Chapter 9: Chapter 9 - Negotiations and Other Pastimes

It was past dawn when Daniel woke again. Most of the survivors had slept in, the gentle sun and cool breeze a welcome relief after yesterday’s tragedies.

He pulled himself up right, rolling the single fur he had tight and stuffing it into his bag-turned-pillow. The fire from the night before was still burning, tended to by Moolio, the wiry woman who had used Kire’s scale the day previous.

Kire himself was sleeping soundly against the boulder Theo had moved, and he assumed the smith was still tucked inside.

With no one familiar to talk to, and the camp still in the early motions of preparing for the day, Daniel fetched the notebook he had purchased from Hutch, wondering if the merchant had survived.

Grim thoughts on his mind, he set to work, documenting everything he could remember. The black stick he’d purchased stained his fingers and was difficult to handle, but it did its job and his penmanship improved as he wrote.

First the events of the day, chronological, as well as he could remember. Then key details, names, the languages spoken and their unfamiliar words, the abilities of the Reborn and Crawlers, sketches of faces and creatures. He paused periodically, fleshing out detail as time ticked on, adding questions he wanted to ask, lists of supplies he both had and saw others carry, anything he thought could ever be of use.

At the rate he wrote, he’d run out of pages in a week, but that would be a problem to deal with in the future.

When he was satisfied he had plucked all the information he could out of his head, he tucked the notebook back into his bag, just in time to see a familiar Crawler approach. The healer, a younger man with a mop of black hair and tanned skin, knelt beside him, looking curiously at his arm.

“I came to check on your arm…” he explained, looking at Daniel’s limb with tight lips and a slight frown. He let silence say the rest.

“My patron healed it,” Daniel said, rubbing his arm and the ring of foreign flesh around his wrist. Its gray color was just barely noticeable, but he felt it had grown a touch darker than last he looked. Recharging, he guessed, hoping for nothing worse than that.

“Oh,” the Crawler said, itching behind one of his ears, his shaggy hair tickling the tops of them. “You really are blessed by Irel.”

“After yesterday, not sure I can agree,” Daniel joked, lack of habit making him forbidden and blasphemous. The Crawler’s eyes widened and he glanced over his shoulder at Mayline and Axen’s sleeping bodies.

“R-right. I’m Tyn, by the way. Don’t think we were ever formally introduced. I’m part of Henya’s team,” the healer said, jutting a thumb over his shoulder to point at the fourth splinter leader, who was collecting and stacking tinder.

”Nice to meet you Tyn. Thanks for the help yesterday.”

Tyn rubbed the back of his head. “Least I could do, after Kire.”

Daniel frowned and followed the other man’s eyes to Kire’s face, to the deep circles of bruises around his eyes and his set but swollen nose. “What happened to Kire?”

Tyn looked like he saw a ghost. “You don’t…? Oh, no, oh, gods I shouldn’t have…” he mumbled, jumping to his feet and taking a few uncomfortable steps back. “Sorry, I…”

He didn’t even try to finish the sentence. He bolted, busying himself with idle packing on the other side of camp.

After Tyn’s hasty departure, Axen rose, and the camp was kicked into motion. Rations that survived the collapse were distributed in priority order, first the Crawlers, then the Reborn, then the townsfolk.

Moolio, not speaking a lick of a Common, handed Daniel their portion of dried fruits and meats, then pointed at the still-sleeping Kire and the boulder behind him.

He approached, giving Kire a nudge with his foot as his hands were preoccupied.

“Three and a half more minutes,” Kire mumbled, turning his head to the side and itching his scales absentmindedly.

Daniel rolled his eyes and dropped Kire’s portion of food on his lap, then sought out Theo, eating his portion of food as he looked.

He had expected her to be sleeping in the boulder still, and gave it a few raps with his knuckles. He felt a bit silly for it, but Theo poked her head up over the boulder a second later.

“Oh! Daniel, good timing, c’mere,” she said, beckoning him to the other side of the rock.

