Chase tilted his head down to look at the redheaded elf. With the sun out, it really highlighted just how much shorter than him she was. Sure, he was tall, even his mom had been five ten and she was the shortest in his family, but the top of Sikadi’s head barely came to the top of his sternum.
He looked past her to see four more of the dokkalfar. There was a jittery looking male in the back that was focusing his attention on the cabin walls and was wearing what looked like leather coveralls with a yellow-white hat that made Chase think of construction hardhats. One was wearing an outfit that he could only describe as a mix of robe and duster with a waist that made her gender obvious. The remaining two, Chase easily pegged them as soldiers, even without the armor plating that he’d bet money on being made from bone on their bodysuits and swords at their hips.
“Why are you here?” Chase asked, his voice and tone blunt and more than a little harsh.
He’d been about to have his first meal that wasn’t jerky or unseasoned meat cooked in coals for nearly two months, thanks to Ricardo having a Network provided magic bag full of foodstuffs he’d salvaged from the emptied and abandoned Port au Prince. So he was understandably a wee bit annoyed at the interruption.
Sikadi shook herself, straightened her back, and said, “My Lord, we have finished preliminary surveys and scouting missions to determine a suitable location for the outpost, and have come to present our findings.”
Chase blinked as she introduced the four with her (the jittery one was Haka, the woman Tahlia, and the other two were Captains Uthrik and Katsu), more than a little surprised. It had been less than three days, and admitedly, he’d been trying to avoid thinking about how he was now, through no desire of his own, technically a slave owner. Still, he’d assumed it would take at least a week, they worked fast.
“Fine. But I’m not having this conversation on an empty stomach. My breakfast is almost ready, and I can easily make more. The porch’d be crowded, and I can clear off the table, come inside,” he said, part of his mind noticing the way all five sets of eyes widened in what he thought was surprise.
He filed that observation away, for the moment he was too hungry to care.
After the others came in and were seated around the old table, Chase placed a stack of plates and a couple forks on the table before moving to the pan that had a few strips of bacon sizzling away on it. Sure, there'd been the occasional monster boar that had wandered through the last two months, but there hadn't been nearly a decent amount of fat with them, so even the belly meat had been crazy tough. In another skillet he had some eggs cooking alongside a few pieces of bread toasting in butter. God, how he’d missed butter.
What had originally been his breakfast was done, so he grabbed a plate and put the hearty meal on it before starting making more. Setting it on the table, he said, “I’ll have more ready soon enough, for now, feel free to pick from that plate. You guys don’t have any problem with digesting human food, do you?”
“From what we’ve observed, your people consume a significantly higher amount of meat than we do,” the one in a mix of robe and dust said slowly, her voice sounding a bit dazed. Come to think of it, all five of them were staring at the eggs and bacon in what Chase was pretty sure was shock.
“We do not have difficulties consuming it,” Sikadi said, hesitantly reaching out and picking up a piece of bacon. “But the majority of dokkalfar cannot afford it.”
…the more he heard the more Chase wondered if they were necromancy focused dark elves or necromancy fueled dystopia elves. Either way, he shrugged it off as Ricardo entered from the side door, a green glow fading from his hands. Chase raised an eyebrow and gave his hands a significant look.
“Minor Arcana spell,” he said, “one of the first spells I learned, and by far the most flexible. Works better than water and soap for washing my hands.”
If Chase could use magic, he’d ask Ricardo to teach him that. Instead, he turned back to the dokkalfar as Sikadi finally took a hesitant bite of the bacon. Then nearly burst into laughter at the wide-eyed expression of pure bliss that crossed Sikadi's face as she chewed. The other dokkalfar stared at her in disbelief, their own hands slowly reaching for pieces of the bacon.
“This…this is incredible,” Sikadi murmured, quickly finishing off the strip and reaching for another. “I’ve never tasted anything like it.”
The others followed suit, their initial hesitation vanishing as they devoured the bacon with gusto. Even the jittery male in the back seemed to relax slightly as he savored the smoky flavor.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Chase shared an amused glance with Ricardo before turning back to the stove to finish preparing more food. As he cracked eggs into the skillet, he couldn't help but feel a wave of amusement. These elves acted like they'd never had a proper breakfast before. It wasn’t like he’d even seasoned the eggs, but those were being consumed just as readily as the bacon. About the only thing they weren’t going crazy over was the toast. Ricardo took a seat at the table, helping himself to a portion of the food.
