Cade wasn't a ruler, the very idea of taking charge of so many undisciplined people made his stomach roll and his head start to hurt.
He was sure were plenty of people that system had chewed up and spat out but what if anything could they do to help him get rid of the slavers and their ilk.
Besides the plan to rid the kingdom of Dejot of the slave trade he still didn't have a driving focus for his life here besides providing for his new family.
Added to that lack of focus with his power and healing, he was pretty much unkillable and if his newfound youth was any indication he would live for a very long time.
"All I want to be is a good person, will this world let me be who I want to be if my power is known widely. Or will they hate me for what I can do or they can use me for, discarding me when they are done?"
Cade shook his head at the unpleasant thoughts, why allow anyone that much leeway with his life?
It was his for a second time, his place in this world he would carve out with the main driving goal being the safety of those that were his and in turn, they would take care of him.
He knew once they reached what he considered civilization there would be crooks, thieves, and all manner of bad people.
He shivered in disgust at the worst of them, the politicians, slimy self-serving bitches. He had met a few of the lower-level ones while he served.
Their smiles never quite reached their eyes, their words never quite matched their actions. He was suddenly double glad for his ability to delve into anyone's mind at that moment.
Grinning to himself like a fool at the idea of having those who loved him unequivocally once again, and the ability to tell that with a literal thought he made a decision.
He would strive to ensure those he cared for and those that were reliant on him would be safe and happy and all the other assholes could eat shit and die.
Deciding to come back from his power trip, hubris had brought many a man or woman low, forgetting that would only end in tears.
"No underestimating anyone or anything Cade, we have lost too much to let it happen again," he said soberly as he looked on at the river they were traveling down.
His melancholy left him as he looked once again at the amazing women that had chosen him as he lounged next to his softly snoring mates.
Deciding he had enough moping and creating problems where there were none, he put his mind to getting them upstream as swiftly as he was able.
As the barges speed increased a spray of water lightly misted the group, he thought of a solution but shied from implementing it for several minutes.
Could he build his houseboat on the go, with two whole days of travel left to them even at their increased speed what could he do to pass the time?
His mates slept on he smiled at his little snake as she absorbed his past life, hopefully finding it to her liking as Mina had.
If her full day of being secreted away in his mind was any indication they would both be out for hours if not till tomorrow.
A little home renovation would allow them to sleep on a bed and him to cook in a real kitchen.
That was one thing he missed surprisingly. He had enjoyed cooking almost every night he could for his family.
Making up his mind on the issue he reached out to a large tree along the left bank and attempted to pull it out of the ground.
He watched with wide eyes as the tree was forcibly yanked out of the ground, roots and all, to smash through the surrounding growth.
It pinballed around other large trees and smashed and toppled others in its path to keep the distance he had grabbed it from.
Cade grimaced and sucked a long breath in through his teeth at the carnage the tree in his grip was causing.
He quickly pulled the severely damaged tree over the water as it leveled one last sapling.
"Gonna have to be careful about that from now on," he said with a grimace at the football field-sized swath of forest he had leveled with his little experiment.
"Well waste not want not."
Retrieving all the damaged trees he could find he swiftly brought them over the water to stack up in an orderly pile that stood fifty feet tall and twenty feet wide.
Smiling at his new building materials, Cade set to work stripping branches and bark, he then cut the bare trunks into manageable sized boards.
Small thunks as the boards and pillars of wood landed on the deck of the barge sounded around him as he began to build the frame of his new home around him and his mates.
"If the boats a rockin don't come a-knockin," he said with a laugh, as he expanded the ten by twenty-foot barge to a roomier thirty by fifty using his power over the atoms of the trees and barge to fix the damage and weld the pieces into a seamless wood floor.
With his foundation made he smiled to himself as he began to construct the innards of his and his mate's new home.
Complications
Finishing up on the first floor of Cade and his mate's new mobile home was a relief.
