The rusty lump of improperly forged metal clattered to the floor, defeated - by me. Skullcrushers to failure. It was a functional exercise, but… shit.

Couldn’t they at least stick a handle on the damn thing?

I was all out of juice with the knife as well. For some strange reason, Stella had decided not to come play today.

Whyever would she be hesitant to join me in a dark, secluded basement once again?

I winced.

It’s not like anything bad happened last time… she should be on my side!

With my workout completed, I now faced the classic meathead’s dilemma: should I take the path of hygiene, and wash myself off immediately? Or should I take the path of POWER, and gorge myself on protein while my catabolic window was still fully open?

It was a real conundrum. Somewhere back in Apis, Socrates and Aurelius were armwrestling.

On Earth, this wouldn’t have been much of a question - a shower only takes 10 minutes. I could have my rotisserie chicken and eat it too. Medieval kingdoms tend to be less convenient. To wash off, I’d have to walk halfway across town, bathe, and come back - that’d be an hour minimum. Most kids at school barely cleaned themselves anyway, so it’s not like I’d bother anybody if I got my food in first.

Decisions, decisions…

----------------------------------------

“...and that’s how it went down. I swear! If you want to confirm it, go talk to the girl! She’ll tell you the same thing!” I finished.

I was getting really damn tired of talking to people who obviously hated my guts. For what it’s worth though, I thought Owen and Allison were decent human beings, so when I saw them sitting together at the bougie cafeteria, I couldn’t help but plunk down next to them to catch up.

“Which girl was this?” Allison asked. She still looked suspicious, but when I’d shown her part of my chastity belt and explained that I couldn’t unlock it, the utter derision in her demeanor had subsided, like I’d gone from a big ugly rat to a small ugly spider.

“Arrabella - she’s Jerith’s fiancee.”

Allison’s face darkened. “I know her. That girl is trouble.”

Home free!

I mentally thanked Arrabella for whatever she’d done to antagonize Allison.

“If you could put in a good word with Stella on my behalf, that would be appreciated.”

“I’ll see what I can do, Bradley.”

You can just say Brad if we’re on good… passable terms with each other…

Sigh.

“Where’s the rest of the crew?” I asked.

“They’re horsing around with some wooden swords in the Coliseum.” said Owen.

“Burt says he’s gonna kick your ass in training.” Allison added helpfully.

“Noted.”

Turns out, Allison had opted to take classes in cooking, farming, medicine, and “emergency aid” - a.k.a. battlefield surgery. God damn.

Meanwhile, Owen was doing mathematics, finance, commerce, politics, and geography. Another fuckin’ nerd.

“I’m also studying the material from other classes in the library - this place is amazing!” he recounted breathlessly. “They’ve even got books about chess!”

Huh, didn’t know we had a library…

I wonder if this is how Spud and Beck feel when they talk to average people?

My two-class course load suddenly seemed like an extreme underachievement. I had an urge to double-check the school’s course offerings, to see if there was anything else that might be relevant to my ultimate quest. My scores on the diagnostic exam were so uncommonly high that Wylie had suggested I try taking the mathematics final exam. What I needed more than anything else, though, was a class with Jerith - out of everybody I knew, he was closest to the King.

Then I smelled my pits and decided I had more important things to attend to first.

----------------------------------------

It was early afternoon when I finally emerged from the bathhouse, but despite the soothing effect of warm water, I was ill at ease. I had no classes today. No items on my agenda. No friends.

On Earth, I lived for days like this. I would have fired up my search engine, entered BIT TITTY FITNESS MILFS SUCK A LUCKY- and it would have been off to the races. I was making good money, eating good food, and staying in shape. So it really didn’t matter if I was doing anything else with my time. Because no matter how much time I wasted, there would never be any consequences. It wasn’t the kind of addiction that would ever zero out my bank account, or make me run naked through the streets, screaming at nothing. And because I was alone, I had nobody around me to tell me where all the stagnation was going to lead. I had an inkling of what was going to happen, and it occasionally kept me up at night. But I was only 31, I still had plenty of time to get my life together, right?

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To make the voices shut up, I decided to walk to the other end of the city. When I reached the smaller market square, I just kept going, until finally, the western stretch of the city’s walls towered above me. The gate was open, but when I tried to walk through, the guard stopped me.

“You have a totem, sir?” he asked. Most people in the city wore their little chess pieces around their necks - I guess it was for situations like this.

“No sir, I’m a student at the school. Haven’t gotten one yet.”

The guard shook his head. “Can’t let you through, then. Killing field is this way.”

“Really?”

“Yup. Too many young hotshots try to go out and make a name for themselves, just to wind up dead.”

“Can’t I just find another gate?”

“Sure! Have a good look around, get to know the city a bit. You’ll find that every gate and bridge leading to the western bank of the river has the same rule.”

Oh well… It’s not like I had anything particular to do anyway.

Just as I was about to turn back, the guard perked up. “Oh, hello there Jerith!”

I turned around, and sure enough, there he was, donning the traditional school uniform, but without his signature glass of wine.

“Hey there Paul!” Jerith said. Then he noticed me. “Bradley! Perfect timing! You wanna see something cool?”

“Uhmmm… yeah, sure.”

