Scene 5: Saloon
Ethan’s earlier optimism evaporated like ice at high noon in Death Valley. He had no idea what information could possibly have been passed the dragon posing at a house cat with a few simple ‘meows’ but whatever he had said to the woman cyber-knight clearly had an immediate and dire impact. Kalista’s passing of judgement and pronouncing death as the sentence was completely unexpected. The indifference or even active collusion of the gunslinger known as ‘Doc’ also didn’t help matters in Ethan’s opinion.
“Whoa let’s take a step back and think about this for a moment,” Ethan says, holding up both of his hands and makes ‘calm down’ motions. “Now she just said that this tree is giving more people powers like hers and if it was easy to find, the Coalition or the Fairies would have done it by now.” Ethan, not understanding Elvish, has no idea that Grace had more or less said just that.
“So instead of killing her, how about we have her take us to this tree?” He takes a few cautious steps forward, placing himself between Grace and Kalista. “How about it Grace?” he says to the young woman. “You take us to this tree, this Mahogany and we will have a talk with it. No one needs to die here today. If you can do that for us, then maybe I can convince my companions to let you walk away afterwards. If you are worried about betraying the tree, it sounds pretty powerful.” “And there is something else I never thought I would say, commenting about how powerful a fracking tree is,” he thought to himself. “If it can give you and others all that power, it shouldn’t have anything to worry about meeting us. So, what do you say?”