by Pirateaba
“Gazi was a soldier, once.”
“Yes. She may be one again, if what we have heard is true.”
Ceria tried to imagine it. She remembered the King of Destruction’s first rampage, hearing of nations falling and cities sieged. She’d never been to Chandrar, but war had been speeding across the vast ocean when the King of Destruction had suddenly called an end to his grand ambitions.
“What will the Antinium do if he starts conquering nations again?”
Klbkch shrugged fractionally. He was armed with two swords, which matched his unique body. Ceria had never seen an Antinium with only two arms – it must mean he was a special leader among them. The other Workers certainly obeyed his commands without question.
“If it comes to war, the Antinium will act. Until then, I believe the Queens will be content to wait. The King of Destruction is far away.”
“True.”
More walking. Snow crunched underneath Ceria’s boots. And then Klbkch asked her a question.
“What will you do?”
“Excuse me?”
“I understand you will not be charged for the attack of the undead. But you are an adventurer alone, not counting the few adventurers who survived. Many have already left, and only the silver-rank adventurer is of any note.”
“Yvlon. She’s…silent. Still recovering.”
“Yes. Will you join with her and continue adventuring?”
“I don’t know.”
She’d lost everything. Sometimes Ceria forgot. She’d wake up or start doing something, and then it would hit her as she thought of the future. She’d lost all of her coin in the ruins, lost all of her magical artifacts except her robes, lost her friends, and her hand.
Everything.
Klbkch slowed as Relc raised a hand and shouted from ahead. There was something in the distance, breaking the uniform snowy landscape.
“Ah. There is the forest. We should remove the bark before bringing the trees back.”
He turned and began issuing orders to the Workers behind him in a clipped, short tone. Ceria watched the black-bodied Antinium move as she thought. Klbkch’s question had bothered her more than he could probably imagine.
What would she do now? What would she become?
Ceria didn’t know. She was lost. She only had one thing to cling to, and that was a certainty. There was something about Erin Solstice and Ryoka Griffin. Something different.
She’d figure that out first, and then decide.
—-
The first of the Workers were returning with boards and another group was beginning to dig what would become Erin’s foundation and basement when Olesm pointed at the sky and called out warningly.
“Uh oh. Trouble.”
Erin looked around, and her heart sank. High above in the sky, she saw a cloud of shimmering shapes, and heard familiar—and unwelcome—voices.
“Look, look! The wretched building is gone!”
“Something destroyed it!”
“Nay, it exploded! See the traces?”
“Hah! Serves the foolish human right! Look how she stands there like a lump!”
The Frost Faeries flew overhead, chattering as the Workers began trooping the pieces of the inn over to the new build site.
“And now the slaves are rebuilding the inn! With nails of iron and metal tools! Let’s curse their steps!”
“Break their foolish tools!”
“Destroy the new building!”
Erin waved her hand and ran at the Frost Faeries in a panic as they dove out of the sky at the oblivious Workers. The others stared at Erin incredulously as, from their perspective; she began shouting at faint blobs in the air.
“Wait, wait! Stop! Don’t attack! Please!”
The Frost Faeries halted, and one of them glared at Erin suspiciously.
“What do ye want? If ye want to beg, don’t bother. We hate all of cold metal and naught you or yer slaves can do will stop us!”
“But I need an inn! I mean, my old one got destroyed! Why do you hate me so much?”
They laughed at her, the faeries. One of them made a rude gesture and pointed at the working Antinium.
“We don’t hate ye, fool! You mortals are nothing to us but pests. Tis iron we hate! If ye’d take away the iron in the building, we might, might reconsider.”
Erin looked at her inn and back to the faeries.
“But how are they supposed to build an inn without iron nails?”
“Silly wench!”
One of the faeries laughed mockingly at Erin.
“Don’t you know? A nail can be more than just iron! Are you a fool? They can be made of silver, wood, steel—”
“Copper! Make them of copper, you daft cunt!”
That was really rude, but Erin ignored it. She ran over to the two Workers in charge, waving her hands desperately.
“Hey Pawn! Pawn!”
Pawn looked up from his discussion with Bird. Erin met them as they walked towards her and pointed to the site where the Workers were already digging into the soil and hauling stones into place to make the foundation.
“The inn. When you’re building it—can you use only copper nails?”
He conferred with Bird, and the nodded.
“We have a large supply of building materials available to us. It will be done.”
Erin turned back to the faeries and smiled hopefully at them.
“Well? Will that do? It’ll be a building without any bad iron—well, without much. And you’ll be welcome there as guests, okay? Promise!”
The Frost Faeries conferred, starring hard at Erin and talking with their small hands cupped. Erin waited, sweating despite the cold, imagining her and all the Workers buried underneath a hundred tons of snow. Faeries couldn’t do that. Could they?
At last, the faeries turned back to Erin and one of them nodded. She didn’t have a pleased expression on her face, but she seemed resigned. The other faeries were smiling gleefully, for some reason that Erin didn’t get.
“Well…alright. I suppose ye get a pass. This time. We’ve got better things ta do than deal with you lot, anyways.”