“So, what brings our esteemed guests here today?” he asked between bites.
Sikadi, seeming to remember herself, straightened in her chair, “As I mentioned, My Lord, we have completed the preliminary surveys for the outpost location. We believe that we have found a suitable site, approximately t͠ẁo̡ ̀m͜i͡l͡e̵s̴ from here.”
Chase’s head snapped over to look at her, his eyes narrowing as Sikadi’s voice turned slightly staticky when she said the distance. His voice hard, he snapped, “Your voice was different when you said two miles, why?”
Sikadi and the other dokkalfar looked surprised, but it was Ricardo who answered, loudly swallowing down a half chewed mouthful of food and coughing to get everyone’s attention, “It’s ‘cause it’s the Network’s still working out the conversions between their measurement system and imperial. The Network, from what I’ve managed to piece together, wants different peoples to interact with each other, so it can study how mortals behave. It prefers violent interactions, but it still wants to study non-violent interactions, so it provides translations. But even for it, some things take time.”
“How’d you figure that out?” Uthrik asked skeptically.
“A few of the ruins that were in the Tutorial had old writings that were from people studying the Network, I lost track of time and spent a few weeks down there,” Ricardo said with a shrug.
Given everything that he’d seen and what Ricardo had said about himself, Chase was not at all surprised. The earlier explanation also made some sense, if the Haitian was right: as far as Chase knew pretty much only the United States had stubbornly stuck with the Imperial System, while the rest of the world had long converted to the Metric System so the Network had a lot less exposure to miles, feet, inches and the like.
Still, as he sat down with a plate of food for himself, he began assembling it into a sandwich and said, “Anyway, you found a place, let’s hear the details about it.”
Sikadi nodded, reaching down to her waist and pulling a cream colored slate that was nearly as tall as herself from a pocket that looked like it shouldn’t even fit Chase’s old wallet. On the slate (that he had a hunch was some kind of bone) was a surprisingly detailed map of the extended region, though it was covered in lines that didn’t match anything Chase remembered.
“We’ve repurposed a number of draug for scouting and survey work, and found a hill approximately two̡ ̀m͜i͡l͡e̵s from here,” Sikadi began, drawing what looked like a mix of bone wand and a pointer from a business presentation from her pocket. She pointed at a section of the map where about seven or eight of the unfamiliar lines intersected, forming something like an extended asterix. “In addition to the abundance of natural resources of the region, from timber to extremely rich and fertile soil, the region’s above average levels of ambient æther and the sheer number of ley veins will allow the outpost to host wards of vastly superior strength than the norm for its size.”
Her presentation continued for a few minutes, extolling the virtues of the location and the region as a whole. Chase, for his part, tried to pay attention, but he was thrown off by two key things. For one, he wasn’t sure what she was referring to by ambient æther, he initially assumed it was something related to the Network, but if it was, how’d they have such a thorough familiarity with it? It seemed like it formed a cornerstone of their thought process in regards to construction, so they had to have known about it before hand.
The other thing that threw him off was the constant extolling of the region’s resources and especially its rainfall. He realized that he’d killed their old leader and was thus was their boss now, but the hyping of a region that was called the high desert for a reason was getting old.
“Do you have any questions, My Lord?” Sikadi asked, coming to a pausing point.
“For starters,” he began. “I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume that you were unaware due to the storm when you arrived, but this region doesn’t have abundant rainfall. It’s actually a highland semidesert.”
All the dokkalfar stared in surprise, and Katsu hesitantly said, “Sire, by your consideration, what makes a desert a desert?”
“A region that receives less than ten inches of precipitation a year. This region averages less than fifteen a year,” Chase answered. The biggest city in the high desert region before the arrival of the Network, Bend, averaged less than twelve.
Uthrik chuckled, “No wonder you don’t think it had abundant rain, most of Svarheim received half the amount to count as a desert.”
Chase blinked, and started to have a suspicion about how their society developed. Barely any rain, poor resources, a cuthroat and brutal society arising would make sense. But while that cleared up one thing that had been bugging him, he still had another question.
“You keep mentioning æther, what is it?”
If Chase had thought the bacon and his statement about rainfall had shocked them, he hadn’t seen anything yet as all five looked like a stiff breeze would knock them over. Haka even fell out of his chair.