Despite Sean’s desire to get on the proverbial road, the pair ended up making all the way back to their new hilltop territory by the time Gel finished explaining the situation to Longbeard. The older, burly, and still impressively-bearded giant had spent the entire time they had been gone sweating at the edge of the oasis, and so reassuring him – and by extension, their new tribe – had felt like a worthy use of another hour or so.
Especially since the dune giant had listened to Gel’s prior orders, and stuffed away all of their loot from the ant colony into a single, massive leather sack Longbeard had brought for just that purpose. Sean and Gel had both said their farewells to the ants, who had responded with happy screeches at finally being allowed to go home. The hardy insects had scurried back the way they had all come not seconds later, apparently needing nothing in the way of directions.
Sean didn’t begrudge them it. He still felt bad about the one ant who had died in the original attack on the oasis. He knew the queen was unlikely to fault them for its death, but it still wasn’t a memory he cared much for.
Once they had reached the hilltop’s base, and Longbeard was finally convinced they weren’t all about to be wiped out by a vengeful druid – a fact for which the dune giant seemed incredibly grateful – the former chief offered up a proposal. One Sean hadn’t been expecting.
“New chief want tour?” The dune giant asked, speaking in Beast via a means that almost appeared to be a simplified type of sign language. Sean found it interesting that even though this language used ‘intent’, at least according to Gel, the unique speech mannerisms of giants still bled through. “Longbeard can show clan to chief. Show resources, buildings. Mine. May change chief’s plans. May not. Good to know, either way.
“I have no issue with that.” Sean told Gel, noting they still had a full ‘tank’ of mana as well as a lingering buff from the oasis water increasing his natural restoration rate. “We’ve got time for a tour. Been curious what the rest of this place looks like, actually.”
“I know, right?” Gel enthused, immediately conveying their assent to the former chief, who looked rather pleased as the pair of them trudged up the hilltop together. “Especially that underground section. Warabe made it sound like he blew it up, but there are still a few sand wurms around. If we can have them repair it, maybe we can start breeding them again.”
“To use in the attack on Bancroft, or for you to eat?” Sean quipped, only half-joking.
“It can be both!” Gel replied, defensively. “Though I am getting hungry. I hope this tour has meals included.”
“Thought you weren’t eating their food, since they’d all but run out.”
Gel grumbled in response, clearly having only remembered that very fact just now. “Fine. You’re right, no meals on the tour… but we’re killing something the second we leave here! The first thing we see, even! No matter what it is, deal?”
“Deal.” Sean agreed, figuring they could probably handle just about anything nearby given what he had seen so far. Not to mention they would likely have the giants on hand if they needed ready backup. “We’re going to need the experience anyway, I want to make as much use Trimleaf soup’s buff as possible. That’s free health. I’m not letting it go to waste.”
“Don’t worry. I never let anything go to waste.” Gel promised.
“Uh-huh.” Sean was about to take another good-natured jab at his friend, when they finally made it over the side of the hilltop. To his surprise, the camp looked far better than it had before.
Gone were the corpses of the slain giants and former chief, and not just because Gel had only left their enormous bones behind. The dune giants had repurposed their fallen comrades’ remains, using the femurs, spines, and other large bones to prop up new tents. A relatively neat stack of the remaining smaller (by comparison) bones were set next to a giant wearing a long, brown apron. He was whittling down a handful of bones that looked like they had once been fingers – phalanges? – with a sharp stone, shaping them into roughly similar-sized nails.
Morbid, but effective. Sean thought, watching the practice. Gotta make use of everything out here, I guess.
Two more giants approached them, both armored and carrying stone clubs that appeared far better cared for than the rest, and Longbeard had a quick conversation with the pair.
“Looks like they caught the one who ran.” Gel reported, sounding disinterested. His next sentence told Sean why. “Tore him apart to use as bait for some traps they have set up out in the sands.”
“Clever.” Sean noted, appreciatively. This tribe’s penchant for preventing waste was really starting to appeal to him. It was brutal, sure. But then again, nature always is. What was it uncle used to say? “Not gettin’ yer hands dirty is a luxury. And not one most can afford.”
Shaking his head clear of such thoughts, Sean returned to the conversation. He indicated the two giants with his hand, figuring it was probably time he started to get to know their new tribe.
“What are their names?” He asked.
