Blood Shaper

Chapter Sixty-eight

The same soothing feeling from earlier chased away most of the pain from his headache after a few minutes. He peeked up from the comforting barrier of his arms and saw Chitel standing next to him.

“You’re still recovering from everything that happened the other day, so take it easy, alright?” She bent down and peered into his eyes for a second before nodding. “Still no signs of a concussion, but that hit to your head didn’t do you any favors. The spell I cast just now helps with pain, so you should be alright for a while.”

“It’s like an Advil!” Cindy chimed in, “You don’t want to take too many at once, but if you space it out, you can keep the pain down.”

Kay pushed himself upright, “That’s a good explanation, thanks.” He looked at Eleniah, “Any recommendations on something to do today? Our new healer here-”

Chitel beamed at Cindy when she heard that.

“-Says I need to take it easy, but I don’t want to just laze around.”

“Talk to our new people,” Eleniah replied instantly. “That’d be the best option even if you were at full strength.”

“Awesome,” He leaned back in his chair, “Send them in to me in whatever groups or singles you want to. I’m going to stay sitting down for a while.” He leaned his head against the chair and closed his eyes. He heard people moving away and opened one eye. “Oh, wait. New policy.”

Eleniah quirked a brow at him and waited.

“Since we need more people, unless we have a concrete reason to say no, let’s start accepting people who show up on probation as long as they sign the Agreements.” He gave a small shrug to her look. “It won’t happen right now, but eventually, people will find out we’re here, and then at least someone will come and want to join. Until we’ve got a decent population that’s self-sustaining, we’ll take anyone that’s willing to get along.”

Eleniah nodded slowly. “Alright, I can see what you’re thinking. We’ll go with that.” She gave him a small smile and stepped through the door. “I’ll start sending people to talk to you in a few minutes.”

Kay grunted a reply and closed his eyes again. A moment later, he opened his eyes again when he heard someone approaching.

Eleniah walked back in with a stack of papers and some pens. “We should get them to sign now. Also, I don’t know if leaving you alone right now is a great idea.”

“Sure.”

She slowly set down the papers. “Have you eaten?”

“Hmm?” He half-opened his eyes, “…No?”

Eleniah sighed and shook her head, “I’ll go get you something.”

“Mkay.”

Someone poking his shoulder made him jerk in place, and he found Eleniah standing over him. “Wha?”

“You fell asleep again. Eat this, then you’re going back to bed.” She pointed at a small plate of food she’d brought. “I’ll talk to the new people.”

As tired as he was, it took him a moment to process those sentences. “Oh. Alright then.” He swayed as he sat forward and slowly ate the food in front of him, barely tasting it and not really having any idea what he was eating. When he finished it all, Eleniah helped him stand and half-carried him back to the room he’d been sleeping in, and tucked him into bed.

She patted him on the head after covering him up with a blanket. “I’ll talk to you when you’re up again.”

Kay opened his eyes and sat up in bed. “Eleniah?” He glanced around, but the small one-room building was empty. There were a pair of Darten’s lightstones illuminating the room with a soft glow, but he couldn’t tell what time it was since he couldn’t see outside. “Clocks are a priority.” He scrubbed at his face as he stood up, “Or at least timed candles or something.” He looked down to see himself half-naked. He didn’t remember taking any clothes off before he got back in bed, but there was his shirt sitting on the end of the bed. He grabbed it and put it on before walking over to the door and opening it. The gentle light of the moon and the stars shone down on him. His stomach rumbled, and lacking anything else to do, he started walking towards the mess hall.

He didn’t see anyone else while he had his short walk, but there were doors on most of the buildings now, made of the same wood as the furniture Devon was rolling out. Only the government building and the mess hall didn’t have real doors, with hanging curtains of some kind of cloth covering the entrances.

Inside the mess hall, there were a number of new tables and chairs spread throughout the first floor, making it really look like a community eating area for the first time.

Cindy, the other Outworlder, and wasn’t that a trip, was sitting at one of the corner tables talking animatedly with Karl at a low volume. They both looked up when Kay stepped in, and Cindy gave him a small wave.

“You’re awake again.” She commented as he walked over to them, “You doing alright?”

“I’m good. What time is it?”

“A little past midnight,” Karl answered.

Kay frowned. “What are you two still doing up?”

“I’m used to waking up around this time for my watch,” Cindy told him, “I couldn’t really sleep, so I went for a little walk and bumped into Karl here.”

“Shit.” Kay facepalmed and groaned quietly. “We haven’t been setting watches at night. That’s so fucking obvious.”

“Oh, uh, well, you can always start doing them now? Or we can, I mean.”

“I’ve been taking care of it.”

Kay glanced over his shoulder to see Eleniah stepping through the curtained entrance.

“It was me and Meten switching off until he left; I’ve been covering it since then.”

Kay scowled at her, “You haven’t been sleeping?” He demanded.