The bottom floor was completed as the sun dropped below the tops of the trees.
As night settled quickly, the swift shift from daylight to near pitch blackness still surprising him.
Bringing them to shore for the night was unnecessary, Cade having thought ahead and built into the center of the house an anchor system that would allow him and his mates the safety of the deep water surrounding them.
Sitting in the small alcove he had dubbed his man shack, he could steer their unwieldy home upstream blessedly with the accommodations he was used to.
The man shack led to their living room, with no TV to provide entertainment he had dredged the bottom of the river to build a decent sized fireplace to cozy up to with his mates on cold nights.
He had pieced together a heating and cooling system in the fireplace that worked almost as well as the one back home.
The dial on the wall had none of the digits that told the actual temperature it would be set at, just a maximum and minimum setting with little hashes in between.
It was simple but effective though as the muggy air in the home was replaced by warm dry air quickly.
The condensation ran off into the anchor hole as he looked on with a smile.
The weight of the stone fireplace slash HVAC though had caused the barge to tilt slightly.
Cade's attempt during the build in offsetting that tilt had caused the living room to open to the kitchen on the opposite side of the barge.
With more stone and a decent amount of metal that he had luckily found by pausing their trip for a few minutes.
He, with a liberal application of power, located a wide variety of metals a few hundred feet below the river. He had used the windfall of materials and fashioned a kitchen that wouldn't look out of place in a five-star restaurant.
With no real electricity, he had opted to make his lighting fixtures by tying a tiny graphite rod into his twenty-pound power generator and tying a spell that would run electrons through it.
Surrounding the glowing rod with the glass he had created from the sand at the bottom of the river he had removed all air molecules from.
The improvised lights had worked better than he had expected.
Setting the homemade bulbs around the house had lead to his home being a shining beacon in the jungle.
Cade had been a little worried he would attract the wrong kind of attention, so he redid his wrap around porch and added a pivot that would dump unwitting intruders into the river.
Smiling at his foresight he had continued with the home's renovation, with the master suite coming next.
The amount of area he had to work with was massive, he had grinned like a fat kid in front of a cake when he had started the project.
Sex swings, stripper poles, and other less savory adult toys flying through his mind as he envisioned their bedroom in his mind's eye.
He had settled with a truly monstrous bed twenty feet wide, almost stretching the complete width of the room, by ten feet long with three
feet thick memory foam material he had created in his first bachelor pad after he had been dumped here.
It was glorious, he had to physically hold himself back from gripping his mates sleeping bodies and using the ginormous bed to wake them up.
With his still sleeping mates carefully laid on the large L shaped couch in the living room, he had to hold himself back from the debauched plan he had in his head to turn into a Cade alarm clock.
He had held himself back by working on the bathroom, if the bedroom was decadent then the bathroom was downright naughty in his eyes.
Having a clear idea of what he wanted, he had started by fabricating a water pump.
As simple as it was to make the water pump, executing on the idea that his mates would be able to turn the water on and select the temperature of the water that it moved had been a major bitch.
He could have just used his power to filter the water from the river and adjust the temperature as needed.
Making the system work for his mates was another matter entirely.
He finally, after hours of trial and error had settled on a dial, using the same idea as the fireplace come HVAC.
Creating a regulator for the temperature controls that governed the energy levels of the atoms in the water that the pump pulled from the river that kept the water below scalding, he had tied the rest of the plumbing for the bathroom into the piping coming off the pump.
He almost did a jig as the hot then cold water spilling into the sinks proved he was able to control the temperature of the water.
As he replicated the faucets for his pride and joy the almost too hot water began spilling into the tub mounted to the far wall of the room.
Resembling a small pool their tub was big enough for all of them to fit in, even Sabine's 15-foot length.
The idea for the color of the tub had him searching for a black rock that would hold water and their weight.
He had found one after a short search through his pile of materials that would work.
Mounding the huge block had taken a few minutes, and even after the long hours of construction, he was still anxious to put it to use.