“Bamf and Baub.” Gel said immediately, and it was only the complete lack of humor in the slime’s voice that kept Sean from thinking he was joking. “They’re the two best warriors we have left.”
“Bamf and Baub?” Sean couldn’t help himself. Those did not sound like giant names. Then again, I do only have two others to compare them to. Maybe they are.
“Mhm.” Gel said casually, still following the ongoing conversation between the three that Sean couldn’t understand. To him, it just sounded like a whole lot of rumbling interspersed with grunts here and there. Mostly grunts, actually. “Warriors in their tribe are often named after their fighting styles, and usually earn that name at a young age. Bamf earned his from the sound his club makes – he carved it himself – and Baub earned his from the way he moves when he fights. He literally bobs his head in battle. It’s actually really amusing to watch, like one of those birds that ducks their head a lot? Seems to work for him, though.”
Sean didn’t know what to say to that. Especially because Gel’s delivery of that explanation had been so seamless it had to be the truth. He decided to just roll with it and change the subject.
“Right on.” Sean said, clapping his hands together as Bamf and Baub trudged off in another direction. “Now, where’s the first stop on this tour?”
The first stop, it turned out, was right where they were. Sean got to officially meet the rest of the tribe, those who weren’t out on hunts anyway. He found their names tended to fall into one of two categories: two-word names like Pale Eye or Broad Shoulder (which seemed sensible enough, if you thought about it from a giant’s perspective), or single-word he found completely ridiculous, like Mehh, Snozz, or Bohwl. There was even one named ‘Strong Hand’ who, true to his name, had a ridiculously muscled right arm for some reason.
Sean didn’t question it. He simply let Gel do the talking, and took general stock of their new tribe. Most were either hunters, warriors, or wurm handlers. Two were what amounted to generalist crafters for the tribe, and there was a singular cook left – though he was out on a hunt right now given the food shortage.
One thing the gelaton also noticed was that there weren’t any female giants left in the clan. He voiced that concern to Gel, but the slime assured him it wouldn’t be an issue. Giants apparently had fairly long lifespans, and were generally solitary creatures. Gel assured him that if company became an issue, the dune giants would handle searching for it themselves. Something Sean was entirely in favor of.
After the meet-and-greet, Longbeard spent the next five or so minutes showing them around the remainder of camp. Sean immediately gave up Big Smash’s old quarters to Longbeard, which Gel explained as the pair not actually needing somewhere to sleep. The former chief’s broad smile at the news was visible even through his dark beard. There wasn’t much else noteworthy about the tour up top, though Sean did ensure that the gear Longbeard had brought back for them was piled away inside one of the now-unused tents.
He fully intended to come back and ascertain the value of their hoarded weapons and assorted goods, but doing so would require he have some level of comparison. Gel had offered to appraise the lot and help him decide which were worth trading away, but they had ultimately agreed that a trip to the city first was the better way to handle it.
After that, Longbeard led them back down to the hilltop’s base where the cave entrance was. On the way, Sean and Gel shared more of their plans for the settlement. Basically, they wanted Longbeard to prep for a future battle with Bancroft while doing whatever was needed in order for them to earn more territory node points. Which, according to what they had learned from Auntie Ta, essentially boiled down to: improve the camp, stockpile resources, explore the mine, and either find more giants to recruit or find another type of monster to join the encampment.
Unsurprisingly, once Sean and Gel emphasized that they would keep orbs and eyes out for goods to bring back from Dervash to help with all of this, Longbeard was more than on board with the plan. He even appeared relieved. It seemed the former chief had been more than a little concerned that his tribe’s new chieftains were going to abuse their new power or simply abandon the tribe as a whole – and so anything above that admittedly low bar was a positive step forward in his eyes.
“You’re sure he won’t try to take over once we’re gone?” Sean asked Gel a few minutes after they had stepped into the cave system. “I’d claim being chief again if my new leaders just up and waltzed out ten minutes after taking over.”
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“He can’t.” Gel said simply. “He’s already lost once, the others wouldn’t follow him.”
“But they’ll listen to him tell them what we want them to do.”
“Yup!” Gel’s crimson whip whirled around, a pair of eyeballs at the end gawking around the cave as they continued on. “Wow, there’s a lot more room in here than I was expecting.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” Sean said, but then he stopped himself from arguing the point. Bringing his own logic from back home into this situation wasn’t going to get him anywhere. “But it’s their deal, I guess. And yeah, it is roomy in here. How far is it to the sand wurm spot?”