“He’s with me, Paul.” Jerith beamed at the guard, giving him a thumbs-up. Paul nodded curtly.

“You kids have fun out there!” Paul grinned.

Alright! Noble connections for the win!

Jerith and I walked through the gate, and across a drawbridge on the other side that spanned a deep moat. Surprisingly, there wasn’t a cluster of buildings on this side of the walls, the way there was on the eastern side of the city. It was just a single paved road that led out into the great beyond, curving through the prairieland. Way out in the distance, I could see a forest, and…

Oh my.

After a while on Alterra, you stop noticing things like the gigamoon, the contrails, and the periodic deep rumblings of distant impacts. But on this side of the city, without any structures to obstruct my vision, I could see that a huge concentration of the contrails led to the forest. The prairie itself was heavily pockmarked with craters.

“Wow! So that’s the killing field, huh.” I said. Jerith led the way, taking a quick left after the moat, walking along the edge.

“Yup, it’s why we don’t let people build over here - not that anyone wants to, anyway. This is why Castella’s main river is so useful - we know that if there are any problems, they’re going to come from this direction.”

I had a hint about what kinds of problems would be showing up… and I seriously doubted my ability to deal with them.

“You sure we’re safe out here?” I asked.

“Yeah, I come out here all the time! There’s always adventurers passing through this way, and if there was anything out there that they couldn’t handle… we would have known by now.”

“So, what do you do out here, anyway? Play in the mud or something?”

I had no idea what kids in this world did without video games.

“Ha! Maybe once in a while! But not today. Here we are! What do you think?”

We’d stopped in front of a huge scaffolding structure, surrounding… a huge mass of wooden beams and metal gears.

“It’s uhhh… very cool.” I answered. Basically the same response I have to those stupid chairs in a modern art museum. “What is it?”

Jerith cleared his throat: “May I humbly present: The Super Ultra Bad-Ass Sling! Also known as the SUBAS!”

“No way!” I exclaimed, suddenly invested. “This thing shoots missiles?”

“Not yet.” Jerith replied, grinning. “...but it will.”

God damn. When I was Jerith’s age, the only thing I bombed was language arts. And my enemies in Call-of-Duty. And my toilet after a night of chalupa supremes. I sure as hell wasn’t designing catapults. That’s the problem with Earth - everything’s been invented already. You think you have an original idea, like a light-up frisbee or something, and then you search for it online and find ten different companies selling it.

“We’ve just started working on building the structure of the launcher itself, but the rotating base is already complete! Wanna try it out?” Jerith asked eagerly.

“Hell yeah! What do we do?”

“It’s this wheel over here, we just have to turn it a lot.” Jerith said, pointing. The wheel he was referring to looked kind of like the captain’s wheel on one of those old-timey pirate ships, but a bit larger, and connected to a cluster of metal gears.

“Twenty rotations counterclockwise!” he announced. We each took a position on one side of the wheel. Jerith pulled his side down, while I pushed my side up (relishing the delt pump). It was surprisingly easy to turn, but before long, I’d broken a sweat. Sure enough, as we turned the wheel, a gigantic gear apparatus at the base of the structure slowly began to turn. I don’t know much about mechanisms, but the wheel must have been seriously geared-up for this whole thing to be moveable by a couple of kids. After we’d finished turning the wheel, sure enough, the structure was pointing a few degrees clockwise of where it had been pointing before.

“Wow, that’s so cool!” I congratulated Jerith. “But aren’t these gears going to get rusty if you leave them out here?”

Jerith shook his head. “We’re using a fancy new kind of metal that’s high-strength and resistant to the environment.”

“What about lubrication? Is there a way to make the wheel turn easier? And when you call out rotations, wouldn’t it be easier to call out the desired direction of the launcher, rather than the wheel?” My head was spinning. I couldn’t remember the last time something had grabbed my attention like this - that didn’t jiggle when you spanked it.

Jerith smiled broadly. “Well! If you want to know the whole story… why don’t you join Forging with me? This project will count as the final exam.”

So that’s where he’s been all this time! Hiding out in one of the trade school classes.

I hesitated, only 90 percent certain, but quickly climbing to 95.

“You’ll learn how to design components to be forged, as well as the actual forging itself.” Jared cajoled. “Is there something cool from back on your home planet that you’d want to build from metal?”

Something else…

Visions of barbells and squat racks floated through my head.

Yes!

This is exactly what I’d been looking for!

I shook Jerith’s hand.

“Alright, I’m sold. Let’s do this!” I said.

Suddenly, I had a horrible thought.

“On one condition!” I amended, pointing my hand up.

“What’s that?” asked Jerith, confused.

“Uhhh… it’s this little situation with Arrabella…” I hesitated, “You wouldn’t happen to know already, would you?”

“Yeah, she told me.” said Jerith breezily, “She said it was just a little misunderstanding, what’s the issue?”

My eyelid twitched.

Just a…

Little misunderstanding!?!

THAT FUCKING ITCHY VAGINA WHORE! WHAT THE FUCK! MY LIFE IS A SICK FUCKING JOKE!

“Uh-huh,” I said, struggling to keep my tone even. “Would you… mind if she shared that information with a few people?”