Lucas's eyes darted about trying to catch a glimpse of them, he scrambled up the mudded path, feet slipping, clothes ripped and tears streaming down his bloodied face. They'd all been left stupefied as the Brotherhood brought down Paradise Falls, he and his friends had all watched it happen, watched as the metal-men left. But they'd never seen the trees coming. Now his friends were all dead. A branch caught his foot and he tripped.

The world spun as Lucas rolled down the embankment, stone and earth battered him until he came to a sudden stop. Then nothing, he stared up at the sky and realised with relief how sweet living truly was, even in a nuclear wasteland. 'Lucky Lucas' they'd called him, he'd left to meet a caravan shortly before megaton erupted, hidden from super-mutants and now he'd run from the ghosts. He pushed himself up to his feet and began brushing himself off, thinking how this would be quite a tale to tell-

A sharp sudden tightness was in his chest and Lucas stumbled backwards. He grasped feebly at the arrow now protruding out from him and screamed noiselessly. Then Lucky Lucas fell, for the last time. 

- 

Linden lowered his bow. [That's the last of them.] He signalled to the others and the four of them slunk back to survey the ruins of Paradise Falls. The Brotherhood Outcasts were as efficient as he remembered from his time among them, the once thriving slave-market was now desolate and devoid of life. God was dead and now paradise had fallen. This had been foreseen, that was how he'd known to be here, but what he didn't know was why? The Outcasts had no love for slavers, but they were not direct enemies either and unless they'd stumbled across some technology, what warranted this assault? 

“It is as the Bloomseer said.” Branchtender Maple spoke coming up to the left of Linden, a light rain had began to pepper the hooded figures. “War is coming to the wasteland.” Linden frowned but nodded. He'd renounced violence once, they all had. But then the Wanderer came and burnt their god to ash. Peace had been replaced with rage in the Oasis. Pacifism did not survive the wasteland and he now had to protect against plasma and power-armour and vastly superior number with sticks and stones. 

“Gather the bodies of the slavers and the witnesses.” Linden spoke softly but with an edge. “Riddle the dead with arrows and pile them in the centre in the form of a tree. We must make it so the Wasteland believes [i]we[/i] did this, their's will be a sacrifice to the Oasis.” 

- 

Every night she saw him burn. Felt his death, his pain, crying out to her. Even a dead god it seemed could dream. An ever present reminder of her failure had made her resolute, more so than she'd thought possible in her old age. Their spiritual guides had failed them, the Treeminders answered to her now. She had grown and guided the Oasis. And she would make things right.

But now as she looked upon the ashen husk of Harold it was not him that she thought of. She had awoken last night to a vision, she'd had such since she was girl; one had lead her to this very Oasis. Men in suits of armour awakened an ancient sleeper. She ran an old hand softly over Harold's gnarled cheek. They needed the sleeper, he was the key. And she seen the lock also, though didn't know it's meaning: Vault 108.