This was a settlement, the saltsmith decided after some time observing. Not a village, but something new.
Their count could not be presumed accurate from high up in the trees, but it seemed there were at least eight people who continuously worked in the area. A few more came and went down a packed dirt trail, made flat and cleared of trees to accommodate wagons.
Tents were set up on the low hill of the lake, while a large open area on a high spot rested untouched near the road’s entrance. A planned city building, perhaps. The tents all faced the lake, as if they were watching over the serene landscape.
It was beautiful, just like the first lake the saltsmith found but smaller. A perfect place to begin a settlement, full of lumber, close to the mountains for access to stone and potential mining, and with plenty of fish for food.
The gold-wearing lady flashed even in the cloud-dimmed sunlight as she checked the camp. Everyone greeted her, leading the saltsmith to believe she was in-charge.
She looked impossibly familiar; the saltsmith dismissed the urge as remembering an actress from a theatre performance who wore similar bangles and braids.
Next, a pair who slept in the same tent, husband and wife assumably. One attended to the cleared-out patch of land further inward, with beast-tilled rows and delicate sprouts; the other went to tend to the goats that wandered around the encampment, each beast with a bell on their neck.
They watched the farmer plant seeds then he… prayed over them. The dirt rustled as little seedlings pushed forth. Satisfied, the farmer drizzled water over the new life, humming a tune.
The herd-lady, for lack of a better term, tended to a few horses in the stables before calling out for a goat. Rose was her name, and she was called impossible, a menace, and tomorrow’s lunch by the beast keeper as she hunted around the settlement.
The saltsmith knew where the goat was; they watched her wander off earlier in the day. She was far, far down the shoreline, around the curve of the lake. The beast seemed to be keeping the settlement in her sight, but she certainly was not afraid of the woods.
As the beast keeper became more agitated, asking others where Rose went, the saltsmith slowly climbed down their tree.
They were careful to stay in the shadows as they circled the lake, just behind tree trunks and bushes, never letting the metal of their limbs touch the sunlight. Rose the Goat chewed on some ferns near a dilapidated structure hidden by time and overgrowth. Another cabin?
The saltsmith looked over the lake at the distant settlement, ensuring they weren’t being watched. Their awareness attribute was too low to determine whether or not this was actually true, but regardless, they felt safe enough to reveal their presence.
It took the goat mere seconds of beastly horror to see and process the tangle of limbs and ember-like eyes that creeped her way, after which she shrieked and bolted back to safety, her long ears flopping as she ran.
Her bleating fear and clanging bell signaled her presence to every human she ran past, finding the leader of her small herd for protection. The goats circled together in worry even as the beast keeper chased them to calm them down.
Run home, the saltsmith thought, and stay safe.
Even in their own world, there were plenty of wild creatures willing to snatch livestock or children out on their own.
The presence of the dragon had taken a toll on the saltsmith’s mentality. This world was dangerous, as dragons could not exist without all manner of smaller beasts to feast on – predator and prey.
Maybe the saltsmith had not been witness to anything more threatening than a deer-beast, but they knew such animals existed.
This settlement wasn’t theirs to claim, yet… the saltsmith needed a home, needed somewhere to linger until this world began to make sense.
Even without a claim to humanity, they could find some purpose here in the shadows of these hard-working people.
🎃 🎃 🎃
Dinner was never a small affair with this many people to feed, but Samir felt that it was made more manageable by the lack of meat. The guild brought root vegetables and dried beans from the city, some to plant, some to grow. Between that, the goat milk, and spices from southeast Kovatelli, it made a decent curry.
No meat meant easier cleanup. The chef boiled lake water in the pot to remove the stuck-on remnants of the curry, dumping it over some rocks as to avoid accidentally cooking the wildlife. He cleaned the knives, bowls, utensils in boiling water once more.
The entire process was hot and literally steamy, mildly frustrating without a proper kitchen. When one of the mages stopped by to say hi, Samir tried to smile at her and be polite, but he was dripping in sweat and his rolled sleeves felt too tight as he scrubbed away.
She lingered, saying goodnight to the tired chef after offering to help him take his wares back to the cooking table near his tent.
“No, thank you,” Samir had said, lifting and pouring out a full cast-iron stewpot worth of boiling water with some effort. “I’ll need to dry and oil the pans before I can rest. You should get some sleep.”
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The mage Nanazin lingered for a few minutes longer, admiring the sweaty and oblivious man before she left for bed.
None the wiser, Samir continued his work, oiling pots, storing them under the open-air cooking tent, cleaning knives, taking scraps to the goat pen and chickens. He ordered his knives on the table, grumbling as he looked over a cleaver with irritation.
Even if he wanted to prep meat, the blade was damaged from travel, slightly bent and badly chipped along the cutting edge. He sighed and set the tool down. He would have to wait for the next shipment to order another.
