14 - TALKING

The hero talked at large. Mateus needed someone to confide to, and to his surprise he found that someone in the little Tommy beside him. The boy had come to rest his head on the hero’s shoulder, and this little action filled him with immense joy. His soft ears ticked his skin a bit, but it was pleasant. It made him feel warm, and loved. Happy.

Then, after a while, he could hear the boy snore softly beside him. He looked at the cute little thing, then made a soft mattress with his nanites, transmuting them into normal matter so that they would keep, and gently placed the sleeping body on it. He covered him with warm furs he also made, and tucked him in.

For some reason Computer knows to make a lot of stuff it’s never seen before. He thought, but Computer did not reply to the veiled taunt. It had its mysteries, and Mateus could not hope to uncover them all immediately. What mattered what that it was on his side. Checking on the boy, he smiled softly, and then set to work.

He went to the wagon where he had loaded up all the inert nanites, and looked at the cubes there. They were dark and grey, lifeless without their connection to him that made them work. Around, scattered on the ground, there still were the many weapons the merchants had: cutlasses and swords mainly, but also daggers and shields. When he made the cubes, he absorbed their clothes into his mass when he consumed the bodies, but he had left all the metallic objects behind.

Approaching the nanites that were idly waiting in their cubed form on the wagon, he had an idea. He picked up all of the metallic objects from the ground and tossed them on a pile on top of the cubes. Then he touched one of them and all the cubes joined together into a single one, coming to life. Greedily, the cube accepted the new matter as input, and the swords sank into it without a sound, never to be seen again.

“Well, if I could make metal items out of nanites, it’s only fair that the opposite is also true.” He said out loud, but then placed a hand on his mouth and slowly turned to see if his voice had woken Tommy up.

He sighed in relief as he saw that no, the boy was still sleeping. Fortunately, the large cube of nanites was digesting the input materials in complete silence, although slowly. He could see the tendrils of nanites coming up to cover the weapons that were resting on the top of the pile, looking like dark spikes growing out of themselves before liquefying and melting the weapons. After the process was complete, he removed his hand from the now much bigger cube, and its inner light dimmed and the whole thing went inert once again.

Computer, how much mass is in those cubes? He asked, only thinking the question rather than saying it out loud.

550 kilograms.

Good. With the 200 more he had on himself he had a good store of materials now.

All around, the forest was clear and silent. There was a line of thicker bushes that had survived the coming of winter, the same bushes from where he stalked the camp a few hours earlier, but beyond them he could faintly make out the barren forest floor, were barely a few plants here and there dared be green during the harsh winter. So much happened, in so little time. From the loud and cheerful atmosphere of the camp barely a few hours before, to a deserted place of cold and dark. The fires had died out, and although he could see very well in the darkness, it felt cold and scary out here.

This reminded him of another peculiarity of his now machine body: he didn’t feel cold anymore. Before, he used to quite dislike winter, and the cold it brought, but now that the cold was no longer a problem it was like discovering the beauty of the season all over again. Maybe this camp was not scary and lifeless. If he thought of it not as the place where he massacred the merchants… well, this served the opposite purpose.

He got up, and went back to the sleeping wolf-kin. Around his, the oppressiveness of the place seemed to lift somehow. It was fascinating, the calm tranquility of the winter landscape where, even without snow, silence reigned supreme. Maybe he could relax and empty his mind here, for a while. He sighed, and closed his eyes.

Far above them, barely lower than the low-hanging clouds, a peculiar magical formation in the shape of an eye observed and, after a while, vanished.

The hours passed in silence.

When morning came, the first light of the sun shook him out of his downward spiral of self-blame. He heard the boy stir beside him, and he knew he would have to be strong now. Not for himself, but for Tommy. He still didn’t know anything about the young boy: where he came from, why he was alone in the forest at night, nothing.

After making breakfast appear, he waited for the him to start eating before he asked any questions.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

He was wolfing down his food, but stopped when he glanced up and saw the hero looking at him.

“You don’t eat, do you?” he asked.

“No, I don’t need to. But I can, if you want. In fact, let’s eat together.” He said, and made another portion appear from his nanites. Eating it simply recycled the converted mass back into usable nanites inside his body, so it wasn’t a problem. And, with so much stored mass, there was no need to be grumpy.

He had worried about potential health problems associated with eating nanites, but when he asked Computer about it, he was told not to worry because as with the other materials he could make with his nanites, as long as he didn’t convert them back into microscopic robots, they would functionally be the same as normal matter. This eased his worries, and also gave him a few ideas.

