Solitaire POV: Day 69

Current Wealth: 21 gold 31 silver 14 copper

Xangô was giving me one of his angry stares again, and I’d figured I was in for it. Probably it’d been the orc whose eyes I’d gouged out.

Certainly, that had been impulsive. But the bastard had deserved it- almost gutted me with his spear, while my helmet was off, and I’ve had a long standing policy to do mean things to anybody that tries sticking a bit of metal in me. Still, Xangô almost definitely wouldn’t see things that way. He was one of those reformist types, not really a fan of revenge or payback.

It didn’t exactly surprise me when the talk came, despite it happening the literal first instant we were both relatively alone and secluded. I was working on more gunpowder, and he was jotting down notes for our inventories in preparation to sell them. Early morning, a bit too early to be making our profits just yet, sadly.

“Why did you torture that orc?”

He asked it straight, and that was a relief, because I was far too tired to deal with some runaround answer. Ever since getting my armour I’d felt incomplete without it, unsafe. Like I was leaving myself open, sleeping without a nice knife under my pillow. That destroyed helmet strap meant that I essentially always had an exposed head, at least until we had it fixed. And my head was where I kept all my brains.

“It pissed me off.” I shrugged.

Xangô glared.

“He.” He corrected, and I only shrugged again.

“Right, anyway, given that he had a spear about three inches from my eye socket just seconds before I think it’s more than fair that I returned the favour with interest. Any more questions?”

“Why did you enjoy it?”

Interesting question, that. I’m sure the answer would vary depending on which psychologist you decided to ask, and I for one had never really taken much interest in that particular dumbass field of study to begin with. I shrugged again.

“Because a million years ago the monkeys that smashed things to bits with a rock in revenge had better survival rates than the monkeys who curled up into a ball and started crying when they were hurt?”

He glared at me.

“Do you really think this is the time to be joking?”

God, it was exhausting to talk about this. I just sighed.

“No, obviously, but I don’t know what you expect. A promise that I won’t thumb any more eyes out in the future, no matter how pissed off I get?”

He blinked, staring at me for a moment. I suspected that the expression was covered fast enough for most people to miss it. Oh me and my big brain.

“Yes.” Xangô glared. “If I can’t get you to apologise, or understand why fucking recreational torture is wrong, then at the very least I want you to assure me it won’t happen again.”

I eyed him, and considered my cards. Without me Xangô would be losing all the gunpowder he’d gotten so used to selling, as well as any of the other things I had planned. If I mentioned that then I’d be adding pressure to him, and surprise, too. He wasn’t nearly nervous or hesitant enough to have realised that I might threaten him over our technology already. Maybe I could unbalance him enough that he would move past this conversation and never quite realise that he’d been played.

But…No. Xangô was my friend, he was a good person. Even if he hadn’t been, he was clever enough that social bludgeons like that would only keep him wrong-footed for so long. Best to just appease him.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Fine.” I told him, suddenly feeling a lot less…Glib. “I promise.”

He held his stare for a long moment, then nodded shortly. His face wasn’t much less tight as it turned away from me. I figured that probably made sense. Xangô was just another person, at the end of the day. People tended to…Freak out.

Xangô headed off soon after that, and I had the rest of the morning to myself. Feeling the rush of adrenaline, a certain animalistic…Something overcame me, and I headed right for Helena.

Remarkably, she proved immune to my roguish charms, actually shuddering when I asked her if she was up for a tumble. Never one to have my ego so easily bruised, I killed the remaining hour or so with some quality “me” time, imagining all the ways I’d kill her if it ever came to it.

I wasn’t particularly bothered, mind, because we all had a nice treat awaiting us the moment the shops opened. Xangô practically dragged Beam with him, while Helena reluctantly trudged after to make sure nobody tried to murder us while we were out. I skipped along with him, though, almost drooling in anticipation of our profit.

As it happened, we made almost 4 gold. 3 silver and 43, to be precise, not bad just for salvaged loot. The real payout was our actual reward, though, which we followed our Vittonian soldier in search of. Turns out it had been the actual city who made us the offer, which was good. At first. Cities tended to be more consistent than nobles or oligarchs, in my experience, and it left me a lot more confident that we’d be actually getting paid.

Unfortunately, that confidence didn’t last. Because we soon found out that we’d be heading to the Main Hall of Elswick to receive that reward. I swear I’ve been told more gut wrenching things, but not often enough to recall off the top of my head.

Well, obviously that started a nice, big discussion. Not about whether we ought to go, of course. Self preservation was nice and all, but 30 gold was 30 gold. We’d kill for that much money, as evidenced by us killing about 20 fucking people for it not half a day prior, so we’d sure as shit risk putting ourselves in the eye of this world’s real big-wigs over it, too.

The only question was who. And the answer, obviously, was Xangô.

It was the only choice that made sense. Neither Helena or Argar were our leaders, Beam wasn’t nearly as good with people, and I’d sadly not been able to guarantee that my body wouldn’t react to the presence of an aristocrat by pinning them down and eating their neck veins.

We got him as ready as we could do, then sent him along on his way.

“I think I might be about to cry.” I breathed, watching him make his way to the big palace-thing that the city’s councillors had declared their main base of operations. “It feels like just yesterday when he was a freshly hatched trust fund kid, getting wailed on and mugged for his money, relying on his friends to protect him.”

“Friend.” Beam corrected, turning back to me with an arched eyebrow. “I was the only one who protected him early on. You, as I recall, were the one mugging him.”

Ah, yes, that. Well, what was I to do? The only ethical consumption under Capitalism was consuming the rich, and I’d yet to learn what a stand-up guy he was.

“Details.” I shrugged. “Regardless, we have more shopping to do. And not just armour repairs, I have something really clever planned.

That interested him, and I filled him in while we headed to the blacksmith. It was nice, just talking about a topic we were both interested in. Beam and I hadn’t done that together since…Well, since we’d created the hellscape we were currently stuck in. It helped that Beam actually had a knack for metallurgy.

“Tool steel.” He echoed, thoughtful. “That’s modern though, isn’t it?”

I actually wasn’t sure.

I knew the classification didn’t exactly show up before relatively recent history, but not how recent, or whether we’d already had what we ended up calling tool steels before officiating their name. What I did know, though, was that the name was descriptive. Tool steels were named for being well suited to making into any kind of tools, including those that cut. Wouldn’t hurt to see what kind of weapons metal like that turned into.

What I did know, though, was that certain kinds were apparently shit hot for sword making. And I knew their formulas. Well, sort of knew them, I had to do a bit of rummaging around in my head to finally find them, but that sort of thing is just a natural hazard of having such an enormous one.

“I’d like to learn blacksmithing.” Beam said, abruptly, and I glanced his way, dragged out of my cognitive cocoon by his voice.

“Good idea.” I noted. “Your physical strength and coordination would help, and I’m sure your other ability could be modified in some way to make it even easier.”

Bellows, protective gloves, compressive grips or blast chambers. Off the top of my head I could think of half a dozen ways he might use his weapon-conjuring to enhance the otherwise mundane art of working metal. He’d need skill to start, though.

We continued on our way to the smithy.