PAUL’S DAIRY
The scool cowsilensor gave me this book, and said that when I cannot talk to others I can write what I feel here. I hope this works.
I miss papa every day, more and more and more. Mama says it will get better when I get older, but I do not WANT to forget him! Mama doesn’t know how sad she gets when she does not think I am looking, but I see her crying. Does SHE want to forget papa so she is not sad anemore?
Logan, dad’s old friend from the nay-vee, came to visit when all the polees cars were stil here, but he missed papa. He has been staying in papa’s shed, his “dice cav” from when papa’s friends would come over for diner and games. All papa’s books are still in there, but meen mister Logan won’t let me in to look at them!
Years have passed, and now I am 11 winters old. Howdy, my erstwhile Elder Fuckwit, who is probably the only one reading this…ever. Pia has likely remarried by now, and Paul likely doesn’t even remember my FACE, thanks to you. If I ever EVER get the chance, I am going to kick you in the whatever-passes-for-nuts…and I’m NEVER going to stop!
But, on the off-hand chance that I manage to make it out of here and get back home, guess I might as well describe what has been going on. I’ve had a lot of shit happen to me between now and my last entry, and I even recorded them. However I later deleted them…there’s only SO many times I can complain about something before it even gets to ME! So instead, I’ll just summarize what has happened, and we will continue from there…unless I later delete THIS as well. Meh, time will tell.
Let us start with my “character sheet” and its changes. Thanks to getting older, while having time to study and practice, I’ve had some pretty…SIGNIFICANT improvements!
AGE: 11.4 years
HIT DIE: 1(1/2)
ECL: 1/2
That’s right; I’ve managed to go up a whole FRACTIONAL Hit Die…woo-hoo! But, and this is a BIG one, that DOES have the perks of getting me some ability score penalties removed AND another trait.
ABILITY SCORES: Cha 14, Wis 12 (10 due to age), Int 15 (13 due to age), Dex 13, Con 10 (8 due to size), Str 8 (4 due to age and size)
FEATS (Simple Weapon Proficiency):
* HD 1: [none due to age]
* Human: Chosen by Fate (Trickery)
So not only have I managed to get rid of the Charisma penalty, but I’ve ALSO gotten my Intelligence penalty down to just 2 points. Still no luck getting the skill points for raw Intelligence, but this HAS allowed me to improve my skills with the +8 points from Wildman, and jacked-up my “Spellcasting” powers.
SKILLS (–3 to Social skills from Primitive):
* Charisma-Linked (+2)
* * (CbF) Bluff +3 (4 ranks) [–3 Social]
* * (CbF) Disguise
* * (P) Use Mystic Device
* Wisdom-Linked (+0)
* * Heal +2 (2 ranks)
* * Spot +1 (1 rank)
* * (P) Survival +4 (2 ranks) [+2 from Primitive]
* Intelligence-Linked (+1)
* * (P) Alchemy +4 (3 ranks)
* * (P) Craft (medicine) +2 (1 rank)
* * (P) Craft (weaponsmith) +3 (2 ranks)
* * Knowledge (arcana) +3 (2 ranks)
* * Knowledge (nature) +4 (3 ranks)
* * Spellcraft +4 (3 ranks)
* Dexterity-Linked (+0)
* * (CbF) Hide +7 (2 ranks) [+4 from size]
* Constitution-Linked (+0)
* * Concentration +1 (1 ranks)
* * (P) Control Shape
* Strength-Linked (+0)
* * (P) Climb
* Linguistics +2 (2 ranks)
SPELLCASTING:
* Chosen by Fate CL 1 (+2), Max SL 0th.
* * 0th: summon weapon
Summon Weapon (Conj): Creates a non-magical mundane weapon you are familiar with. [Summon]
* Eldritch Soul CL 1 (+2), Max SL 1st. Spell Level Pool Points: 15 (0th-Level are free)
* * 0th: acid splash, detect magic, prestidigitation; 1st: color spray, mage armor
Acid Splash (Evoc): Orb deals 1d3 (+4 Breaking the Limits) damage [to Con]. [Acid]
Color Spray (Ill): Knocks unconscious, blinds, and/or stuns 1d6 (+3 Breaking the Limits) weak creatures [Material Consumed (colored red, yellow, and blue sand or powder)]. [Mind-Affecting; DC 13 Will save]
Detect Magic (Div): Detects spells and magic items within 60 ft. (+4 Knowledge:arcana and Spellcraft checks Breaking the Limits)
Mage Armor (Conj): Gives subject +4 (+3 Breaking the Limits) armor bonus [Focus Needed (piece of cured leather)]. [Force]
Prestidigitation (Universal): Performs minor tricks. (+4 to relevant skill checks Breaking the Limits).
Plus, I get the “Track” feat as a bonus feat…so I can now actually JOIN Torden on his hunting trips! Yeah, I’m as excited by that as the last shit I took. Of course this hasn’t stopped Torden from dragging me along, which is how I actually finished picking up Wildman, and training my extra ranks in Knowledge (nature) and Survival skills…thanks to the tutelage of the hunters that guard him on these trips. I seem to become something similar to a mascot for them, given that I will pay attention to their lessons while Torden just climbs trees chasing squirrels, or whatever. I swear this kid would sell ALL the ADHD medication, if he was ever on a commercial for it.
“But what about your gun summoning,” I can hear you asking. Well, I’ve managed to get the slag-iron 1911 to be reliable about 70% of the time, and a bronze one up to pretty much 100%. But I dare not even TRY to fire that iron one again, and the single test firing I did of the bronze model (using a string, a couple wedged rocks, and a handy tree for cover) showed that it was just as bad at staying in one piece. But, I HAVE managed to get a bronze single-shot blunderbuss to work about 9 out of 10 times, give-or-take. So what if the barrel looks like Fudd’s after that wascly-wabbit puts a carrot in it, since it only has ONE shot anyway. I think going low-tech is the better option, at least for now.
***
Part of being Torden's adopted brother is having to live in the Jarl's longhouse, and attend his court. Supposedly, it is to learn the skills I would need to serve Torden as a competent aide when he takes over, but it invariably just turns into Borden asking MY advice on various matters. Advice he RARELY takes, usually only when he is leaning that direction anyways, but this doesn't seem to matter to Sikan (the I-eat-nothing-but-lemons priest).
Yeah, I'm still getting shit on by my least favorite man of the cloth. At least I only have to deal with his sniping in court, AND his attempts to sabotage me when I am out on my own. So if I could avoid the flying goat shit he eggs the village kids into using, and stop him uprooting my Alchemical herbs, just by staying inside the fortress: why don't I?
