and then smeared everywhere.”

“Exactly. Your insight is immense… or perhaps my curse is simply too onerous to avoid recognizing.” Jotem sighed.

I mean, it sounds like you tried a random method with only a shallow understanding of how to farm… and without doing much research about the crop. Randidly kept those thoughts to himself. Instead, he asked the other question that had been bothering him.

“What about installing an Engraving to modulate the environment around the farm? That would alleviate some of the issues, wouldn’t it?”

“Tragically impossible. First, it’s illegal, by order of the mighty council of Malloon.” Jotem said sourly. He must of noticed Randidly’s expression of disbelief because he continued to explain. “Indeed, the enforcement of such a baffling rule is beyond the reach of that feebleminded and soft-spined group. Only made more embarrassing and tepid by the addition of Drane Swacc. Yet the sludge-fingered pilferers don’t need to offend us by making an issue of it; the environment is on their side.”

Jotem pointed up. “In the chaotic dance above, even in this brief interlude of peace, much of the Engraving exhaust fills the sky around Malloon. They cannot stop you from creating an Engraving, but like calls to like. If you have an Engraving, the pollution they constantly belch will congregate around it. Your crops will be wan and yellowed, poisoned by the Council’s fetid breath. And once the pollution begins gathering, the sky itself seems to notice you. The storms worsen. Many contemporaries were thus ruined. Some of my fellows… haaah. It is too tragic to speak of it…”

Randidly had a weird mental picture, which he sensed was almost entirely true. A charismatic and enthusiastic young man, going door to door, selling all these established and rather foolhardy merchants of Malloon in the wonders of investing in Ara fruit farms, considering the rise in popularity of this befuddling game Hobfootie. Hell, it might have even been Drane Swacc himself. He sold them expensive seeds, supplies, and promises of a quick return on investment and then vanished with their money.

Isolated and completely out of their depth, these merchants failed one by one, too proud to complain to anyone but each other.

“Yet even the possibility of an Engraving is perhaps also surmountable. Yet there is one more block to keep such a plan from even being born.” Jotem paused for dramatic effect. “Money. How can a failing farm afford to reinvest into an expansion? It is just bad economics.”

Randidly briefly considered spending his time in Malloon opening the first-ever investment bank but decided it would probably be a waste of time. Better to return to his roots and see if he could make some DIY-improvements to the farming operation.

He nodded, ready to move on for now. “And the second crop?”

His body undulating behind him, Jotem floated back through the few mounds with Ara fruit and to the front area of the house. He gestured broadly to the messily cluttered front yard. “Carrots. Perhaps you haven’t heard of it, but this root vegetable is extremely hardy-”

“I have seen carrots before,” Randidly’s lips twitched. He gestured to the garden, which was sparsely populated with the distinctive top of the carrot stalk. “Why did you plant so few carrots? And it looks like there are a lot of weeds you’ve let grow in the same area…”

“I have seen plants grow large with more space; in my wisdom, I only planted a few carrots and let them joust against the riffraff of the plant kingdom to grow strong. On the triumphant corpses of lesser veggies, my carrots would have risen… if not for the poor soil, I have no doubt that I-”

Jotem continued to talk about his strategies, but Randidly’s mind had already moved on. He looked up into the wind-wrenched air above the farm, thick with dirt and other debris. Rubbings his chin, he began making plans on how to revitalize the farm.

The plan will be to make this area profitable. Spending time here will allow my Nether Core to rev further, pushing my abilities back up to acceptable levels. Also, these saved individuals won’t interfere too much in the development of the timeline. Especially since Elhume will apparently soon come to Malloon for a trial… In the meantime, I can learn more about the Second Cohort and refine my emotional affect.

Antagonizing Drane Swacc will be an inevitability; when he hears that Jotem’s farm is recovering, he will investigate. He will discover us here, Jotem still alive. Randidly grinned up at the sky. …and I don’t doubt he will be apoplectic. But with all those important events coming up for Malloon… the Hobfootie Tournament, the Trial of Elhume… I doubt he will have much time to come up with a thorough plan to handle the issue.

Randidly turned slightly, so his gaze pierced directly through the storms to Malloon. “And believe me, I’m not someone you want to leave at liberty to fuck you.”

“Excuse me?!?” Jotem coughed and collapsed onto the ground, the violence of Randidly’s words making him lose control of the nearby gravitational waves.