He had created an enormous shower that was mounted to the near wall with rainfall showerheads and plenty of room for adult shenanigans.
The walls and floor were made up of tiles he had created from the river rock underneath them.
He had contemplated making it out of the same material as the tub but liked the look of the rocks that ran the gambit from white to pitch black he had found more.
The gradual change from pure white on the top of the shower to grey in the middle that changed to the same black stone of the tub had taken a few hours and another search beneath the river to complete but the time spent had been well worth it as he had gazed lovingly on the results.
The last necessity in the bathroom had been the toilet, he had manfully resisted making it out of solid gold.
He had finally set the toilet was set up in a large enclosed closet, across from the shower.
The final building material he had decided on was a mixture like the shower.
He had taken a full hour mixing the white, grey, and black stone so the colors shifted almost imperceptibly from white on top to black on the bottom.
Cade hoped that Sabine would be able to use it, not having the pleasure of seeing the beautiful woman naked, yet.
The septic tank that their waste would end up in was mounted under the bathroom, he had flip-flopped between creating a bacterial colony to get rid of the waste or simply burning it and venting the remnants.
He had decided to just burn the waste when needed, ideas of a new bacterial plague had flown through his mind as he had contemplated what would happen if his custom made bacteria were to escape.
His last addition to the bathroom had been a massive vanity with a mirror-polished sheet of metal between the tub and shower, and a large waterproof couch on the opposite wall.
Cade wasn't sure if they had any hair products in this world but the ability to sit and view his mates wet naked bodies more than made up for the effort of creating the last two additions.
Even with that in mind, the storage space in the vanity was sure to be used for the jewelry he would either make or buy for his mates.
A his, hers, hers sink with black countertops stood near the door, the sinks being made of the same material as the tub.
He had topped that off with another metal mirror and waterfall faucets that he had lightly coated with the same black rock.
He had liked the look of the rock coated faucets so much that he had done the same for all the fixtures in the bathroom.
He glanced around admiring his work as he sat on the couch next to his still slumbering mates.
He was still uncertain on what the stairs in the living room to the second floor would lead up to though.
The completed bottom floor was a beautiful modern home with all amenities all the appliances looked new and high tech, and all of it ran off the twenty-pound block of metal, still in its home under the kitchen sink.
Leaving his slumbering mates Cade walked through the rooms grinning to himself at the home he had created.
The sound of padded feet signaled his Dresk's arrival as Mina ran into the room with a look of terror on her face.
"We are under att..." He was almost thrown off his feet as he caught Mina in his arms as she fell into his arms as their home rocked side to side as a massive BOOM sounded.
The whole barge shifted as a fiery explosion hit the starboard side of their home blackening the boards of the wall and starting little fires on their wooden porch.
Cade quickly recovered from his shock and expanded his awareness to find the culprit.
Sensing ten bodies grouped along the riverbank, he seized the group and set a recovered Mina on her feet before he ran through the living room passing Sabine as she fell off the couch in her rush to prepare for the fight.
As he ran towards the stairs leading up to the second floor he saw Mina reach into the jumble of weapons, armor, and supplies he had dumped into the center of the living room as she retrieved her scavenged short swords from the pile.
As he ran up the stairs to the bare floor of the second story Cade brought the struggling group out over the water to stop on a line ten feet away from the porch of the houseboat above the water.
Looking at the group of obvious slavers in their black leather garb with millions of questions running through his head about how and why these men found them, he failed to notice one of the slavers grin at him.
Sharp pain brought him out of his contemplation, as a dozen sharp spikes slammed into his body.
Jerking at the surprising pain he reflexively threw the group in his mental grip back towards the shore and away from him to splash unceremoniously into the dark River.
Mina and Sabine screamed his name as he bled profusely from the stab wounds.
Attempting to remove the ones he could reach with his hands resulted in his palms cut all the way down to his metal-covered bones.
Atomic Mage Page 18