Well the answer to THAT is because Borden and his wife got BUSY back in the day. In addition to a rarely-seen daughter from his previous wife, Torden has a sniveling spoiled rotten little brother named Badrik (yes, the same sword-swinging kid from my…interview). A couple years younger than myself the sweet cherub-cheeked apple of EVERYONE'S eye who can do no wrong, and who shits rainbows. The priest's little tricks are annoying and often embarrassing, but BADRIK is a stereotypical spoiled prince with NO sense of “too far”! That goat shit I mentioned? I'd rather dodge it flying through the air, than have it shoved down the back of my tunic...in a flagon of scalding-hot water.
So yeah, I take every chance I can to get away from a kid NOBODY will discipline, who hates my guts because I “have” his father's ear, and that I get punished for even shouting at to stop throwing stuff at me when we eat dinner. I swear, the kid must have some kind of super power, to not get in trouble from THAT!
On the flip side of my new family relations is the Jarl’s wife, Freygi. She is a still-pretty woman in her early 30s, with platinum blond hair, and a positively infectious smile. She makes the family’s meals, from butchery to bakery, often teaching the village’s young women how to tend a household when they don’t have mothers to do it themselves. And Borden DOTES on her like a lovesick teenager, it’s honestly kinda heartwarming. She treats me like I’m her own son, so all of my current clothing that is not a hand-me-down from Torden has been hand-made by her. She even has Venradik helping her out, growing cooking herbs and vegetables in with the plants for his elixers. She may be twice as tall and MUCH paler-skinned that Pia, not to mention about as far apart in hair-sliders as it is possible to get, but she somehow still reminds me of my wife every day.
Probably why I avoid her as much as I can. I just can’t handle the constant heartache, not to mention the reminder that even if I was able to get back to Earth the day I woke up here…Pia would STILL no longer be my wife anymore, since I died and was a freaking CHILD! Yep, I’m DEFINITELY going to develop calluses on my nut-kicking foot.
***
The next spring after I rescued Torden, we get a few hundred people wandering into the valley, carrying whatever possessions they had and starved nearly half to death. It seems that the gnolls we fought were part of a scouting force, and the tribe as a whole decided WE weren't worth the risk since WE had magic...so they harried and eventually overran another village about a hundred miles south-west of us. A fishing village on the fjord, which thankfully limited the avenues of attack. The village's warriors stayed behind to weather the siege, and to buy time for their women, children, elders, and other non-fighters to escape into the late winter wilderness. So over a thousand of these people took much of their smoked fish, tools and other amenities, and struck out to find a NEW homestead.
Notice the discrepancy in numbers there? Yeah, over 2/3rds of them died in just the past 40 or 50 days until they found US. Not only is even the tail-end of winter here BRUTAL, but the NORMAL wilderness is full of wild animals like bears and boar, that do not take kindly to being disturbed ESPECIALLY during the snow season. Add to this a world of magic filled with monsters, without warriors to defend them, and it gets WORSE.
I was there when their surviving elders beseeched Borden for entry into his village's walls, a privilege only a handful of the TRIBESMEN have gained! Then again, we DID attack him, so yeah, I get it. I remember all the “trucks of peace” and other terror attacks, child trafficking, and so on from the muslim “refugees” America took into OUR walls un-vetted, honestly Borden has done a MUCH better job. I even have managed to find out WHY he executed those two tribesmen so brutally. I won't say why he did it, because I still hold out hope of showing this to my family, but I TOTALLY agree with his actions!
So when he asks the priest's advice, Mr. Smug McTwitson says to kick them out, and keep HIS village safe from THEIR bad fortune. My advice was, “Take them in, I heard Sikan is ALWAYS taking men into HIS home overnight, often more than one at a time, so he MUST have enough space to....FIT...them.”
Ok, I admit it, I've heard no such thing, I just wanted to tweak Sikan's beak after that unveiled allusion to kicking out me and the rest of the tribe. Don’t get into an insult fight with a former U.S. Navy seaman NCO, unless you want to wind up losing it! But, to my surprise, Borden LAUGHS and agrees! Mostly. He said that they could make camp in the low wooded hills west of the village, help his warriors clear the land, and live upon whatever they could reclaim by next winter. So long as they swore fealty to Borden and the crown of Askfjör (the village's name translates to English as “Ashfjord” by the way), and with obvious joy they agreed.
Then the fucker bids ME to see to their accommodation until such time as they have roofs of their own. I don't know who was more disappointed between us, but at least the elders appreciated my speaking on their behalf. That isn’t to say they respected ME, and thus would really listen to whatever I had to say. Well…at first. After a tenday (see? Even I can learn to use the phrase!) of getting hosed by skunks, finding their dugout huts filled with water runoff, and OTHER things I warned them about, the new villagers FINALLY decided that the kid who has spent years running around those very hills MIGHT know where is good to put up their homes. I guess THEY can learn too
they manage to get the entire group of refugees housed by late spring thanks to my guidance on where the fruit-bearing trees and bushes are more densely populated, where dangerous animals keep their dens, and places that the ground is too unstable to build. Which still gives them enough time to plant some summer crops, in those semi-cleared fields. I say “semi” because the newcomers do not cut down the already-food-bearing plants, instead putting in crops AROUND them. And in areas where the fields would be too stingy, they plant fresh apple tree saplings, to prepare for the future. All of this alongside seeing me utilize magic to help eliminate boar dens, and fixing their injuries with my healing skills, has earned me not only THEIR respect…but also made the two priests that they brought with them into my own erstwhile allies! Yes, I FINALLY have access to SOME clerical-type people to answer my questions!
An unexpected benefit of this is it has almost doubled the number of children in Askfjör, and the NEW ones actually don’t HATE me. Over time this slowly combines to undermine Sikan’s influence in the village, and I rarely have to tolerate bullying by kids anymore. Except by Badrik, he’s still 100% dick.
So, with my newfound popularity, I eventually reach 11 a little over three years after the refugees arrive. And THIS is when my life derails, of course. All because of Torden…AGAIN.
***
Torden has reach 14, found girls, and like so many guys before him he has let them ruin his life. Even worse, he took ME down with him! There is a girl from the former refugees that he likes, but his father does not, due to her “loose” reputation. But, when has a teenage boy listened to good advice with the promise of poontang in front of him? The father and son argue about it hammer-and-tongs, on a pretty much daily basis, until everybody ELSE in the fortress has come to just…tune them out. A young buck in spring, knocking heads with the old grey-furred stag? Must be Tuesday.
