Chapter 12 - Hate this Cage

Tiba’s fingers ran over my scalp, probing for anything she missed with her shears as well as parasites that were far too common down here. Curly, brown clumps of greasy hair laid in my lap and in an expanding pool on the floor.

Already, I could feel the loose clippings sliding inside my rough spun shirt, made in the style the goblins seemed to favor. It didn’t fit properly, tight in the shoulders, loose in the belly and itchy on the best of days, but it was better than wearing rags like before. Supposedly, it came from a domesticated beast they kept penned down here in the caves.

“Feel better?” Tiba asked as she let go of my head, blowing loose hair off of her shears before placing them in her pocket.

It was certainly cooler, allowing the draft to reach my scalp again. “Yeah. Thanks a lot. It was getting really hard to clean,” I replied with only a little sourness at the memories. Bathing with a cup drawn from an ice cold underground river was less than pleasant, and it was time consuming, especially with long hair. Kuul wouldn’t allow anyone to give me a blade to cut it, so I ended up making a pair of iron shears for Tiba, and asking her to do the deed.

“I’m not saying you look good, human, but you do look better,” Hunty quipped from his stool.

“Shut up, Hunty,” I shot back, giving him the finger over my shoulder, a gesture that had spread like wildfire through goblin society once I had told them what it meant. “You look like punk broccoli anyway.”

He scratched his scalp where his mohawk met skin and scrunched up his face. “I don’t know what those words mean.”

“Uh.” I considered for a moment, trying to find the phrasing he might understand. “You’re a vegetable with bad taste.”

“That is like a plant?”

I sighed. This was going to be another one of those conversations. Still, I gave it a shot. “It’s like… a miniature tree but edible.”

Hunty’s face lit up with fascination. Goblins were strict carnivores, and my green friend found it absolutely charming that the human ate plants. Apparently, that stuff was for domesticated animals and slugs.

“A tiny tree. What does it taste like?” He asked, leaning forward and raising an eyebrow.

I thought back, trying to remember the last time I ate the stuff, back before Barrow and his reavers burned us out. “Like socks and disappointment,” I replied with a nod. “It’s better with cheese.”

Hunty scoffed. “I don’t taste like that.”

“Don’t you, though?”

Tiba jumped in before Hunty could respond to that. “I like when you two bicker like grandmothers, but I have to go. The healing house is full, and this is my break time,” she informed us as she packed her little medic bag.

“And Hunty does not taste like that,” She said before her eyes went wide, and her mouth dropped open in horror. “Wait- No. I mean- No.”

Hunty came to her rescue. “It’s nice to see you during the day,” he said, grinning and slipping an arm around Tiba’s shoulders, leaning in close to say the next part. “I see you tonight, then?”

It was dark, and these were little green people. However, I thought I detected the ghost of a blush on Tiba’s cheeks as she replied, smiling and shoving Hunty away playfully. “Yes. I see you as soon as I can. Do not be late, yeah?”

I waited until she was gone to rip my daily piece of Mendau wood from my prison, Consuming it to get my Engine on.

Devouring Grasp [5 MP/sec]

You gain knowledge of material: Mendau Wood [50/50]

Affinity upgraded: Mendau Wood: Grade E

Detect radius is now 15 ft.

+25% of mana gained from Mendau Wood that retains its original type. [Hunger]

Status gained: Engine [+2 MP/sec for 45 min]

My first E grade affinity, and it came with a curious bonus. What was this about mana type? Was I using a mana type already? There was so much I didn’t know.

“Broken ass tutorial,” I mumbled as I settled into a comfortable position. “Greetings, Chosen. I am supremely unhelpful, and I can’t wait to get you killed.” My Nali impression wasn’t great, but I didn’t care.

Hunty, of course, paid my eccentricities no mind. He considered them mostly harmless, a human thing. The bars were already growing back, thicker than ever like scar tissue. Kuul’s magic continued to prove limitless.

I sat with my back against the bars and ran a hand through my hair. I kept it shorter back on Proxis as was the style for the Clan, but this style would do for now as long as it stayed out of my eyes.

I’d been thinking of home a lot lately, the way things were, how I’d been treated.

Everyone was so obsessed with perfection. Progress.

They trained their children to fight from the moment they could walk, filled their heads with tales of Constance and her exploits. Everything everyone did was to forge themselves into weapons, all for the sake of the System.

They were so diligent and pious, they couldn’t spare a moment for the kid with the amputation or even allow their perfect progeny to associate with him, lest his condition be contagious.

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Just looking at me made people uncomfortable, as if I reminded them that this could easily have been their kid if the universe were slightly different.

Now, if I completed my tutorial and went back there, I would be whole and more capable than I was. I would be the one who was on his long path to power, and it had nothing to do with being perfect to begin with.

I imagined scenarios where I would return. Where I would walk up to my dad, and he would look at me and what I was without pity or shame.

Surprisingly, it felt wrong. Like a cheat. A shortcut to happiness. I didn’t want it.

Well, I did, but I didn’t.

I wanted that look. I wanted him to look at me and see something to be proud of, but I would know it wasn’t actually me that inspired that pride. Instead, it would be the System, random chance, another accident just like the one that made me a pariah.

No. There was no scenario where I had a happy homecoming. For the longest time, I’d just wanted to be accepted, and every waking moment was spent trying to gain that acceptance.

Now, if I made it home, I’d have that and more.

I was blessed by the System, but all my accomplishments were tainted.

A depressing but liberating prospect.

What do you do when you have nothing to prove anymore? I didn’t know. I couldn’t conceive of it, just being who I wanted to be. Free.

If you want to be free, better get on the whole ‘escape’ thing, Ryan.