The faeries began to spiral back up into the sky. Olesm blinked at them and stared at Erin in amazement. Pawn and Bird ignored the faeries as they continued plotting out the inn, and Selys hid in the snow as they flew upwards. One of them called out as the herd of faeries flew off.
“We still don’t like you, human!”
Erin stuck her tongue out as the Faeries left. A snowball spiraled out of the sky and struck her in the face, but all in all, she decided she’d gotten off pretty lucky.
—-
Ceria, Klbkch, Relc, and the other Antinium returned an hour later, carrying long boards of neatly cut wood. Erin was amazed to see that each board of wood the Workers carried was perfectly cut to the dimensions the other Workers needed.
It was uncanny and sort of terrifying. As the thirty workers converged on the new inn’s building site, they worked without speaking or apparently, needing to look at each other. One Worker would be repairing a wall, and another Worker would slice a board of wood to fit the spot exactly.
It was the thing ants did. Telepathy, or some kind of hive mind. Erin was fascinated, but she didn’t have long to look. She was busy too.
Relc and Klbkch weren’t in charge of the workers so much as Pawn and Bird. The two former Workers knew their job well, and so they were the ones in charge. For their part, Relc and Klbkch used their superior strength to help lift things that would take more than one Worker. Relc by himself could lift something that would take two or more Workers.
Olesm and Selys didn’t have many applicable skills, but Selys was happy enough just to find things that had been knocked over or scattered by the explosion. She assembled small piles of pillows from upstairs, gathered Erin’s messy supplies from the kitchen, and made sure nothing else was damaged.
For Olesm’s part, he’d tried to help Selys, but kept blushing whenever he found some of Er
in’s more private types of clothing. Selys eventually chased him away and he ineffectually tried to help Workers until Klbkch suggested he be useful somewhere else. In the end Olesm sat at one of the salvaged tables and played chess with Bird and Pawn.
And in the meantime, Erin wasn’t just sitting about. In point of fact, she was cooking. She moved about her kitchen, trying to ignore the oddity of it.
Her kitchen hadn’t been destroyed when the fireplace blew. And with the addition of a quick door to keep some of the hot air in, Erin could still cook food. She could hear the Antinium moving around and above her, recovering pieces of the inn, but she ignored that and focused on making food.
The Antinium had their own meals. They ate some kind of horrible mushy stuff that looked like regurgitated food mixed with—it looked bad and Erin was glad it was too cold to smell. And she had no acid flies to give them which broke her heart. But she could do something for her non-Antinium friends.
“Hey! You guys! I’ve got food!”
Erin called out as she emerged from her kitchen, beaming and holding a large plate full of her latest culinary achievement. Relc eyed her suspiciously and caught Erin as she tripped on an upturned timber. He caught the plate before it tipped over and eyed the food.
“What is this?”
Relc sniffed suspiciously at the round object Erin handed him. It was a hamburger.
An honest-to-god, real hamburger. Complete with a bun, mayonnaise on the side of the plate, and ketchup. Or catsup. Erin didn’t mind either word, but catsup always made her think of cat food.
It was easy. Erin had taken the ground beef she’d gotten from Krshia, added some pepper, an egg or two, and then squished it all together and made them into patties. Then she’d fried the burgers on a pan.
She didn’t have a grill, so Erin felt some of the authenticity was lost, but the burgers were made even realer with the addition of a bit of lettuce, a tomato, and cheese. All the ingredients were in Liscor, and cheap, too! Krshia said that while the city imported tomatoes and other vegetables from overseas, they weren’t as popular as other foods. She’d had to get the tomatoes from a fellow Gnoll who specialized in the rarer plants.
But that wasn’t all! Erin had made ketchup from the tomatoes and mayonnaise from the egg yolk and mustard. It was amazing. Amazingly hard to make, that was.
Erin had no idea making ketchup involved boiling tomatoes and adding all kind of complex spices. She still was miffed that mayonnaise used lemon juice and vinegar. But Ryoka had given her various recipes before she’d left, and they worked.
They worked!
“Try it! It’s really good!”
Erin had already sampled her wares, so to speak. She’d made a hamburger, eaten the hamburger, made another cheeseburger, and eaten it too. It was so deliciously good and reminiscent of home she’d actually teared up a bit as she ate.
Relc didn’t seem convinced, but he could smell the grilled meat and he was hungry. He took an experimental bite out of the hamburger and chewed. His eyes went wide.
Klbkch and Olesm got to the plate too late, because Relc had already eaten four hamburgers and Ceria and Selys each had one. Relc happily bit into the burgers as Erin yelled at him for stealing the other’s food and ran into the kitchen for more. Thankfully, she’d made a big batch.
Selys chewed her burger, looking happy. Ceria opened the lid of her hamburger and inspected it.
“It’s quite good! But I’ve never seen a food like this. Did you invent it yourself, Erin?”
“Nope!”
Erin shook her head happily as Olesm and Klbkch took a burger. Relc reached out and she slapped his hand.
“Wait until they eat theirs and then you can have one if they don’t want another. No, Ceria, it’s a popular food from my home.”