That is until I wake up in the middle of the night to Torden shaking my shoulder, having evidently wedged his huge frame into my tiny-ass former-storage room. Yeah it’s about the size of a postage stamp. Just BARELY large enough for my twin-sized bed, a chest/table with all my clothing and personal items (at least those that I am not hiding under a cut-out piece of the floor in a corner), and a chair. Despite being “royalty”, the rest of the household doesn’t live much better, just LARGER. They ARE back-country nobility in the ass-end of the far north, not far removed from cavemen, after all.
“Get dressed for an adventure, my brother! But be quick about it, we have to leave FAST,” says the guy almost twice my height. At a guess it is a mix of the ancient Elven genes mixed into Laughash’s DNA that make him, and so many OTHER tribesmen, so small in comparison to the linebacker-like villagers. But it could ALSO just be generations of malnourishment…or fucking magic pixie dust, how the hell am I supposed to know? “Hurry little Laughash, I have the BEST idea EVER!” Great, what disaster is he cooking up NOW?
So a quick change into my “surviving Torden’s fuckery” outfit, made with Venradik’s assistance to be as close to fur-lined Kevlar camo-gear as I could manage here and now, I shortly find the two of us up in the hills tossing pebbles at the back shutters of a small house. I got a BAD feeling about this…
After a few minutes the shutters open, and Torden’s crush is yawning into the night while holding a lit taper from the house’s banked firepit. Yep, guess I can see the future now, too. I know JUST where THIS is going, passes through my mind with an exasperated sigh, as I start mentally ticking ways to mend a lovestruck heart and knocking them off a checklist. Lots of beer? We got plenty of ale back at the longhouse, and since Venradik has taken to being the brewmaster it ain’t COMPLETELY horrible anymore. Sports games with friends? Meh, I’ll just have to get his guards together to take him out boar hunting, not too hard. Picking up easy chicks until he’s too pooped to pump? He’s a KID, but if push comes to shove all I have to do is point out all the OTHER village girls that he’s been ignoring the advances of these past months, any of whom will seem like SAINTS to his parents after THIS little debacle.
As I’m lost in my reverie, only half-listening to her telling him off for the STUPIDITY of thinking she’d run off to live with him in the woods (after I set them up with a fresh home of course), I’m shocked out of it, “Then I’ll just have to PROVE to you it is easier than you believe, come on brother, let’s go find me and my new wife a home!” Wait…what? I hear a feminine squeal fading into the distance behind us as the dumb blue-balled lummox drags me behind him towards the “sunset” mountains that run westward from just north of Askförd, “Wait…WHAT?!” Guess I couldn’t keep it in.
I don’t get my arm free until we are long past the village’s outskirts, and it is a good few hours of panting as I follow the long-legged freight train until we reach the foothills past the woods, before Torden FINALLY stops to catch his breath. The next thing I know it is dawn, and Torden is kicking me awake with his toes, evidently having kept watch all night after I collapsed from exhaustion…and he is THINKING for a change. Once I am awake he takes out some smoked goat meat (his favorite) from the bag he had prepared, and splits it with me. “I know that you are more cleaver than me little brother, EVERYBODY knows that, and that I am probably being foolish for not seeing even HALF of the problems with this plan of mine that YOU see. But you don’t know what this fire in my chest FEELS like, because for all your wisdom Laughash…you are COLD inside. I hardly ever see you smile, and you seem to have been mourning something ever since I first met you that day in the woods. It is like you have closed your heart off, so that you may never be hurt again, and EVERYBODY can tell. I love you brother, and I hope that in helping me find love with MY life, your clever eyes can see how to find happiness with YOURS. Besides, I’m not SO addle-witted as to think I could pull off founding a home in the wilderness WITHOUT your aid…or that if I left you behind that you wouldn’t be able to find us for father before I even LEFT the village!” Shit, I spend so much time ridiculing Torden for his frat-boy personality, that I’ve missed just how INSIGHTFUL the little shit can be, haven’t I?
With a heavy sigh, I stand up and resign myself to the inevitable, “Well are you coming or not, you hairless bear? It isn’t like a decent hidden mountain home is going to fall on from the sky, and knock some SENSE into you, on its own is it?” He’s going to head out if I’m with him or not, but at least THIS way I can probably get the kid back home safe after he realizes what a fool he has been. If I go back NOW all I’m going to get is my hide torn off by his father, for leaving Torden to his own wits…and I’d deserve it too, since I will have gotten the innocent jackass killed.
***
It is a bit over a week later (FUCK this “tenday” shit), and we are staring to run low on supplies as well as frustration tolerance. We are MUCH higher up the mountains than either of us feel comfortable with, having had to backtrack and route around large hunting creatures’ territories time and time again. I don’t know what they were, guess my tracking skills aren’t THAT good yet; just places with fresh bloody trails dragging off ahead of us…and neither of us wants to be the NEXT meal! Eventually I find something promising: a crevasse in the rocky mountainside with a thin trickle of water draining out of it, and the mixed musk of animals blowing by in the breeze. I can’t tell WHAT animals, or if they are SAFE, but Torden smells goats and his nose for his favorite food has ALWAYS been better than mine, so we go inside.
I’d say we are maybe halfway up the mountains at this point, when we come across a large jagged-cliffside hidden valley filled with clover, down the back of which a stream flows to make the place more damp than one would expect. To Torden it must look like the promised land, because of all the goats! There must be a good few HUNDRED of the sure-footed fiends here, probably trapped long ago by the too-sheer cliff faces between levels for even THEM to get out. As we start walking around the edge of the valley, looking for a good place to set up Torden’s love-nest, I am torn. On the one hand it looks like the dumbass’s whole plan to elope might actually WORK, since his food would more-or-less take care of itself, and there’s even a water source. On the other hand something about the place just makes me feel…wrong. Like I am missing something on the tip of my brain.
Then there’s the sound of bees buzzing around, shocking given the altitude and total LACK of flowering plants, and I look around to find them despite feeling like they are constantly buzzing around my ears. So I grab Torden’s arm to pull him away from the hunt for footholds to climb, only to see his blank face staring into the distance, his slack mouth open and drooling.
I’m standing there dumbfounded, doing my best Torden impersonation, at a loss for words when I hear voices far above us talking in loud deep bass. THEN it hits me what was so strange about the place, what I have been missing. These jagged cliffs looked kind of like STAIRS…just with steps up to a dozen feet apart. Giants!