“No, I’ve been sleeping.” She smiled at him and slid up next to him, “Don’t worry, I’ve been taking care of myself. We talked about elves not needing much sleep compared to other races, remember? That plus being a tier five means I take a nap during the day when I’m not busy, and I’m fine.”

“You promise?”

She laughed, “Yes, I promise, I’m fine.” She patted his shoulder and pulled over a chair to sit in. “I heard you walking around; you okay?”

“Yeah, I feel a lot better.” Kay shook his arms out, “Still a bit on the weird side, but not as exhausted now.”

“Good!” She turned her smile on Karl and Cindy, “So what were you two talking about?” She asked.

“Guns.” Karl grinned a satisfied gin, looking like the Cheshire Cat for a moment.

Kay chuckled a little and headed towards the stairs. “I’m going to grab some jerky and come back up.” He trotted downstairs and grabbed a few pieces of prepared meat that were in the second basement level, and trotted back up. The turkey didn’t taste how he was expecting, but it was still good. The venison jerky was almost the same as the last time he’d had any and was also good.

He pulled a chair back over to their table when he got there and took a seat, still munching on a piece of meat.

“So what I was explaining to Karl,” Cindy started, “Was that I was an SCA member back home.”

“Oh, what era?”

“Mostly Revolutionary War period and stuff in that general area. I did do some medieval and Renaissance period stuff, though. My favorite was antique guns, hands down, so that was my main focus.”

“Sounds like you have a lot more of the kind of information Karl wants than I do; I can only tell you random crap I picked up from books.”

Cindy shrugged, “Yeah, I guess, but I learned something really interesting from Karl here. I was wondering why guns haven’t really become a thing. There have to have been enough Outworlders coming along with at least enough piece-meal information to start people here developing guns on their own. And yet, there are no guns anywhere but one nation, and even then, no one uses them. The axe-guns this lot brought with them, Karl made himself! They didn’t have any other guns at all! Good job, by the way, Karl, those are nice work.”

“Thanks.” Karl glanced away bashfully, “I managed to find some journals from an Outworlder that hadn’t been destroyed, and I copied the designs from there.”

“And that’s another thing!” Cindy threw her hands in the air but still kept her volume relatively low, “They literally destroyed notes from people who told them how to make guns! Even if you can’t magic them, or magic is better, they’re still useful! Why would you do that?” She gave Kay a look. “So I asked Karl what the fuck was up.” She looked at Karl.

“There’s no Skills or Classes for guns,” Karl said.

Kay stared at him. “That’s…” He leaned back in his chair, “That’s interesting.”

“Right?” Cindy leaned her elbows on the table. “Tells you some interesting things, that does.”

“I’m guessing people found out that this new weapon system didn’t have Skills or Classes, and they decided that was a bad thing, then got rid of all of it that they could? Probably passed it down to keep doing that, knowing what I do of the Clans.”

Karl nodded, “Exactly. The three books I found about the subject looked like they got put somewhere else accidentally and survived because of it. The Clans use black powder for mining explosions when magic isn’t as useful, or they just don’t have the right mages on hand, but I’d literally never heard of guns until I found one of those journals. Ahthia helped me hide the two I found and managed to find the third herself.”

Kay stared off into space. “So, The System has to be manually updated.” He stated out loud, “Why would they design it like that?”

“It could be a bug.” Cindy pointed out.

“That they haven’t patched in hundreds of years? Even if they’re some kind of god-like beings with a weird sense of time, there’s no way they missed a bug for that long.”

Cindy shrugged, “We have no idea what they’re like. Hell, maybe the original programmers are gone, and The System is just running on its own.”

Kay groaned. “That would be bad.”

“Would it? Everything seems to be running alright.”

Eleniah raised her hand. “What are you two talking about?”

“The people that made The System,” Kay replied, “I was pretty sure that there was someone that made it and put it into place here, but this sealed the deal. There’s no way that The System would just not work for something if it was natural in this universe. Natural Laws don’t just stop for some particular items; they just are.” Kay rubbed at the back of his head. “I don’t think it affects us on a day-to-day basis, but it’s interesting.” He looked at the three other people at the table. Eleniah looked a little worried, Karl looked interested, and Cindy just looked back at him calmly. “Karl, you still want to mess around with guns and black powder?”

“Absolutely!”

“Then I’m assigning Cindy as your helper when you both have free time to tinker with stuff. See if you can figure stuff out about the system while you’re testing things out, too.” He glanced at Cindy, “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do,” She started listing things on her fingers, “Test different skills that might work and see if there’s a difference, compare damage and other things of that nature, just basically see if the system recognizes that guns exist at all, or there’s something in there that resists them or whatever.”

“Exactly.” He bit off another piece of jerky. “It might not mean anything, or it could be incredibly useful. I’d bet on the first one, but you never know.”