“Are you alright?” I asked after Vaozey hadn’t moved for around three minutes.
“I need to… sleep,” Vaozey replied unsteadily. “Thank you for the training. I’m very tired now, so if you don’t mind, I’ll just sleep right here. Just… leave me alone for a while.” That was uncharacteristically polite, I thought, not even a single expletive. As the last vestiges of flame smoldered down to embers in the fire pit, I walked back over to my initial spot with the caravan and laid down myself. Though I didn’t try to listen in, as I attempted to sleep I heard Vaozey talking to herself and breathing erratically, words too muffled to make out.
I believed it was like controlling a computer-driven tool, I thought while lying awake, Magic does work like that, but that can’t be the whole truth. For Vaozey to be able to use magic, and to be able to do it so easily, the control system must be far more complex than I thought. Instead of giving it orders it must be like… a conversation. It’s almost as though there’s an AI interpreting the thoughts in a mind, and then trying to translate them into changes in physical reality. But how could it even do that? Decoding exact thought information from a neural network is exceedingly difficult, and that doesn’t even start to cover the actual physical mechanism for interfacing with the brain.
My mind spun and spun, almost taking on a will of its own as it tried to integrate the new information and hypothesize about its possible implications. Even when I tried to sleep, it wouldn’t stop, and I wasn’t entirely sure I slept at all when I saw the first signs of sunlight. And I didn’t even manage to think of any way to apply this new knowledge, I grumbled as I heard everyone else starting to move. When I finally opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was that Vaozey was already up, sitting beside her burned-out fire pit, and staring up at the rolling gray clouds above.
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“S-so, how’d it go last night?” Koyl asked me around noon, teeth chattering. It had started raining around mid-morning, and while the rain was lighter than usual, the small droplets being blown around by the wind created a misting effect that chilled everyone’s skin more than normal rain would have. Thankfully, I could heat myself with magic. The rest of the caravan wasn’t so lucky.
“Fine,” I replied.
“She s-seems a bit p-pissed off,” Koyl remarked, looking back at Vaozey near the rear of the caravan. I glanced back as well, seeing her looking off into the distance, expression concealed by cloth as usual. “Actually, m-maybe she’s just being awkward about it. If y-you two were n-normal I would cong-gratulate you about now.” Koyl lightly slapped my shoulder, then smiled.
“I don’t need to tell you that we weren’t engaging in anything you’re thinking of,” I deadpanned.
“How are you s-so warm?” Koyl asked, putting his hand back on my shoulder. “You’re l-like a campfire.”
“Magic,” I replied.
“Lucky npoyt,” Koyl grumbled. As he was about to continue speaking, he stepped straight into a deep puddle, submerging his foot into filthy mud. “Ah seyt,” he swore. “Gods be damned, why would they make a world with rain?” I briefly considered explaining the water cycle to Koyl for my own amusement, but then thought better of it.
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The rest of the rainy day and the day after passed without much incident. Vaozey didn’t even try to talk to me, nor did she say much of anything to anyone, preferring to remain away from the other members of the caravan. Koyl was growing chattier, more resembling how he had been in Vehrehr, but was tired enough to go straight to bed after walking each day. Both nights, I watched Vaozey sleep in the cold without even attempting to make a fire, wondering what she was doing. Maybe she thought I was lying? I wondered on the morning of the third day, But then, why such a strong reaction? My own magic training still hadn’t succeeded in making electrical current, but applying “magic conversation theory” helped me speed up the generation of static tremendously.
At sunset on the next day, Zhervaol told us that we were only three more days from our destination, and therefore we were going to stop early as a reward for traveling so fast. So I guess we encountered bandits because we took a shortcut, I thought, still fifteen days of travel for a journey that would take a maximum of twenty isn’t awful. Zhervaol enlisted the help of Aeday and me, asking us to build a large bonfire while the rest of the caravan unloaded food and drink. When the bonfire was ready, everyone but Vaozey gathered around, and the driver whose name I had somehow still not learned began handing out strips of raw meat and metal fork tools.
“So what’s the purpose of this?” I asked Koyl, who was already cooking his meat with the fire. It’s spiced and salted, I noticed, sniffing the air, better than usual.
“What’s what?” he asked back, sounding more cheerful than he had in quite some time.
“Is this some kind of celebration?” I clarified. “It seems a bit excessive just for a reward for good performance.”
“Don’t be so stern,” Koyl sighed. “How can you not be starving after walking all that distance uphill? Just cook your meat and enjoy yourself.” I was quite hungry, but I hadn’t said anything because I knew when the meal times were. Instead of using the fork and strips I was given, I walked back to the crate the meat had come from and cut myself a chunk weighing nearly a kilogram from the carcass inside. Zhervaol, the driver, and the other two guards were already chattering with Koyl by the time I returned. Hovering the meat just in front of my hands, I used magic to put it inside the flames and slowly rotate it.
“Show off,” Koyl snorted, being the first to notice my cooking technique.