Gel exchanged a few words with Longbeard, who seemed to find it easier not to converse in Beast while holding a lit torch.
“We’re almost there!” The slime reported back, a merry cheer to his voice. “Warabe collapsed the main breeding ground with whatever he did earlier, so they’re using one of the side tunnels to hold the rest of the eggs for now.”
“Eggs?” It took Sean a second to process that. He knew worms laid eggs, but he hadn’t really thought to make the connection of wurms laying eggs. “How many are left?”
“That many.” Gel said, as they turned left down a branching corner in the tunnel.
Sean’s jaw dropped open in shock as he surveyed the sight.
Ahead of them, a dune giant with leather-wrapped hands was busy scooping out earth with a makeshift bone-and-stone shovel. When he had made a sizable hole, the giant rolled a pale, almost entirely see-through egg the size of a nightstand into it. With a grunt, the giant set about burying the egg halfway to the top. That act, in and of itself, was nothing too surprising.
What had gotten him though, was that there wasn’t just one buried egg. There were dozens, if not hundreds of them all half-submerged into the earth. Most also had several inches of sand dusting their tops or piled around their sides, and Sean saw a half dozen of the fully grown wurms slowly making their way up and down the tunnel as if checking on their spawn.
Longbeard had started talking again, but Sean still couldn’t understand the giant so he ignored him. Instead, the gelaton’s mind raced. They didn’t just have some wurms at their disposal. If all of these eggs hatched? And they managed to raise them up?
We’ll have an army.
Sean’s dreams of collapsing Bancroft’s mansion via tunnel-based warfare plummeted back underground once Gel started talking.
“They take about a year to hatch, and have to be kept warm… but away from the actual sun.” Gel explained, clearly passing along the highlights of Longbeard’s speech to him. “Sounds like they grow pretty fast once they hatch, though. If they do. The tribe uses them as another source of food whenever they can’t catch enough elsewhere.”
“That’s a… lot of eggs.” Sean understated heavily. His mind was already filled with questions. How often did the wurms lay eggs? How many at a time? Could they eat one? He shook his head. We don’t have time to learn all the ins and outs here, we’ve got places to be.
“Mmmm… Delicious.” Gel announced, having apparently thought of one of the same questions, and decided to answer it for himself. The slime’s crimson whip continued to push its way into the soft, membrane-like outer shell of a nearby egg as its interior was consumed. “It tastes like eyes, Sean. Only with a hint of marmlat, and a dash of left toe. The big one, not any of the smaller ones. Those are never as juicy.”
Rolling his orbs at his friend’s voracious appetite, Sean waited until the slime was done before following Longbeard back down the tunnels once more. As they walked, Sean tried to sense a change in the ambient mana around them. The difference was sometimes subtle, and sometimes not. After the revelation of a death-mana-filled cave somewhere inside the ant colony, the gelaton had honestly been hoping to find something similar here. The territory hex’s description had listed “Death” as one of its three mana aspects, after all. That, Life, and Chaos.
And yet, as they continued down the often winding tunnels towards the salt mine, Sean found he couldn’t actually feel anything. There was no vibrant presence like back at the oasis, no sense of pervasive calm like he usually felt around death mana, and no repulsive feeling like he would have expected if they had found a tunnel riddled with life mana for some reason.
The air was simply still, and for lack of a better word, empty.
At least, it felt that way until they made it into the salt mine proper. His bones shivered slightly as they passed outcropping after outcropping of salt jutting out from the rocky earth. The passageway was huge, having been dug out by giants, and to Sean it looked like the veins of salt were determined not to be dismissed. They were massive, easily more than a dozen feet across, but all Sean could focus on was the feeling he got from them. A sense of unease was crawling down his spine the further in they went, and the gelaton wasn’t the only one affected.
Longbeard slowed to a stop and spoke up, his voice subdued and soft even in the rumbling language of his kin.
“He says this is as far as we should go, and I for one am in complete agreement.” Gel translated immediately, and Sean could pick up how unsettled the slime felt through their bond. “This is more salt than anybody should ever have, for any reason, and I want it to be known that this being our first territory’s only resource is a cruel joke that I want no part of.”