I quickly run through what I know of them from Venradik and the tales told in town, which is honestly not much besides “big and tough”. Remembering what I can recall from my copy of The Harrowed Earth all these years after reading it, I can only recall that all the “True” giant species have some sort of psychic magic in common, tend to live in mountainous areas far from civilization, and that SOME of them take humanoids as slaves to do fiddly labor jobs they are too immense to do themselves. Oh, and that the only way to effectively fight them is with Adamantine weapons or LOTS of magic. Just great, we got NONE of the first, and too little of the second.
So as the ground shakes near us, I purposefully let out a little drool, and try my DAMNDEST to keep a blank look in my eyes. Surely if they wanted to kill us they could have just landed ON us, which means that this is some of their psychic magic. Maybe hold person, which means these are likely the “takes slaves” type…meaning we could have a chance at ESCAPE later! If they are just the “people are crunchy” type, and don’t feel like pancakes, I swear I am going to become a ghost just so I can spend the rest of eternity haunting TORDEN’S ghost!
The giants pick us up, and get their leg day in carrying us up the back side of the valley to the accordion-style divots in the mountain’s side, laughing and chatting in their language the whole time. Huh, nice to have confirmation that it is only Laughash’s languages that I can somehow understand, not ALL of them. Eventually we are carried to a large open-air outside hall dug out of an expanded cavern, cast in shadowed illumination by the gigantic rent in the ceiling to the south, where they talk to an even BIGGER giant on a throne made out of a carved stalactite…stalagmite? Meh, whichever one comes up from the ground. As the giant’s king questions the smaller giants, I take the opportunity to look around from the corner of my eye, examining the OTHER giants in the hall with us so as not to risk the king “feeling” my eyes on him.
They all look like grey stone statues, in desperate need of a hair cream supplier, even the females being TOTALLY bald. Guess that explains the need for Adamantine weapons to do more than stub one of their toes, they look like they are made from mobile GRANITE! Each appears to be wearing clothes made from stitched-together layers of goat hide, when not wearing plates of thick slag-iron held together by thicker-linked steel chains, and often a mixture of both. Just before our escorts carry us away I see one of the unarmored ones carrying in a plate of roasted skinless bodies, but this time even MY nose can tell they are freshly-fried goats.
The last thing I see as we leave the hall of the mountain king is the giant king himself popping one in his mouth like it’s a chicken nugget, before his head tilts to the side and turns to face the way we just left, almost meeting my eyes before I turn my head down. They’re telepathic…can’t risk it.
***
We are deposited in a smaller collection of caves near the back of the complex, where their slaves strip us of our belongings, before giving us goatskin robes to wear which are obviously made from fragments of torn giant’s clothing. I notice that the largest proportion of the slaves are humans, with the second-largest being orcs. Well…I am GUESSING they are orcs, since I haven’t really seen them before, but they fit the description. The humans appear to be mostly of the same dark-haired phenotype as my (erm…I meant Laughash’s? meh, whatever, I’m leaving it in) tribesmen, but not ALL of them. There are even half-elves and a handful of elves, which I discover later as I get increasingly familiar with my fellow slaves over the next days. Torden gets put on mining duty with most of the orcs, due to his size, whereas I wind up spending my waking hours in a circle sewing hides together to make clothing for our captors.
It isn’t long before I figure out that the main language spoken by my captors is the same as the giants’, just in a less rumbling-thunder-over-rocks timbre. Probably thanks to their having grown up in captivity. Some, however, still remember their old languages and it is from THESE folk that I manage to figure out what kind of fire Torden and I have jumped in to.
These are “stone” giants, a race of slavers that live in the far north at eternal war with their “frost” giant cousins. They utilize their prodigious mind-magic to enslave those they capture, as well as to ward away predators from their settlements, and then interrogate their captives for information about other resources. THIS settlement has been mining shiny rocks for hundreds of years, eventually breaching a nearby dwarven thane, tripping a war between the two natural enemies. But when the dwarves came through that tunnel they found themselves bloodied by those very same mining slaves, and were eventually captured then enslaved in their weakened state. Now the giants keep a TIGHT mental leash on the dwarves to prevent their rebellion, and are forcing them to work in the forges making tools for the other slaves as well as weapons and armor for their new masters. As a result the former dwarven thane’s population is a fraction of what it once was, and has had all metal stripped from it, to turn it into a giant mushroom farm that is tended by the children of the various slave races.
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Great…not only slave labor, but CHILD slave labor, what a WONDERFUL world I have found myself in, I think, trying to come up with a plan. Evidently Torden and I only managed to escape being brain-tortured to death for information, thanks to the recent acquisition of the dwarves cutting down on their labor needs for now. But even if we COULD stay here, I don’t want that hothead to get himself killed trying to organize a slave rebellion any more than I want to spend the rest of my life sewing underwear for some granite-skinned huffalaunt! And who knows WHEN the local equivalent of a chicken wrangler is going to decide it’s time to replenish the flock…I have GOT to get us out of here!
After another few days of feeling out my sewing circle fellows, it becomes obvious that they are all too accustomed to their lot in life to even risk THINKING about trying to escape. No wonder, what with the giants able to pluck errant thoughts of rebellion from the mental winds. Which begs the question…why not from MY mind? Maybe a side-effect of getting sucked into another world? Or was my Will save just too high the first time, and NOW I’m just lucky enough not to have gotten noticed? Whatever the reason, I need to bury any rebellious thoughts DEEP down, just in case. So I set out to do what every other slave has done around here…time to learn how to speak giant-ese!
Turns out…it’s not that hard. The language is very similar to the two I already know, just with different intonations and some minor pronunciation changes, plus a few sentence structure tweaks. It’s a lot like speaking pig-Latin, but doing it Yoda-style. Maybe this is just another benefit from those Linguistics skill ranks? Yeah, that’s probably it, otherwise there is NO way I could have picked it up enough to be fluent in just eight days! Huh, maybe I should get a job at the United Nations when I get back…then I can tell them ALL what I think about them! Hey, I got to laugh to avoid going whacko, and I’m fresh out of ketchup and mustard to make funny faces out of.
So a few weeks later with THAT task out of the way, I set off to go get my erstwhile brother from the gym, and get the ducks outa this pond! Good thing too, I am so fucking SICK of mushrooms!