Leaning forward, I placed my metal hand on the lip of the watering hole, making sure to wedge my fingers well into the grooves.

Devouring Grasp [5 MP/sec]

With a crack, the limestone came away, a chunk that fit comfortably in my palm.

“If you are making your cage bigger, maybe start with the walls” Hunty called from over my shoulder. “Unless you plan to escape through the underriver. That plan kills you, you know. There are no other holes like yours for miles downstream, and you make Tiba sad if you drown.”

I transferred my new rock over to my natural hand, closing my eyes to concentrate.

Volatility [1 MP/sec]

It was nothing like Shape. Shape I could understand.

Volatility used a completely foreign method to accomplish its goals. The ability forced the mana onto the matter, not caring for how much it could hold or what it would do. It conquered. It overwrote. It flooded into the object until I told it to stop.

Not my mana but mana from somewhere else, rushed inside. Maybe the energy came from the air, from another universe, or from the System itself. I didn’t know. Whatever it was, it was different. Wild mana. It writhed and twitched within the molecules of the stone, awaiting a chance to Do. For release. At the slightest touch, all that energy would be set free in an uncontrolled, violent instant.

With nothing else to observe through touch, I opened my eyes again.

I only charged the rock for half a second, but it glowed an angry purple already, bleeding energy from its now volatile matter.

“No, Hunty. I don’t plan to escape that way,” I said as I leaned over and tossed the rock down the hole, angling the trajectory to hit where I needed it to. “Not when I have such fine company, at least.”

The stone fell, illuminating the tunnel as it went down, down. *POW* The rock hit almost right at the water line and exploded, sending up a plume of cold mist to wet the lip of the hole and my face. After so long in the dim, the purple flash burned my eyes.

Damn.

I couldn’t see if the rock survived, whether Volatility destroyed it from the inside out or just discharged the wild mana and left the matter itself intact. My next experiment would need to be inside my cell, but I’d need to take precautions first. I’d been avoiding that after my first try at Volatility left me partially deaf and blind and with Hunty constantly rubbing his ears for the next week. Tiba didn’t thank me for that one.

“Guard change time,” Hunty announced, standing up with a groan, waiting for his replacement to come and relieve him. He danced anxiously from foot to foot, probably anticipating going to see Tiba right away.

When the other guard got there, though, the two started speaking in low tones, too quiet for me to hear. Hunty’s replacement, Iger I guessed, spoke animatedly with his hands, gesturing to body parts, waggling his fingers like they had claws. All the while, Hunty’s body language went rigid, and he gripped his spear tightly.

Then the two goblins suddenly stopped and stood up straight, spears pointed up and hafts on the ground.

After a quiet minute, Kuul stalked up to my cell door, a miserable scowl on his face. He looked older than he had when we met. His sagging skin seemed looser than before, and there were bags under his eyes that gave him an exhausted, sickly look. The fire hadn’t left his eyes though. They held a volcanic malice, not necessarily directed at me, but it was always there, threatening to explode.

The old goblin looked down at the box I’d filled with arrow heads earlier today, bending down to examine one of them. Then he dropped it and kicked the box away, hard. The tinkling sound of the metal scattering across the cave floor echoed through the cavern. The noise of the workers ceased.

Kuul leaned forward and pointed to me with a gnarled finger. “It makes better and better for many days, and then progress stops. Why?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t owe this thing an answer. Besides, Kuul already made up his mind on whatever this was, I knew. He just needed to build up to it.

Unfortunately, Hunty came to my defense. Maybe he didn’t read the old goblin like I did, or maybe he felt he knew Kuul better and could reason with him. “The human makes better and more all the time. We work him until he sleeps. The weapons are good and sharp too.”

Kuul, spared a contemptuous glance over his shoulder, but he didn’t reply directly. Instead, he glared at me as he spoke. “It is not challenged anymore, I think. Too many little things to make.” He raised his voice to make sure all those nearby could hear him as well. “The hu-man makes us rich with its iron magic, and it is good. We have food and gold and clothes, many, but things are changed. The Black Ones have come close. We lose goblins on the surface. We can’t sell our iron treasures any more,” Kuul said to them all, turning around to address the crowd more directly now.

Silence hung over the cave as the chief paused.

“Now,” he said, holding his hands out wide in challenge. “Now, we defend our homes. Now, we go to war.”

Kuul’s enthusiasm didn’t catch on. Most goblins listened silently while holding their tools or leaning on their friends. The warriors looked grim.

“Hurry and bring all you can. We get ready for a great battle, one we win. The Black Ones search for our home, and we are ready when they are within spear reach. We kill them all and send them back to the black.”

This time there was a scattered whooping shout from the workers and warriors, but Hunty just leaned on his weapon, staring at the floor pensively.

Kuul dismissed them all but my guards then approached my cell, shuffling closer until his hands were on the wooden bars he’d grown so long ago. His breath wheezed from his throat.

“It makes swords and armor now. It makes us weapons of war. If it does not, the Black Ones come, and we cannot protect it. It works as if its life is at stake. It does this or dies.”

We stared at each other then, Kuul with all the power, me increasingly short on give-a-shit.

“Who are the Black Ones?” I asked with folded arms, not breaking the staredown.

Kuul didn’t answer me, instead, calling over his shoulder. “Hunty! Tell it why it works then get it working. Poke it if it stops. I have things that need doing.” Then, to me, he said: “Work hard, and you live through this. Remember.”

When Kuul was gone, Hunty didn’t make me work. He told me to rest and get my strength back, so we could do more tomorrow. While we sat, he explained things to me, and, as he did, a heavy ball of lead settled in the pit of my stomach.

We were all going to die, and it was my fault. It was a situation all too familiar.