“Is that madwoman coming?” Yaayowjh asked offhandedly. While he didn’t direct the question to anyone, everyone seemed to direct their attention to me. I looked over to Vaozey, who was sitting around twenty meters away, looking away from us, then shrugged. “I suppose you really hurt her pride, didn’t you?” he joked.
“I did win our spars,” I replied, “but I don’t think that’s the reason.”
“She can join in if she wants to,” Koyl said. “Nobody’s stopping her. If she wants to sulk and be alone, she can sulk and be alone.”
“She survived a massacre, that would be difficult for anyone,” Zhervaol interjected. “Besides, you all saw what she looks like under those thick clothes. That woman hasn’t had an easy life, that’s for sure. Some people can’t handle celebrations very well, instead of making them happy, it does the reverse.” The mood fell, and everyone went silent for a moment.
“Like the boy said, if she wants to come over, she can,” the driver said loudly, making sure that Vaozey could hear him. That seemed to get the humans moving again, and soon everyone was jovial once more.
“So, Yaeteyv, do you have one of your famous stories for us?” Zhervaol asked. Ah, so the driver is Yaeteyv, I thought, it sounds almost like Yaavtey. Maybe the names have similar roots.
“Ah, well, I think I have one,” Yaeteyv smirked. Taking on a new cadence and a strange accent, he began regaling the group with some kind of bard-like tale. It was quite formulaic by Uwrish fiction standards, at least based on my limited experience with the ship’s library, save for the part where the hero of the tale spared the antagonist at the end and was surprisingly not betrayed for it. Essentially, the plot involved a single man from a poor village defeating the army of an invading nation in battle, then bringing peace between two provinces called Mehzowrow and Yuwkiysiyah. Mehzowrow is this province, right? I recalled as I devoured my meal, That means that Yuwkiysiyah might be an adjacent region.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“That was great,” Yaayowjh complimented once Yaeteyv had finished. “I always liked that story as a child.” So it wasn’t just made up on the spot, I noted, might be some kind of regional tale. “Say, Yuwniht, you weren’t born in Uwriy, right?”
“I wasn’t,” I replied, “I was born in Yahn Gwah, in a small village.” I really need a better backstory, I reminded myself.
“I’ve never heard a tale from Yahn Gwah,” Yaeteyv said. “Do you know any?” That almost sounds like a challenge, I thought, briefly glancing at the Steelheart Company medallion on his chest.
“Most of my memories from that time are fuzzy,” I replied, testing the waters. “I’m not sure I know any stories well enough to tell them. Certainly not well enough to tell them the way you just did. It would be better if you just continue.”
“But you do know some,” Yaeteyv prodded, smiling. “Let me tell you, boy, you need to open up more. Regale us with one of your people’s tales! The legends and myths of a foreign land! You all want to hear them too, don’t you?” Looking around, I saw the rest of the caravan except for Koyl staring at me. Even Vaozey, still sitting far away, was now facing us.
“I’m not sure that-” I began.
“You don't have to-” Koyl started at the same time.
“Oh it doesn’t matter if you remember every detail,” Yaeteyv insisted. “Just make up the parts that you don’t remember. You’re among friends, it’s not like we’ll laugh at you or something.” Behind his jovial exterior, I saw a glint of seriousness in his eyes.
“Okay, fine.” I agreed, causing a few cheers from everyone near the fire but Koyl, who was trying not to look as curious as he was. I suppose I could improvise something, I thought, it would be suspicious to refuse at this point. I just need to recall an appropriate mission and make a few adjustments. Over the next ten seconds, I wracked my brain, then settled on a story that I could adapt to meet the caravan's expectations.
“This is the story of a man named Bruwnow,” I began. “Bruwnow was a follower of the god Eyaybaetahlneht, a god of combat and warfare. When Bruwnow became a man, his god called upon him to exterminate the heretics that were occupying the ruins of an ancient city known as Sao Luwiys. To assist in this, his god blessed him with a body both strong and durable, a disguise to infiltrate the heretics, a special weapon called a Naenowkaarbahn maonowmahlehkyuwler swor-”
“A what?” Aeday scoffed, interrupting me. “That must be at least four or five words put together, what does that even mean?”
“Don’t interrupt,” Yaeteyv hissed.
“It is a type of sword so sharp that it can cut through flesh like water, never dulls, and is nearly indestructible,” I explained. Technically, it was a combat knife along with a pocket in my right arm to hide it, but a sword makes more sense for this kind of story, I thought.
“So like a wawjhaemeyy,” Aeday said. “Why not just call it that?” That means… artifact from the gods? I translated quickly, I think I read that word in a book on the ship.
“Because it’s called a naenowkaarbahn-” I began.
“Aeday, please,” Yaayowjh interrupted. “Yuwniht, if you can, try to use shorter names for things, okay? We don’t know your language, those words are very hard for us.”