Surprisingly, slipping out of the sewing circle is pretty easy. Ready with a quick lie about having to hit the shitting-closet down the hall (after having sabotaged the one in THIS room), I stand up and walk out casually…just waiting for somebody to call me back to tell me to get back to work. But nobody does. Then I start making my way to the place that I’ve been told the forges are located, ready to tell anybody I need a new shitting-bucket made for the sewing room if I’m asked why I am not at my assigned task. Since the old one has an extra (read: acid splash made) hole in it…but again, nothing. I go past the mushroom-stalk-powered forges down to the mines to find Torden, a quick lie on my lips that I am running an errand for our giant masters to fetch somebody for “questions”…and STILL nothing.
Ok, I am officially NOW weirded the FUCK out! I stop one of the humans heading walking towards me with a box of ores, asking him in my newly-proficient Giant, “I need to find the newcomer. I have a tas-”
“The laughing idiot is back that way, down the third shaft on the left, alone. Just follow the bellowing,” he says before giving me the cold shoulder-check as he carries his box further up the way I came. This mystery is getting deeper and deeper, my dear Watson.
I follow the rather rude porter’s directions, past other tunnels busy with life, to one shaft with the sound of Torden’s laughter ringing out of it…but no sounds of metal on stone. Following the light from the phosphorescent moss that seems so prevalent down here, I find my brother sitting and panting. He is buck-ass naked except for the sweat, laying atop the same kind of goatskin smock that we are all wearing while leaning against a long-handled metal sledgehammer. Being fed water and cooked mushrooms by a bevy of girls from all the various races of slaves, “What the FUCK Torden?! I’ve been working my fingers bloody every day of our CAPTIVITY, while YOU have been drowning your broken heart in whatever piece of gash you can find?!” Shit, lapsed into English at the end.
Yeah, I’m not ashamed to admit it; I was so thoroughly PISSED, however despite my linguistic fuckup my intent came across. But hey, in my defense, I’d been stressed out for WEEKS that this asshole was being worked to death under an overseer’s whip so…yeah, pretty shocking sight.
“Would you fine girls please leave my brother and I alone for a bit? It looks like he is upset by something, and I’d HATE for you to see us fight,” Torden asked with his usual big floppy-eared dog smile, and the girls laugh before almost skipping down the hallway. “I knew you would find me Laughash, no need to be angry, I’ve just been doing MY part to help out your escape plan!”
Huh?, “What?! Help me out HOW, by drowning your broken heart in a broken MANHOOD? Oh, how about by chasing off anybody who MIGHT be strong enough to help, with your constant laughter IN AN ECHOING TUNNEL, so that NOBODY can stand to help us? Have you organized a rebellion, or found a secret escape tunnel, or DUG one? What is it ‘dear brother’, do tell ME how getting finger-fed by a bunch of floozies will help us escape being made into slaves WHILE LOOKING FOR A HOME FOR YOU AND YOUR LADY-LOVE!” With every sharp-witted point, I could SEE him flinching in pain and…so help me…it felt GLORIOUS to vet my spleen after years of babysitting the short-sided ass! But eventually I had to wind down and catch my breath, giving him a chance to talk.
“I drove away my fellow miners because I KNEW that YOU would come up with some method of escape, where obviously THEY either could or WOULD not…being too in love with their own captivity to ever dream of open skies and freedom once more. After I found out that you can get FAVOR here for mining the most resilient deposits, I set myself to mining THIS one because everybody ELSE said it was impossible to get the ore out of the wall...but I managed it anyway. While I have not managed to find or dig a tunnel out, I HAVE dug a nice-sized hole…and used it to secret away the things we WILL need to get back home again!,” then with a flourish he stands up, shoving a nearby boulder out of the wall. Revealing a fairly sizeable cache of goatskin hides, smoke-preserved mushrooms, water skins, and…yep, even iron tools.
I’m just leaning over as I look inside, flabbergasted that my idiot brother managed to come up with so much as a half-baked GOOD idea, let alone THIS, “Oh, and before I forget…here, as an apology.” Turning around I see him drop two small finger-length plates of metal into my hand after he pulls it up, “I know how you THINK I forgot about that wolf-man spearhead all those years ago, but I’ve seen you looking at it and thought you might like to add to your collection. I got given these by one of the dwarves in the smithy tunnels when I asked for samples of what ores to look for down here, I thought you might like them.” One was a silvery metal with an oil-like shine to it, the other looking to be iron with a shimmer of pale-white and gold in it. I knew EXACTLY what these were, since I had been FANTASIZING over their descriptions in The Harrowed Earth nearly every day after my first failed attempt at replicating dad’s old Colt 1911…Mithril and Adamantine.
“Who are you, and what have you done to my short-sighted self-obsessed big brother?,” I say, nearly tearing up, but unable to take my eyes off his present.
“Laughash, I think that is the FIRST time you have ever called me ‘brother’ without a sneer in your voice!,” Torden says with a barked laugh. Damnit…he’s right. Leaning down to my height and throwing his arm over my shoulders as I quickly grip these treasures to my chest, “Come little brother, let us get out of here before one of them comes back with ANOTHER little gift I am going to have to hide in this hole, in her attempt to buy my affections for her own!” I don’t know if he was talking about them trying to bribe him for some one-on-one time, or to get into their smock, and before he has the chance to tell me I slip from under his hug and start pulling things out of the wall to go over.
***
I tell Torden my plan for escape, mostly just to shut him up, and get him to stop speculating where people might overhear him. We’re going to the old dwarven thane, taking supplies to the kids working there. Originally I was going to volunteer us to do so, to get bags of supplies, but thanks to Torden we can skip that dangerous step. Now, anybody who sees us walking towards the tunnel which leads to the thane will simply assume we are just part of the normal hauling detail, instead of having to try and talk our way onto it.
Once in the dwarven thane we circle the place, looking for a side tunnel WITHOUT tracks, since that will mean nobody has taken it since the thane fell…and thus, it just might be the way to the SURFACE. Then it is just a matter of marking tunnels as we go, doubling back when we hit a dead end, until we EVENTUALLY find our way outside. But we will have enough food, and goat bones covered in faintly-glowing moss, to do so. Turns out it takes what I am estimating to be six days to find a route that is just a couple hours long, and no you do NOT want to know what we had to do to keep the moss glowing that long.
Why rely on the world’s worst TP instead of using prestidigitation to make light, you ask? Because the candle-flame I can make just isn’t BIG enough to do…well…shit, for lack of a better word. This will probably change as I get older, but for NOW it just doesn’t make enough light to keep from stumbling around.
So, despite finding AN exit, we have to camp for a while until the sun comes up. The errant breezes we felt while down in the dark show there are doubtlessly OTHER exits, but many of the passages we had to double back from had giant holes, were thin cracks, or were otherwise impassible…who knows how long it would take to find another one? So we stayed here and waited on this small ledge, until the sun rose and we could see how hard the climb down would be.