He stepped around Kire and rounded the boulder to find Theo plopped cross-legged between two flat surfaces. Various tools were spread around, and a peculiar sconce was on the center of one of her work surfaces, one end of it connected to a chain loop.

“So I’ve been thinking about your—,” she started, cutting off mid sentence when her eyes found the rations he was holding, and his unbandaged arm. “What happened to your arm?”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“It got better. Praise be, ah, Irel.” He gave her a look. She returned the look, a deep furrow to her brow.

“Right. Ok, well, I was thinking about your rib,” she continued, tapping the surface holding her latest creation. “And, oh man, what a material! I can’t believe it got through that door, you have no idea what we threw at that thing. And— AND— it’s literally godly! Crazy lucky to have, but also, impossible for me to work with.”

She scowled at her tools, limited in their number. “I mean, I don’t know any smith who could work with it, honestly. How do you manipulate such an indestructible material?”

Theo trailed off into her thoughts, tapping her nails in a rapid pattern against the stone. Daniel cleared his throat.

“Right, right, sorry, so I was thinking of how you could use it until we figure out a way to turn it into a proper weapon,” she continued.

“Besides popping the cherry of sealed off dungeon rooms,” Kire chimed in from over Daniel’s shoulder, awake and chewing on shreds of dried meat.

Theo crinkled her nose. “Gross.”

Kire’s lopsided grin matched his lopsided nose, delighted to make Theo uncomfortable like a little boy dangling a worm in front of a school girl. Daniel was more surprised the euphemism translated.

But Kire’s attention rolled away and he pointed at Daniel’s arm with his pinky, other fingers occupied with shoving food in his mouth. The motion was casual, but his eyes were narrowed, a focus behind his nonchalance. “Nice arm.”

”Thanks, picked it up from the store last night.”

“An-y-way,” Theo interrupted, emphasizing each syllable. “Can I see the rib?”

Daniel found the idea of handing it over much easier than yesterday. The Hunger was quiet, a need that took little effort to squash down as he fetched the rib from his bag. Satiated was the only correct word to describe it.

He passed the rib over to Theo. She took it gingerly, avoiding the razor sharp edge. Then she picked up the sconce-like object on her little table and slotted in the blunt end first. Tiny sheets of metal were connected to equally small bolts that Theo twisted to tighten against the bone, first with her hands, then with a slim wrench.

On the other side was a slender metal sheath, more like a pen cap, that was attached to the chain loop. She slid the rib in, connecting the two pieces with a quick flick of a rounded latch. Watching the intricate pieces connect, he wondered when she had managed to make it, if she had slept at all.

She stood, bounding to Daniel in an excited step and looping the chain around his neck. The rib fell against his chest.

The attachment created a hilt, and when he undid the latch and pulled it free, the rib became a dagger — a small, peculiar one, but it would stab nonetheless. And it made it easier to carry as a tool. The scars on his hand let out a tingle of pain, so soft it almost tickled.

“What do you think?”

Daniel smiled at her, and she beamed it back. “It’s great, thanks.”

Kire peered at the interesting weapon. “Man’s two days into Etheril and he’s going to be stabbing people with a god’s rib. Life just isn’t fair.”

“So, what do I owe you?” Daniel asked, latching the rib back together and letting it rest on his chest. It looked absurd against his Earth clothes.

Theo shook her head. “Nothing now, but, if you’re okay with it, I want to try and work with it later. Maybe once we’re in Mast, but I need to do some research first.”

“Easy deal, thank you Theo,” he said, sticking his hand out to finalize the deal. She took it eagerly, then returned to her tools to pack.

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

The morning passed in a blur of packing, the group on the move soon after Axen was awake.

They worked their way along tattered paths, similar to what Daniel had first approached the village on. Rolling hills obscured their view, but periodically a new farmstead would come into view, just as decrepit as the ones they had passed.

