Solitaire POV: Day 50

Current Wealth: 1 silver 47 copper

I’d asked for the town’s clever-clogs, and apparently the woman I’d been given was their pick. She was about as dull as might be expected of a slightly below-average human whose brain had been further shrivelled by malnutrition, but she was quick enough compared to most of the savage morons in this world, so I supposed she’d do.

Margaret, her name was. Prettier than she was smart, and at the very least cognisant enough to seem interested in what she was helping me do. I explained as I worked. Mostly for good reasons, but partly because I found it incredibly arousing to induce a look of awe on her face with every revelation.

She asked about how I was mixing things, and I explained the basic concepts of reactivity and how it could be accelerated with heat and pressure. She asked how I was turning shit into something useful, and I explained the concept of elemental composition and distillation. She asked how I knew what effect I’d get by mixing different things, and I tried to explain the concept of atomic nuclei, electron shells and what both things could let you predict about two substances’ interaction.

It was around that point that I saw she was completely lost, but the poor thing did her best to keep up. It was if nothing else nice to have the background noise while I worked, abating my monotony, and distracting my senses.

I’d been making good, steady progress over the course of the day. Carving away hours of daylight and spending them frugally on the processing still required for my chemistry. Already I’d managed to make my final blend, and filter it out. All that was left to me now was letting the soaked powder dry out under the sun.

Lucky, all things considered, that I’d had a few extra hours to spare. It would’ve taken a lot longer to dehydrate under moonlight. Then again, I’d have been mauled to death by zombies before I could actually use it for anything in that scenario regardless.

Xangô saved me wondering what to do for the next few hours by showing up himself. I wasn’t entirely surprised, being honest, the village wasn’t big enough that I’d actually expected him to take that long in cataloguing our assets. I hurried over to meet him, wanting to make use of every extra second we could before the horde of bastards showed up.

“What are we working with?” I asked, having neither the time nor patience for niceties. Xangô replied in much the same way, and it unnerved me somehow. Speaking with a friend like that- being spoken to likewise- it let our situation sink in deeper than I’d noticed earlier.

I buried the observation, this was no time to wallow in it.

Xangô was as efficient as ever, and answered quickly, clearly.

“We have lamp oil.” He explained. “Quite a lot. Farming tools, some construction hammers and such, loose timber, cobbles, more mortar that could be made and reset if needed-”

He went on, and I listened, nodded, and internalised. This was why the two of us had always been such a strong pair. Xangô was the best researcher I knew, capable of powering through textbooks without even being touched by boredom. I’d never had the attention span for that, but I could listen to his summaries and recall practically everything on a single repetition if I needed to.

In this case, it took about thirty minutes for me to become an expert on Rinchester defence. I paid attention of course, even while he flitted over the list at a hundred miles per hour.

“For fortifications we have the mayor’s old building, which is already being used. There’s also the bell tower for another stone building, might be worth splitting some people into there-”

“-Bell tower?” I asked, instantly. He hesitated, eying me cautiously, nodding.

I grinned.

“With a bell still in it?” I pressed. Again, Xangô nodded.

“How big?” I demanded. “How heavy? Can we get it down, or is it down already?”

Stolen novel; please report.

Clearly he was still confused, but he was clever enough not to waste time with pointless questions.

“It’s about half a tonne and maybe a foot or two wide at its mouth, it’s already down.”

“Take me to it.” I demanded, then glanced at Argar, eying his muscles. “And get me some more idiots and a smith.”

Our walk was brief, and Xangô ended up pulling ahead of the others to fall in step beside me. He had that way about him, the manner of holding his arms, the slight tightness to his jaw. He smelled of hesitance and uncertainty.

I wasn’t surprised when he started speaking in that hushed tone he always used for subterfuge.

“What do you think of our being here?” He asked. I glared at him, and Xangô sighed.

“Okay, yes, fine, maybe you were right. But aside from being a smug cunt about it, what do you think of our chances? What…Have you been preparing, Solitaire?”

I was on the verge of answering, but then paused. He was barely even paying attention to me as I spoke. Why?

Because he wasn’t asking what he’d wanted to, the pussy had stopped himself and swapped in another question at the last second. I didn’t have time for that, my tolerance for such things had died sometime around my third huff of urea.

“What’s really eating away at you?” I asked, too tired for any of his distractions. Xangô sighed. Clearly he’d not been expecting to fool me anyway.

“Is this really worth it?” He asks. “Even if we win? We have better odds than the villagers here, but…But…”

“But you’re worried we’re condemning them all to death by giving them false hope and convincing them to fight.”

He didn’t meet my eye, and I sighed.

I could try lying to him, could manipulate him, but even I had my lines, and those were ones I wasn’t willing to cross. Not to a friend, at least. Instead I shrugged.

“We’re holding the fate of the world in our hands, aren’t we?” I asked. “And…We were holding it long before now. All of this is our fault. We made this world regressive and mediaeval, we filled it with trolls and rotters. We didn’t know we were, but…Still…”

It was irrational, petty, stupid. And yet I couldn’t quite keep the knowledge from gnawing away at me. All of these people were suffering because I’d decided to write a book.

“We can’t be blamed for that.” Xangô began, and I spoke over him.

“Maybe you’re just too bad at blaming things.”

He was right, of course. Whenever I wasn’t, odds were he would be. And I knew I was lying to myself even as I kept doing it. But that didn’t change the things I’d seen here, nothing would.

Intent is an irrelevance next to action, action is no more inherently unforgivable than inaction. Dead people don’t care if they were killed by a giggling villain or some dumbass writer in his teens, dead is dead. And I’d made plenty of dead’uns in this world. A million, perhaps, for each one I’d already personally seen.

Xangô stared at me the way he often did when I said something completely reasonable.

“Out with it.” I sighed, never having been one to enjoy getting eyed like some lunatic in an asylum.

“I don’t think it’s on us to fix the world just because we unknowingly created it.” He said, quietly. Not meeting my eye. I shrugged again.

“Then how about because we have the potential to?”

That moved him, and he swore long, harsh and loud before finally speaking again.

“So we’re saving the world?”

“We’re saving the world.” I concurred.

What I didn’t tell him, though, what I could never tell him, was exactly how I realised would be best to go about it. Because there was a particular species responsible for ruining this one, and if it remained in control it would just keep on ruining away.

We walked a while longer, letting that settle. It occurred to me that we’d not actually discussed means before, and still hadn’t. Did Xangô know what I did? It would be more like him to not address something he’d figured out than not figure it out in the first place.

“The mercenaries are our first step, then.” He said after a while, and I nodded. It seemed only logical.

“So we need funds for that.” Xangô sighed. “Which we can only get in a large quantity here, for the time being.”

I didn’t say anything, because there was no need to. I recognised the sight of someone talking themselves into a position, all Xangô needed to make his decision here was silence. So I provided it.

“Fuck it, you’re right.” My friend - my brother- conceded after a while. There was a new fatigue to him that I didn’t like, his exhaustion and guilt weighing on me, so I did what I always did. Cracked a joke to try and take his mind off it.

“It’s amazing the time we’d save if you just started every conversation like that.” I grinned. Then my smile fell as I caught sight of a stone tower ahead. We’d arrived.