Turns out, from the angle of the mountains we could see, we weren’t too far from home. I’d say around halfway between there and the giant’s settlement as the crow flies. The rising sun also showed us one of the trails that we took further down below us, maybe…30 or 40 feet? The side we were on wasn’t a sheer cliff, but still pretty steep, while covered in south-facing brush and saplings stuck into the near-vertical wall’s cracks. Not a QUICK free-climb, but a doable one, and looking to be easier than some of the rope-climbs I’ve had to do while I was in the navy. The path below us even had an upturned lip on the other side, so we could toss down our bags without fear of them rolling off the side of the mountain never to be seen again.
So, leaving behind our shitty moss-covered torches, we began to climb down after tossing the bags. Torden went first, “To catch you if you should fall Laughash.” But I think it was just him being eager to get home faster. Either way it was slow going. While Torden has a longer reach and wider stance thanks to his bigger frame, I made good time despite having to stop every now and again to cast prestidigitation for a firmer grip.
Then something I should have thought of happened, FUCK I can be so DENSE at times! One of the plants that Torden was gripping tore out of the mountainside, RIGHT as he was reaching down to grab another one. At his startled shout I look down, only to see him try for and fail to grab another plant…and fall backwards. He hits the path below with a crackling sound like crushed bubble-wrap, before fetching up against the bags and stopping…motionless. “Fuck, fuck, FUCKING FUCK!,” I shout in English.
Throwing caution to the wind I start rushing down, in my panic to reach him and see if he is OK, before nearly falling myself about halfway to the bottom. That sudden spike of fear from my own brush with death gives me the clarity I need to realize, I can’t help HIM if I’M dead myself. Then I resume casting prestidigitation and taking my time to get down safely. Reaching out I feel for his jugular under the thin start of his beard coming in, YES! The lummox is just too STUBBORN to die!
Then, as if the universe believed my thoughts to be a challenge, I heard a rumbling growl behind me just as I fell a
A quick mental inventory reveals that I am out of my usual “fire and RUN” option, being unable to cast color spray without either my usual pinch of three-colored dust or…STUPID! I left the “useless” moss torches back up top! But maybe I could distract it, get it angry enough to chase ME and MAYBE get a chance to double back and tend to Torden?
“Hey UGLY!,” I shout standing up, before hitting it in the (bearskin?) smock with an acid splash, then turning and running. With a hissing bellow I can hear its wide footfalls behind me, slowly closing the distance, and it starts cursing at me…in Giant? Well, something LIKE Giant, but like the retarded inbred step-child of it. Shit if I keep going like this, I’m just going to die as a tired appetizer, before it doubles back to Torden!
Then I see what I need, run a bit more, and stop to turn around. It is maybe 30 feet behind me, giving me enough time to line up and whip off another acid splash into it, before I have to jump aside to avoid becoming one with the stone…or its club, coin-flip either way. But this puts me on the outside edge of the path, which it realizes must mean I have nowhere else to go, as it turns and smiles at me.
But this time I’m smiling back as I raise up my bronze punt-gun to fire upwards, to the precariously-tipping boulder coming out of the mountainside above the path. As the (I’m going to go with “ogre” here) reaches up to shield its eyes from the flash, it is staring straight upwards when it receives some impromptu dental work courtesy of Rocky Boulder-Boa. Meanwhile I’m running BACK towards Torden, to get out of the way of the landslide I just caused! After I am outside of the landslide zone, and done panting, I look back, Going to need a new way down, but THAT is tomorrow me’s problem.
***
At least that ogre was good for SOMETHNG, I think dragging Torden on a sled made from his goat skin smock into the ogre’s cave. From the look of some of the bones around here, this used to be a BEAR’S cave, until that ogre ate it.
Torden wasn’t waking up. From the bruising on his chest under the slave’s smock, and the feel, he has at LEAST three broken ribs. One arm isn’t looking too hot either, being a mass of bruises pretty much everywhere from the bicep down. We still have plenty of mushrooms foods but I don’t have any healing magic, and all my emergency medicines were taken by the slaves back in the…giant…batch of resources, where they don’t even know I am gone… Am I REALLY that desperate, here?
Before making an OBVIOUSLY STUPID plan, I use the bear’s skull and some of the small trees that fell with Torden to make a mushroom broth, then feeding it to him a sip at a time. On the general principle that, “The body cannot heal without fuel for the fires of life” as Venradik often says. Then I go outside to see about finding my way down, maybe I can SLIDE the big ox to the forest?
And I find the path I need, just 10 feet below where the one that the cave is on ends, and it looks kinda steep BUT it goes down ALL the way to the forest. Where were was this on the way UP?! No way in HELL I can get Torden down THAT without ending up buried UNDER him, let alone carrying him down TO it!
So…time to make a withdrawal from the Bank of Bad Ideas.
I make a quick trip up to, then down from, the tunnel entrance that afternoon. I had to empty out then carry up one of the sacks, before bringing down one of the moss torches. I am NOT going to risk being without my full arsenal of spells again! Then I head down to the thicker brush besides the trail I spotted, and spend the rest of the day ferrying bunches of brush up to the cave for firewood. As evening starts to set in I use some more bones to hang Torden’s ruined smock over part of the cave’s entrance, before stacking rocks in the rest of it to make a half-way useful windbreak that can keep the heat in. The rest of the night is spent using some broken bear bones to shave off a patch of that same torn leather smock, then sewing it into a small pouch on a thong I can hide beneath my OWN smock. No point in getting supplies to take care of him, if Torden DIES before I get back!
The last thoughts I have that night before feeding Torden some more broth, is that if I he DOESN’T wake up, at least his body should be safe until Borden’s men can come and retrieve it. After my execution.
***
Dawn arrives, and it is time to do the single DUMBEST thing imaginable, outside of marrying a feminist. I can practically HEAR my old drill instructor shouting in my ear, “Just because it is the ONLY idea you have, doesn’t make it a GOOD one, just you a DUMB ASS!” I couldn’t agree more. And then I start climbing BACK into the slave pits. Thanks to prestidigitation and the path I remembered from yesterday, it goes much faster than the first trip up, almost like fate itself is pushing obstacles out of my pathway to hell. Oh yeah, calluses ON calluses, you hear me you eldritch asshole?!
Taking the spare moss-torch I
* Food, and a LOT of it, preferably including GOAT if possible! It is amazing what you miss when you are stuck in prison…or recently ESCAPED one.