“Well, I love it. And it’s so convenient—it would make a great travel food.”
“That’s how people back home eat them! You can just walk around and eat!”
Ceria bit into her hamburger and chewed with her eyes closed. It still slightly bothered Erin to see an Elf—half-elf—eating meat so easily. But she was a fan, and as soon as they’d tried it, so were Klbkch and Olesm.
“You should sell these in the city! If you started on Market Street I’m sure you’d make a ton of money.”
Olesm commented as he took another burger from Erin’s plate and tried dipping it in the mayonnaise. Relc gave him a dirty look. Then Klbkch, Selys, Ceria, and Erin took another, and he threw up his hands and sulked.
There were no more burgers after that, but Erin tried making french fries. They made him so happy that Relc declared that he’d eat at Erin’s inn every night if she kept making the food.
Erin was ecstatic. And the work on her inn was progressing so fast that by the time she’d finished with the french fries, the Workers were dismantling her kitchen around her.
She left what had been her old inn—now only a few floorboards and broken wood—to stare at her new inn, made with shiny wood being coated with some kind of waterproof substance by the Antinium.
And by the time the sun disappeared behind the mountains, the Antinium were done. As promised.
The inn stood tall on the new hill, sides still tacky to the touch. They would be dry by morning according to Pawn, who told Erin not to worry about the damp surroundings. She hadn’t even known that was an issue with the wood varnish, but the Antinium had their own special array of substances.
Erin admired her inn even after the others had left, with full bellies, thanks, and an open invitation to visit tomorrow. Ceria had decided to return to the city with Olesm for one more night, as both were still technically supposed to be recovering.
Her new inn was just as big as the first, which was big. Erin could stand in the common room and turn around and feel the vastness of it. But more importantly from a construction standpoint, this new inn was made mostly with new wood, and it was in a lot better condition than the aged building Erin had found long ago.
The walls and roof were coated with a varnish the Antinium used. It helped protect the wood against the weather, but it also added to the integrity of the building. The nails were copper, and the building was fairy approved. Erin now even had glass windows, complete with shutters to keep the cold out and add privacy. Her kitchen was redone, and now her possessions were organized thanks to Selys’ [Receptionist] skills.
Best of all, and most importantly, the sign over the top of the inn was now painted in bright gold letters that shone when the light touched them. Erin had personally hammered the sign telling people not to kill Goblins into the ground. It was the only lopsided part of the entire affair.
And she had an outhouse and a well. The Antinium dug through the dirt like…well, probably faster than someone with a shovel or a drill.
It was all perfect. Erin spun around in her inn and laughed until she was dizzy. And she was happy. For once she’d turned a disaster into a miracle.
She was happy. She was happy. So happy. But—something was missing.
For a long time Erin searched for it. She looked through the new upstairs, around corners, in the kitchen, under tables and chairs, wondering what it was. She walked back to the empty hill where her inn had once been, staring around, wondering what it was.
And then she realized it as she sat at a table. Erin looked around and didn’t see him. Toren.
Her skeleton still hadn’t returned. Erin had no idea where he was. She climbed up onto her roof and stared around for nearly an hour, ignoring the cold.
“TOREN! WHERE ARE YOU?”
Her voice, amplified by her [Loud Voice] skill, was thunder. Erin heard echoes as her voice bounced off hills. She shouted again and again.
“TOREN!”
She saw no movement, no familiar burning blue eyes. But then Erin heard something.
A faint voice, coming from the much-closer walls of Liscor. A familiar voice echoed as Zevara shouted from the battlements.
“HUMAN! SHUT UP!”
She wondered…where he was.
[Innkeeper Level 19!]
2.12
Because it was magic, they were able to talk to each other despite being far apart. Over four hundred miles separated the two, but to Lady Magnolia and Teriarch, their conversation felt as if they were sitting side by side.
If he closed his eyes, Teriarch could imagine Magnolia sitting by him. Not the older, distinguished [Lady] of now, but the young girl of then.
Thirty years? Forty? He lost track sometimes. It seemed like it had all past in the blink of an eye, a single beat of his heart. But now the girl full of laughter and mischief was gone.
In her place was a woman no less than the girl she’d replaced. But she was different. Youth and energy had been overtaken by—well, more energy, but of a different kind. Hopes and dreams became ambitions tempered by practicality. Impulse and instinct became wisdom. Recklessness transcended to grace.
He loved her for it. But she was growing older. That was something neither he nor she could escape. In time, she would die. Not now—not for many years still. Decades, perhaps. But she would die, and he would remain. Unchanging.
It was his nature, and Teriarch felt it weigh more heavily whenever he found someone like Magnolia. A rare mortal with a spark. It was their nature. They brought light and passion to his life, but like sparks and fireflies, they died all too quickly.
Because it was magic, they could speak even from this distance. Because it was his magic, they could speak without fear of eavesdropping, even from the most powerful mages living on the continent. But it still didn’t mean she could be here, in front of him. Magic could do many things, but it was only a means to an end, not an excuse for miracles.