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Loren again felt like there was more subtext there that he was missing. And Hector wasn’t giving him anything more to work with, either. The man was sticking with the silent treatment.

Caster moved on. “I will be frank,” he said. “I am looking for information. I want to know if you have visited any fertile lands, recently.”

“Fertile lands?”

“You know of what I speak, surely? Land that is particularly... ripe. With memory. With Significance.”

Wow, Loren actually understood what was being talked about now. Partially. This was, supposedly, why he and Caster had been traveling the continent, after all. They were searching for places that Caster could “commune” with, whatever that meant.

And even though the Marauder had not explained much more beyond that, Loren had at least been able to connect a few of those dots on his own. Back before their journey began, when the two of them first met in that club full of Freemen, Caster mentioned wanting to build a “tower.”

At first, Loren had thought that perhaps Caster had just been trying to find the perfect construction site, according to some arcane, unknowable criteria. But over time, after having visited so many different places and witnessed Caster “communing” over a dozen times, he’d instead come to believe that there was more to it than that.

Because surely, they must have visited at least one viable location by now, right? So maybe it wasn’t just about finding the right spot. Maybe Caster actually wanted to find lots and lots of them.

And then, of course, there was this cruise ship. Caster had sheared off some of its body and then disappeared. That hadn’t been the first time Caster had done something like that, either. Loren had seen him shear off many things before, seemingly at random. A building, a truck, a big tree, a giant boulder, and more.

But despite his best efforts, Loren had yet to see any commonality between them all. His only thought was that perhaps Caster had been gathering materials for the construction of his tower, even if that didn’t make much logical sense to him.

Maybe logic simply didn’t factor into it, though.

Agh.

“...What do you intend to do with such land?” said Hector.

Holy shit, he just came right out and asked immediately. Loren had obviously tried that before, and it hadn’t worked out, but maybe this strange fellow would have better luck? Loren was trying not to look too eager as he listened closely to his boss’ next words.