After a few minutes while they ate together, the hero spoke again.

“So…” he said, awkwardly. “What were you doing in the forest at night like that?”

Tommy looked at him. He shifted in place, and Mateus was already feeling bad for asking such questions. But if he wanted to help the kid, he had to know what he was dealing with.

“I had nowhere else to go. No place to call home anymore.”

“But—there was a village of wolf-kin like you just a few miles down the road.”

“Yeah…” He looked down for a moment. “I come from there.”

“Can’t you go back?”

He shook his head lightly. “Why, what happened?” the hero asked.

“I was hungry. Always so hungry, I could barely move. I lived in the streets, trying to be as invisible as I could. And it worked, but there was nothing to eat. When winter came, I had no choice but to sneak inside wherever I saw an open window. To steal some bread, something. One day, I was caught. They didn’t recognize me, fortunately, but they banished me from the village. If I ever came back, they said…” He sobbed. “Please,” he said, looking at the hero in the eye. “Please let me come with you.”

He paused for a moment. “You have seen what I am. How can you ask to come?”

“I saw what you did and what you are, but I also saw why you did it and what values motivated your actions. You went against everyone, just to save me. That much is more than enough for me to know that you truly are a hero. I don’t care if people will call you a monster, or advise me to stay away from you: I know the truth. You are you, and what you are made of does not define your value as a person.”

Mateus felt like hugging the little thing. But, Tommy was so small and frail that he feared he would hurt him. Surely, the boy had to eat now that he was with him. And thus, without even thinking about it, he had already accepted Tommy as a companion in his travels. He was already picturing his hair, ears and tail clean and brushed, and his hollowness filled up by many a good meal.

“You want to come with me, then?”

“Yes.” He said, voice full of motivation. “I will earn my place, and pay you back for all you’ve done for me.”

A faint smile crept on Mateus’ face. “There is no such need. But you can come.”

And with that, all of his worries went away like the morning mist under the shining light of the sun. After they finished eating, they boarded the wagon with the large cube in the back, and they went. The horses pulling it seemed not to mind the increased weight. They were many more than usual as well, because Mateus could not in his good heart abandon the horses pulling the other wagons in the clearing, like he instead did with the wagons themselves.

Digesting the selected wagons will take 2 days 3 hours.

Mateus had asked Computer is he should eat the wagons as well, and only received this message as an answer. In the end, he decided it was not worth waiting so long. He wanted to go to the capital, after all, without wasting too much time.

As they went, Tommy whistled a merry tune that seemed to warm the very heart, while the sun shone upon the road. They would reach Pyee in maybe two days, going at a relaxed pace and enjoying the journey. They didn’t have to worry about anything, because all their necessities could easily be taken care by the nanites.

The wagon went up and down the hills, through the plains and the prairies. On the right a few stretches of farmland were starting to be seen in places where the wild had been tamed by people. A few ditches, lined with trees, carried the water and separated the different fields, and the road was sided with large evergreens and a few berry bushes here and there.

“You know, even if I’m like this, I sometime have dreams. They are not as they were before, of course, but still. I dream, and see.”

Tommy perked up his ears. “When did you dream?”

“Not last night, for sure. It was back the last time I slept. It was in your village, and I saw… something I cannot quite explain. But it was not the last time I saw. I always see things, now, as if peering behind a sort of veil that cannot be pierced. Or that requires some sharper tools to be pierced.”

“What did you see?”

Mateus chuckled. “It was odd, and beautiful. I’m not sure I can even describe it well. I saw a place, far away and yet so close, where the ingenuity of humans brought light into the night. A realm where the dark was banished, where men had vanquished the demons of the dark and shone their brightest hope. I saw them harness the power of the nature, harness the sun, and the wind, and the dark powers of the depths. And they all were tamed, and made into white, warm, safe light.”

“Men? Were they all humans?”

“Yes, they were.” The hero replied. He turned to face the young demi-human. “Why, do you know of such a place?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I think I heard of it somewhere, though. Maybe in the nighttime stories my mother used to tell me? But I always thought they all talked of humans because she heard them from the humans. She used to travel a lot, visit the cities of the kingdom, and she brought back with her stories from far away.”

Mateus smiled. “Thank you for sharing that.” He said, then turned to gaze upon the far horizon, where the city of Pyee was about to appear. Plumes of smoke could already be seen above the far hills, where beneath them the many fires of countless homes were burning hot to stave off the chill of the incoming night.