* Weapons. Even if we can make it down to the forest, I am unfamiliar with this section of it, and have NO IDEA where dangerous creatures might be!
* Medicines. I can make SOMETHING once I am in the woods, but we need to GET there FIRST, and Torden might not be mobile without some pharmaceutical help.
* Water. Can’t rely on streams below the treeline being free of little nasty surprises, best to carry our own for a while.
* Camping Supplies. As cold as it is up HERE, at least the south-side is FACING the sun all day. Under the forest canopy, at this time of year, it will get cold enough to FREEZE overnight.
That’s quite the list, and I’m going to have to bring it back a piece at a time. Joy. Welp, looks like the path is clear, I think before heading back into the cavern to wind my way to the slave pits. For some reason my nose starts to ache. Blaming the cold I rub it until the ache fades away.
In hindsight, I think my subconscious was probably trying to tell me I wasn’t as sneaky as I thought myself to be. Let’s knock off the hardest stuff first, since I can get much of the rest on the way back anyway.
I take the route into the slave pens, then turn to go towards the forges instead of the mushroom piles. We are going to need WEAPONS to fight off any animals or monsters in the woods, plus at least a small cookpot and metal spit. Torden’s little collection of penis-surcharge loot already included several small knives and metal pegs, so at least we should be able to fell smaller trees, but there is NO way that bear’s skull will survive the trip back…maybe not even the trip off the mountain. And we’re not going to be able to fight off a gnoll hunting part with pocket knives and bone-tipped spears.
So…we need some ironmongery! It is easy enough finding the forges, but NOT so easy getting the attention of one of these brain-drained slaves. The only time any of them pays attention to me is after I get between them and their ore cart, This bruise on my butt hurt for DAYS after I did that! However I notice that the further back into the forges I go, the older and more broken-down the dwarves get, which goes along with them getting less and less busy. Is it some lingering sense of dwarven solidarity, trying to protect their elders, maybe? In any case I take a gamble, and go to the cave furthest in the back, where…sure enough…there is one white-bearded dwarf inside sitting on his anvil. Evidently snoozing, with his face on his hands, atop the long handle of a hammer.
Cautious of the boot-shaped bruise on my ass cheek, I carefully move up to shake him awake while saying in Giant, “Wake up old-timer, the masters call on your services.” With a snort his rheumy eyes crack open to stare at me uncomprehendingly, before he starts and seems to realize I was speaking Giant.
“Eh, what? The masters called for ME?!,” he says querulously, with the beginnings of sparking pride in his dying eyes. Not QUITE what I meant, but sure, let’s run with it.
“Yes, they demand the best of weaponsmiths be called upon to make something, and everybody says that was YOU, sir.” Maybe I can get some decent weapons out of the guy, even give him a bit of his old pride back before he dies…
“Naw kid, you are just trying to play a joke on me. The masters forbid making weapons back when they captured us, all we make NOW are tools for slaves, and iron bars for the masters’ own forges,” his voice sounding incredulous, and evidently with reason.
Ok…change of tactics, after all a “weapon” is just a tool for killing things, “Not playing with you old man, they don’t want a WEAPON, they want a special TOOL made for a special miner. The masters recently captured a human who can break the hardest ore from the wall, but he is going too slow and breaking too many tools to do it. They want YOU to make a wea…er-TOOL capable of letting him work nonstop, without it breaking, since you are the best of the old weaponsmiths.” Hmmm…let’s see about making grandpa Sugurdsson proud and it isn’t like anybody ELSE will get the joke to call me out on it…
“Eh? What pick could POSSIBLY hold for so long against ‘mant ore WITHOUT breaking…and NOT be a weapon?,” he asked, with obvious curiosity and pride leaking into his voice. Got him!
“No pick, no pike, no spade…but a HAMMER old man, the BEST hammer you can make!,” I can see his face start to fall, but before he can voice the complaint I already see coming, “AND the masters have ALREADY given permission to use the ore the human has dug out, to make it!”
The old dwarf’s eyes light up with hope as a fire seems to burn once again in his heart, “YES boy! I’ll get it done. But I will need some of this human’s hair, to dedicate the hammer with, so it doesn’t turn against him in a dark tunnel late at night!” Fuck, I forgot how superstitious our village smith is, guess the same is true of dwarven smiths too.
“He is busy trying to pry more ore out right now, but I will bring you a handful of his hair tomorrow, just spend today gathering what you need to start,” I saying right before leaving. I got to go back anyway, and I doubt Torden will be awake to complain about my taking one of the fire-red braids he is so vain about. If you are going to force me to play proto-viking in a fantasy isekai, then I’m going to get MJOLNIR on the battlefield, you eldritch motherfucker!
By now it was getting pretty late, and I’m likely not going to be back to the cave with much daylight left, so I better head back before I have to climb down by moonlight. I am NOT kiestering a damn torch just to climb down! It doesn’t take long to find my way to the mountain springs that the slaves use for water, and the cistern is empty of peopleby the time I’m done filing and tying off the water skins in my bags.
Mostly empty, as I turn around to find a young half-elf slave girl staring at me, “I saw you two leave, but only YOU came back, then you went to the dwarves. Why?”
Sheeeeiiit, red-handed and all, what can I say to get her from calling out an alarm?, “Look girl, I don’t know WHAT you saw, but it WASN’T me. Now get out of my way, I have errands to run.”
But as I am passing by her, “You going back to the cursed tunnel in the mushroom farm again? Good, I’ll follow you!” FUUUUUUCK! I don’t want to have to KILL some innocent slave kid, just to save our lives!
“Just go back to your parents; they must be worried about you if you’ve been following ME around all day instead of doing your work,” I try to dismiss her perfunctorily.
I can hear her walking just behind me for another couple minutes, before I make out her sniffling, Shit I better stop and get her to cease crying, before we wind up being spotted, “Why are you crying, I don’t think they will be THAT angry at you.”
“Shhh, shhh, I didn’t know, I promise you I didn’t know. But hey if I made it to the end and came back, then maybe your father just hasn’t been able to find his way back? He might be outside right now, trying to figure out how to get YOU out too!,” Yeah right, if he isn’t dusty broken bones at the bottom of some pit, he probably got turned into ogre chow.
“I don’t know if he is or not, I never met him. But I know that if I was separated from MY child, I would do ANYTHING to get back to them,” Shit, I’m not even lying am I? Strange, am I so used to having to stretch and mutilate the truth these days that it is noteworthy when I’m telling the bare-faced TRUTH?