I continued the story, recounting one of my first missions as “Bruno”, a six-year-old warbreed male ostensibly deployed to the fortress city of São Luís to reinforce the crumbling defensive walls against AI hunter-killer drone attacks. My actual mission was to infect the water supply with a special type of genetically-engineered protozoa that would infect the blood of the warbreed and incubate while evading their immune systems by masking itself as a harmless sister organism. Later, when exposed to certain patterns of infrared light, the organisms would activate and kill their hosts. This would allow all exposed warbreed to be killed remotely using a variety of low-power methods when convenient.
Since part of the city’s retrofit had been done specifically to resist biological warfare, there was no way to affect its water supply from the outside, necessitating infiltration. The mission was considered a success not only because I accomplished my goal, but because I was able to assassinate the city’s commander, which created a large amount of confusion and prevented the warbreed from noticing my real objective. Over the next ten years, my actions resulted in the deaths of nearly twenty thousand warbreed, though sadly the organism's true purpose was eventually discovered and it was eliminated through revision of the warbreed immune system.
“Okay, I need to ask a question,” Zhervaol interrupted as I was narrating an assault on the base by flayer drones, a type of low-intelligence carbon-based melee combatant robot that could self-replicate by consuming organic materials and fought using claw-like blades. “What is a rayfahl? Is that a type of gahn?”
“In common speech, a rifle is a type of gun held with two hands, like this,” I gestured, showing how most rifles were held. “Technically, the word rifle refers to the grooves placed inside of the… tube that the projectile is shot from, but essentially all guns except for certain shotguns have rifling, rendering the original meaning obsolete.”
“So it’s like a crossbow?” Yaayowjh asked. “Wait, a tube? For shooting the arrow through?”
“The rifle in question, the FSGM-B3A, holds twenty-five rounds of hyper-nitro ammunition in its double-stack detachable box magazine, and fires at a rate of approximately…” I paused, realizing that I might as well have been speaking entirely English from the point of view of the others. “It shoots metal projectiles, about this big,” I gestured, showing the diameter and length of a standard twelve-point-seven millimeter round with my fingers. “It holds twenty-five at once, and can shoot all twenty-five in about a second if desired, or shoot them one at a time.” I used the Uwrish second, which wasn’t quite the same as an Earth second but was close enough.
“That doesn’t sound very dangerous,” Koyl commented. He was looking at me like he was unsure of exactly why I was giving so much detail.
“They travel at-” I paused, realizing that I had no way of explaining the speed without a reference. “Okay, a meter is about this long,” I gestured with my arms. “They travel around eight-hundred meters in one second.” Instead of looks of recognition and understanding, I got mostly blank stares, with one notable exception.
“That’s-” Koyl began, looking at me in disbelief and worry.
“It’s just a story,” Zhervaol interrupted. “It’s not real, let's not obsess over the details. Thank you for explaining, please continue.”
I continued my story, getting to the part where I snuck past the guards to get to the water supply, and how I used an extra organ inside my body designed to contain the parasite to infect the water. Of course, in the story, Bruno spilled his holy blood into the water, making it so that all heretics who drank it would be damned to die painfully when Eyaybaetahlneht’s eyes fell upon them. This plot point seemed to entertain the humans greatly, and even Koyl was deeply invested in the story. When the hero, Bruno, then gained the trust of the evil heretic leader, before killing him, they had more mixed expressions.
“It just seems dishonorable,” Yaeteyv muttered.
“It’s from a far-off country,” Koyl countered. “You can’t expect them to have the same idea of honor as we do. Besides, the guy is the villain, having him die a death of betrayal just seems fitting.”
“That’s basically the end of the story anyway,” I shrugged, and some of the humans groaned.
“But does he escape?” Zhervaol asked.
“Obviously,” I replied. “He makes his way back to the temple of Eyaybaetahlneht and is rewarded for his service.”
“What does he get?” Koyl asked. Well, I was copied into more bodies, I recalled, I never received any form of physical reward because there was no point. In fact, the after-action analysis of the mission was a bit scathing when it came to the risks taken in the poisoning. I might have been decommissioned if not for the opportunistic kill of the commander.
“His god created twelve sons for him,” I replied, trying to improvise something that made sense. The humans all looked at me as though I had said something extremely bizarre. Maybe I should have just said money or land, I thought.
“Well, that was certainly different,” Yaeteyv said. “Thanks for that. I think I have another story ready, if everyone wants to listen.” The humans enthusiastically agreed, and Yaeteyv launched into another tale about a group of heroes fighting some kind of animal that couldn’t possibly ever have existed, even with magic. Maybe if it had some kind of biological nuclear reactor, I snorted, otherwise there’s no way it would be able to fuel its own body at that size. Though magic would be able to keep its body intact if it could muster enough output…
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Later, once people started to split off and go find spots to sleep, I looked back over at Vaozey to find her staring at me. Though I couldn’t fully read her expression because of her face covering, she didn’t appear angry. Instead, she looked intensely curious, as though she was actively holding herself back from coming over and asking me questions. After exchanging stares with me for around a minute, she finally looked away, and I laid down on the ground to sleep.