“What’s the deal down here?” Sean asked, ignoring his friend’s commentary as Longbeard turned and began walking back. The gelaton extended his right hand to place his palm on one of the outcroppings of salt. Immediately, he felt that same sense of unease drift up through his hand. Which didn’t make sense. It wasn’t glowing. “Does salt have life mana in it, or something?”
That wouldn’t explain why Longbeard was looking every bit as trouble as they were, but it was all he could think of. The gelaton felt a loss here. Everything in this world seemed to have hidden connections to everything else, and he wanted to figure this one out.
“Nope.” Gel said quickly, his crimson body retreating up Sean’s white bone arm. “Salt in its unprocessed form doesn’t have any mana in it. You have to break it up into small chunks and mix other materials in for that. If you’re asking why it feels like you shouldn’t be touching it, it’s because you shouldn’t. Salt doesn’t naturally retain mana, it repels mana.”
The slime’s tone had taken on that same hint of recitation it always did when he was quoting a memory, and so Sean removed his hand from the outcropping as Gel continued.
“What you’re feeling is your body telling you why I was right the first time we encountered this stuff back at Dry Run - salt is pure evil and we shouldn’t be messing with this much of it at once. Your hand is probably tingling right now, and that is not a good thing. Check your mana.”
Confused, and a little concerned now given the shift in Gel’s tone to one of dire warning, Sean did just that. To his surprise, his HUD showed his current mana was… exactly what it had been earlier. Sean had checked it when they had come down here. The number hadn’t changed.
“My mana’s fine. What’re you–”
“It’s fine for now.” Gel corrected. “If you’d kept your hand on that stuff, I guarantee you would have started to lose some.”
Sean took several steps back towards Longbeard, shaking his skull at this sudden turn of events. Why is literally everything in this world trying to kill me? How does a block of salt push your mana out? Does that mean–
Sean’s line of thought derailed his concern over losing mana, turning instead to the incredible opportunity this mine had just opened up for them.
“Gel, have Longbeard ensure there’s at least one of the tribe down here each day mining whatever salt he can grab.” Sean commanded, feeling his excitement build. “If all we need to repel mana is big slabs of salt, then we just found the perfect counter to fighting a mage.”
The slime was silent for a moment after passing the message on, and it wasn’t until they were back out of the mine that Gel spoke up again.
“I want you to know that even if salt somehow helps us kill Bancroft, that’s not going to change my opinion of it.” Gel declared. “Also, how are we going to even use that much salt? I know you’re getting stronger each level, but a slab of any kind of rock is still heavier than you might think. We can’t exactly carry all that into battle. How are we supposed to counter Bancroft with it?”
“I don’t know.” Sean freely admitted. “But that’s not the point, we can either experiment with it ourselves later or see if someone in Dervash has the answer we’re after.”
“I did not sign up for salt experiments that don’t include food, Sean.” Gel stated flatly as they headed back out of the tunnels. “You know my stance on this.”
“The point.” Sean continued, resisting the urge to grind his teeth. “Is that we can stockpile a potentially valuable resource now, one we can figure out how best to use later. We might not even need to use it like that, maybe Dervash or the oasis will trade us for it. For now, I just want to make sure we don’t let it go to waste.”
“Oh.” Gel said simply before finally acknowledging his point. “Alright, that makes sense.”
The pair of them were silent for the rest of the walk out. At the entrance they made a few last minute arrangements with Longbeard before bidding the giant a good day, and making their way out into the desert once more.
“How much salt do you think we can trade for food in the city?” Gel asked suddenly. “The exchange rate is probably poor, but any trade for it is technically our gain either way so I propose we look into that once we arrive.”
Sean’s soundless laughter clattered around the dunes for a moment, and he was about to respond when the sight of something beyond a distant dune stopped him in his tracks. The gelaton’s burning orbs nearly popped out of his skull as Sean stared in sheer disbelief at something he had never expected to see.
Gel’s far more audible mirth split the air as the slime cackled uproariously while pointing at the very first creature they had encountered since leaving the hilltop.
“Hahah, you said the first one!” The slime reminded his best friend. “You promised! Now quick, help me figure out how to kill it!”
“Help you kill it?” Sean echoed, dumbfounded. “How would you even–”
“I have no idea! But we have to try!” Gel practically shouted with glee as a crimson battle-axe formed in Sean’s right hand. The slime seemed impervious to his friend’s incredulity, taking in an enormous gulp of air before bellowing a single word out across the sands.
“Chaaarrrrrrrrrge!”