The group moved like a slinky, Axen and the Crawlers stretching ahead and the townsfolk falling behind. The catalyst of the snap was Theo, who would stop when she noticed the townsfolk trailing too far behind. Kire would stop for Theo, Daniel would stop for them both, and Mayline would stop for Irel’s blessed.

The method of movement made progress slow, and Henya, the fourth splinter’s leader, was visibly annoyed. Every stop was accompanied by sighs, hands thrown to her hips, glares at the lagging Reborns, but Axen issued no order to prevent the stops, and so they slinkied their way down the damaged roads.

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

The first change in scenery was improvement in the road conditions.

They had become almost tended to, their smooth stones lining up in consistent patterns, the grass and weeds sprouting between them growing thinner.

At the sign of improvement, Axen held his hand up for a halt in the makeshift march, and called Kire up, who groaned, but obliged.

The two were too far away for Daniel to hear, as he had settled into walking beside Theo and the townspeople, but Theo started talking as the pair did.

“Take a look around the area, report back any points-of-interest,” Theo mumbled, voice a low mimicry of Axen.

“You hired me for a dungeon clear brother, haven’t seen a lot of grassy fields in dungeons, have you?” she continued. As she spoke, Kire tapped the palm of his hand pointedly, staring down Axen’s chilly gaze.

“Can you hear them?” Daniel asked, surprised by the sharpness of her ears, but she shook her head.

“Naw, but it does sound like them, doesn’t it?” she replied, a cheeky grin softening her grim features.

Theo’s assessment was accurate, and Kire sauntered back to the other Reborns with the swagger of a victorious man. “Back in a minute,” he said cheerily, plucking a scale off and tossing it in his mouth like a chip.

He jumped backwards, the start of a flip, but before he finished the arc he vanished into a puff of blue smoke, reappearing as a sleek white bird of prey that Daniel didn’t recognize.

Bird Kire took off like a rocket, soaring upwards and sweeping in grand arcs around the area, passing overhead only a few times.

After a few passes, he swooped back down, landing on Axen’s shoulder, much to the ire of the other man. They seemed able to communicate, and eventually Axen shrugged him off and resumed the march.

Kire glided back to the Reborns, reappearing as himself in another puff of smoke.

”What kind of bird is that?” Daniel asked, pulling out his notebook to take notes.

“An Oshire,” Kire answered, itching his scales as he returned to his place in the march, on Theo’s left side.

Both of them stared blankly at the shapeshifter.

“It’s a bird from my home world,” Kire explained with a shrug. “Guess you guys don’t have them where you’re from.”

”Is that how the translation works then? If we don’t have the same creature or object, we hear what you’re actually saying?” Daniel pressed, scribbling as he talked and walked. It made his penmanship shaky.

“Oh yeah. Like, sheep. Sheep sheep sheep. You hear sheep, right? But I’m not saying sheep, I’m saying o-t-i-l,” Kire answered, his accent faltering when he got to spelling out the word. Daniel realized he may not be getting the letters right, they likely weren’t English letters at all, but he had no better way to decipher.

“All Reborns are translated to Common, but languages don’t always play nice, y’know,” Theo added on. “The Crawlers speak Common, mostly, but it’s a totally different language than what you’re speaking. A third language, that we’re being translated to by our gods.”

Kire snorted his disapproval at the last addition, but didn’t object. There was a brief pause in the conversation as Daniel added to his paragraphs of notes.

“So what was that language you were translating in the dungeon? What Moolio speaks,” Daniel asked, gesturing at the woman who was far ahead, helping Tyn carry the injured Crawler on a sheepskin stretcher.

“Ah, yeah that’s Proper, or Etherilan, depending on who you ask. Official language of the above lands, should learn it if you can, an easier one to pick up, only twenty-four letters in their alphabet.”

Theo’s cheeks flushed at the comment, her skin turning a plum-purple with the increased blood flow under her blue tone. She picked at her eye patch, tugging at where it wrapped around her ear.

Kire looked down at her out of the corner of his eye, a remorseful frown on his face that led to nothing as the trio fell into silence again.