“Very well then, take ME with you!,” Aaaannnd THERE’S why I’ve been lying so much these past few years. Well, in for a penny…
“
She actually starts to look whitsful, “Papa always used to describe the outside to me before he left, it sounds so wonderful…”
And that is how I ended up with a nurse to take care of Torden while I was collecting supplies.
***
Turns out her name is Aedirboa, and she is able to create glowing orbs of light, using some sort of dancing lights-based power. Her father fled to find a way to get her to safety, since any slave with psychic powers is executed by their stone giant masters, rather than risk a slave uprising. So she promised her father not to use her “snow lights” as he called them, until she was free of the slave pits…the little lawyer figured out that being down the “cursed tunnel” counted.
And she would NOT stop making jokes at my sore ass’s expense for the entire trip, after she saw me rubbing the boot print. I got to get me a set of shit-kickers like that, for when I find the fucker that sent me here… I got my revenge though, after she nearly pissed herself in fear at the sight of the sun! She was so scared of the giant burning ball of light in the no-ceiling sky, that I don’t think she even REMEMBERS the climb down.
I showed her how to make mushroom broth, feed, and care for Torden. Then the next morning she shows ME how to make it taste edible, before I head back to the slave pits with one of his dreadlock braids in hand. By the time I come back that evening with extra goat pelts and food, I find that she has cleaned up and organized the ogre’s filthy hovel-hole. Then she shows me her prize, a woven-gold ring that she found in the ogre’s filthy fur bed before tossing it out. Afterwards I take her outside when the sun is setting, point out the location of Askför, and then spend time pointing at the stars and trying to explain what they are. Sometime that night she hands me the ring as a present. I don’t have the heart to give it back to her, since she was happy-crying and smiling while she did so.
Then out of curiosity I cast detect magic and realize it is a MAGIC ring…but I have no idea WHAT the enchantment it (not many magic items in the village to practice on). I explain this to her and ask if she wants it back, but just end up keeping it as we talk late into the night about the differences between MY magic and HER “mind-magic” psychic powers. Its hours later as I explain the differences in the types of magic as I remember them from The Harrowed Earth, and what tricks and options for psychic powers that I still remember reading about all these years later (admittedly not much, since it wasn’t my jam), comparing them to what SHE can do. Eventually her fuel tank hits “E”, and she passes out after experimenting with her “DANCING lights”, then I follow suit. It’s nice to have somebody I can be ME around, without the ghost of Laugash clouding their perceptions.
***
Weeks pass, and eventually I am only making trips into the slave pens every few days to refresh our water and food supplies, having gotten all the other stuff on the checklist that the three of us need to get back to the village. I haven’t tried making or test-firing a firearm since the ogre, for fear of alerting the giants to our location, or awkward questions from Aedirboa and Torden (when he EVENTUALLY wakes up). Meanwhile, ‘Boa and I have gone through tic-tac-toe and even checkers in our early days, and are playing chess on a board made from pieces of carved wood while I’m trying to explain the concept of a collectable card game to her, when Torden FINALLY wakes up, “Will the two of you STOP talking for a bit, so I can sleep?”
Ok, he’s not AWAKE-awake, just grousing on the edges of wakefulness in his coma and nearly re-breaking a rib as he tries to roll over. I end up having to use some homemade sleeping dust on him to make him pass out before he undoes WEEKS worth of healing! I leave the dust with Aedirboa and show her how to dose him up if he starts moving again, explaining WHY, before going back to the tree line to get the makings of more as well fresh small game. Looks like it will be a few days until he is healed enough to ACTUALLY awaken, so I can explain to him why rolling onto a broken rib is a BAD idea.
At least on my next trip into the forges, I find thar his present is finally ready. I also manage to snag a few pounds of refined Mithril for myself, by using prestidigitation to make it look like pig iron. Turns out “least wish” actually CAN make valuable objects
A few days later I am able to get Torden to actually WAKE-wake up, and explain that is has been a couple moons since we were captured, most of them with him on his sickbed. A quick poke in the ribs is all it takes to convince him to listen to his doctor, and STAY there until he heals. Then I show him his present, an Adamantine hammer, its long faces carved with knotted scrollwork around their edges later filled with molten iron, “Hey brother, when you can swing THIS comfortably, then we can head home…ok?” Yeah it’s an obvious bribe, but he’s a 14 year old kid full of piss and pride…a bribe WORKS!
He is mistrustful of Aedirboa at first, but after watching us laugh and play with our magic, her making lights that I try to shoot down with acid splash, he comes to a grudging respect of her as, “Good for Laughash.”
And time marches on.
Eventually he is able to breath without any pain, and rapidly regains his muscle mass while depopulating the local squirrel and bird population, until he can easily swing his big-ass mass of skull-mashing metal. After depositing our travel supplies at the start of the next trail below us, we manage to climb down and start our trek back.
Not much to say about the trip, other than the universe STILL hates me, as I seem to run face-first into every skunk on the way! But at least eventually we find the stream that leads back to town, making it go relatively quickly and hassle-free after that. Torden even gets to introduce a boar to “Mister Slammy”, Mjolnir not having caught on, which feeds us for much of the rest of the trip. No gnolls though, maybe they are south near the coast for the season?
And yes, Borden was FURIOUS when we got back! But despite my fears, he was angry at TORDEN and not ME. He just thanks me for getting his “fool of a goat-minded son” back home. Huh, for a change when Torden gets us in trouble, I’m NOT the one mucking out the goat pens, “If you are going to think with your manhood like a goat, and think you can live in the MOUNTAINS like one, you might as well SMELL like them!” I try my best not to laugh whenever I bring him his meals for the full tenday of his punishment, I swear, but I usually fail. Even afterwards, whenever he gets too full of himself, I find that saying something like, “Yes brother, but I hear that the goats need some tending” will usually deflate his princely ego nicely.
Aedirboa winds up living with Venradik, since none of the villagers will take in an obvious “savage-born” kid, and the tribesmen think that her being a slave makes her bad luck. Venradik, however, couldn’t give two wet shits (and we BOTH know why), so he takes HER in as his new live-in apprentice since I’m not able to play doctor-in-training much of the time. At least I now have an honest-to-god FRIEND in the settlement now, even though much of the time she’s just picking my brain for training ideas. Plus, Torden and I have a relationship I haven’t had since my ACTUAL brother died, I didn’t know how much I missed that kind of comradery until now.
Oh, the ring? Turns out to be in essence a ring of stashing with a 5-pound capacity, capable of holding one object (or container) up to that weight outside of space/time until it is called upon by the wearer. Nothing was stored inside of it though, at least not YET…