As Samir disappeared off into his tent to sleep, the magical torchlight flickered off movement in the near forest, dimly lit metal among bark.
The saltsmith approached cautiously, having watched each human retire to their tent for the night. They didn’t need high awareness to feel a pang of disgust at how badly the cleaver was damaged.
In silence, they used [ skill: capture ] on the blade, floating it safely into the makeshift ribcage at their imaginary chest. The system typed a notice into their mind as they wandered around the camp; their natural locomotion was sneaking by default.
[ attribute increase: agility +1 ]
They borrowed a hammer from the carpenter’s workstation near the sole building. It was the wrong kind, but it would have to do.
It was much harder to find a scrap of leather, but eventually the saltsmith returned to the hidden cabin on the far end of the lake, rooting through debris to find an old piece of leather armor.
From the cabin land, they used their stockpiled progress to capture several rusted, bent nails, nibs from ink pens, a bell without a clapper, multiple horseshoes in the yard. Their materials were stored easily in their core, with five pairs of arms arranging and re-arranging until things were comfortable.
There was no proper place to work, not without cutting down a tree nearby, so the saltsmith wove their way through the moonlight to a tree stump near the road. It had a flat plane, which was all the saltsmith needed.
They used [ skill: repair ] on the cleaver, pulling steel from the spine to repair the blade. When the edge was properly fixed, albeit not sharp, the saltsmith turned their attention to the leather armor.
They used their skills to remove all the rivets and small nails, chaining them to the rest of the iron and bronze scraps to form a junk pile. The saltsmith wrapped the largest piece of leather around the blade of the cleaver, then affixed a smaller one to the head of the metal hammer.
They would be a pillock to use a bare carpentry hammer on a fine tool such as a knife, even if the blade was of a sturdy cleaver.
The saltsmith drew the hammer up high in their skeletal grasp, bringing it down on the blade to begin leveling out the bend. They lacked the strength to simply manipulate the blade by force, but a hammer could do the work that muscles could not.
The mere attempt to use their strength earned them a new attribute point, bringing them up to strength 5.
[ attribute increase: strength +1 ]
Ah, to be as strong as the strongest child.
Their work took an hour or more, just to fix the cleaver. By the time they finished, the blade was straight, pocked with shallow – yet clean – dents from hammering. The leather couldn’t prevent every mark, but a little texture on a blade did not mean it had to be retired.
Unsatisfied, the saltsmith continued until every inch of the cleaver was textured in a similar manner. They didn’t have a body, but they refused to perform shoddy craftmanship because of it.
They returned both cleaver and hammer to their rightful place, adhering the leather scraps to the junk ball with rivets.
The saltsmith mentally listed out hammer-smithing on their future chores; they had plenty of metal, a haft of wood would be easy in this forest, but it was a matter of melting an ingot and shaping it over an anvil or a hardwood stump.
Perhaps the saltsmith couldn’t make one of those fancy automobiles that were driving down the horseshoe business, but they certainly knew how to make a smithing hammer.
They scurried to shelter as the sun began to rise, watching the humans move about from across the lake, perched on the rooftop of the abandoned cabin.
Their endeavor did help more than the cook; the saltsmith’s attributes and abilities were increased overnight, to their great pleasure.
str 0 (5 ➢ 6) ∙ awa 5 (5 ➢ 6) ∙ cha 5 (2)
agi 0 (6) ∙ con UNK ∙ int 5
dex 0 (7 ➢ 8) ∙ end 10 ∙ luc 0
Level 2: Range (bodily), weight (medium), control (bodily), persistence (low ➢ bodily)
Captured chains: 13/13
Captured objects: 320 / 325
While the system seemed to avoid giving the saltsmith any direct answers as a human could provide, it did suggest that bodily persistence was the ability to move all captured objects as if they were part of a singular body.
Fates, that’s what the saltsmith needed.
With this new form of capture persistence came a need for rest. Not sleep, rest – as if the chains were indeed muscles and their stolen limbs were their own.
Previously, their stamina was merely a meter by which to measure distance, how far the saltsmith could travel at full speed without being forced to stop by a total loss of control. Now, it felt more human, physical.
The saltsmith was no longer stopped mid-step for recovery, but exerting unseen force to pull themselves upwards steadily drew from their stamina.
With an internal sigh of relief, the saltsmith settled down on the roof of the cabin. They couldn’t sleep, but they could watch the world pass by for some time. The humanity of needing to rest was, sadly, the most comfort they had experienced yet in this world.
It took Samir until mid-afternoon to notice the repaired cleaver, longer still to thank the guildmaster for the replacement, even more time to realize the scratches on the blade’s handle were the same as the old, broken one.
It became a mystery within the guild settlement, a curiosity paired with Samir’s sighting of a strange spider creature.
But it was just gossip, right?