Mind Your Step, Draft 1, CH 09

“Can’t you make a sled with your water?” Heather asked as Tibs threw a third bag of flour over his shoulder.

“Yes, but I won’t. Those are off limits,” he told Ruppert as the squirrel climbed on top of them.

“Can we get one just for me?”

“Why not?” Heather asked.

“If I do, you don’t touch it until we’ve left the village.”

Heather closed her mouth. “You know. You need to let me know when you aren’t talking to me. It gets confusing.”

“Imagine how it is for me, when neither of you pays attention to when the other one’s speaking.”

“How am I supposed to know when Ruppert is talking?”

“He chitters.”

“So that’s actually it talking?”

“Yes.”

“I try to stop it from happening,” Ruppert said, back on the cart, head in the flour.

“Was that him talking?” Heather asked after the muffled sounds stopped.

“Yes. He can’t seem to stop it, even when he’s stuffing his face.”

“How else am I going to bring all of this to absorb? Why is this body’s influence so slow?”

“I don’t know, Ruppert.” Tibs used water to put an extra bag over his shoulder and connected it to the others with ice.

“So,” she said after waiting. “A sled? We could bring most of that since you could ice the ground, too.”

“Are you cutting down all the trees in our way? And even if you do, I don’t want them to know I have an element, so it’s only what I can carry on my shoulder. And yours,” he added.

“Held together with ice.”

“Once I drop Ruppert’s bag, I’ll be able to hold them in place without help.”

“So you’re stealing from the people you claim to help.”

He sighed. “One. This is helping them. They aren’t going to have to worry about the bandits anymore. Two. I’m a thief. Three. They might not even come retrieve the bags. The forest is a terrifying place even without bandits in it. Four. I’ll be surprised if the only open bag is the one Ruppert clawed by the time they do get it. Hand me the map.”

She took it off the table where Tibs had drawn the path from the village to this camp and gave it to him before putting bags of flour on her shoulder. With a smirk, she had three on each of them, held with her arms, and her essence. He couldn’t tell exactly how she did it, but he sensed the cloud she maintained around the bags.

“Ruppert, we’re leaving.”

The bloated squirrel fell off the cart in his attempt to jump, then scampered clumsily.

“How is he still alive, looking like that?” she asked.

“He’s no longer a normal squirrel. The core changed the body.”

“Okay. And what is he going to do with all that flour?”

Ruppert paused in climbing up Tibs’s leg. “Absorb it.”

“Digest it,” Tibs said.

She shook her head in consternation. “Ruppert is odd.”

“You know this wouldn’t be so confusing for her if you told her I am a dungeon.” He resumed climbing.

Until she made the connection to where Ruppert came from and looked into how it was a dungeon existed outside a mountain. Tibs didn’t trust her not to got to the guild in seeking answers to that question.

The trek back to the village was faster than Tibs expected. He set his pace to match Heather’s, and had expected her to be slow. Instead, she walked as if the bags of flour weighed nothing like what Tibs knew them to, and didn’t unbalance her the way he felt his wanted to if he didn’t use air to counter that.

One was because of her strength, which he knew was more than she looked like being, and the other had to be her essence. Leaving the camp with the shadows still long, they reached the tree line with ample sunlight left. He set the extra bag among the branches, and they continued on.

Ruppert looked only fat when Tibs ordered him inside his vest and to remain out of sight.

One of the village folk in the field ran ahead on seeing them, but, to Heather’s disappointment, instead of a welcoming committee, they entered an apparently deserted village.

“Where is everyone?”

“Hiding.” He headed for the tavern, where he sensed people. Each house had someone, but the tavern keeper had already interacted with them, so he hoped would be less scared.

“Why?”

“Because they’re scared.”

“Of what?”

He dropped the bags on the porch and ensured they leaned against the wall. It was louder than he’d expected and repeated when Heather did the same with her two stacks on the other side of the door.

The door cracked open without him having to knock, and a scared eye looked at them.

“You don’t have to worry about your monsters anymore,” he told the tavern keeper. “We removed them.” He offered her the map. “This will take you to their camp where you can find more of your flour.”

She had to open the door further to reach for it with a trembling hand, which vanished without the map when she noticed the bags on Heather’s side. Her surprise was mixed with more fear as she reached for the map again.

When she spoke it was with reluctance. “What can we do to repay you?”

“Nothing,” he said, cutting off Heather. “Making sure you’re all safe is reward enough,” he added, cutting Heather off again. The glare told him she wasn’t happy, but she didn’t try to speak again.

“Who…. Who are you?” the tavern keeper asked fearfully.

“Tyrone of Jisteisteon.” He turned and walked away, pulling Heather with him.

He yanked her arm out of his hand. “What was that about? We could have gotten some sort of reward from this.”

“What would you have asked for?”

“I don’t know. I’d have taken whatever their generosity led them to give me. Wouldn’t be much in a place like this, but it would have been something.”

“Did she look inclined to generosity?”

“We saved them. It’s just good manners to reward your saviors.”

He snorted.

“What was that for?”

“Two of us have taken on their monsters, Heather. We aren’t their saviors. We’re adventurers.”

“How is that different?”

“Adventurers aren’t people in the minds of folks so far from everything. They’re monsters in their own right. They can do the impossible, like kill other monsters.”

“They go around helping people.”

He snorted again. “Are you telling me your father told you that’s what the guild had him do?”

“Well, not all of them do that. Some do actual work. But bards sing about adventurers rescuing people and villages and towns.”

“Bards lie. That’s about all they do. They sing songs that make people feel good without giving a damn about what the reality is, and then claim they really happened that way.”

“How do you know?” she asked defiantly, and he almost told her about the songs bards sang about him.

“When you read as much as I do. When you spend time looking through the songs scholars put down. You start noticing interesting things. Scholars don’t know everything, and they definitely think they know more than they do, but when it comes to histories, they are careful to mark what is documented and what is supposition based on what they’ve been able to gather. I’ve come across bards’ songs claiming to tell the same event scholars have documented, and even the one that is closest to what scholars can show happened lies about it, while still proclaiming to be entirely the truth.”

He reined in his mounting anger. “I don’t mind the bard who sings something to entertain. Something to make people stand and rejoice in the moment. But unless someone has access to a library and pours through book after book. They are the only way people learn about what happened before, and I think they have a responsibility to get that right. Instead of twisting them into so many stories, no one knows the past anymore.”

“That anger sounds like you’ve gotten into an argument with a few of them.”

“Like I’d waste my time with that.” He opened his vest, now that they were outside the walls, and Ruppert hurried over his shoulders. “You could have asked for every firstborn in the village, Heather, and they would have given them to you. That’s how terrified of us they are.”

She looked over her shoulder. “But we helped them.”

“Blame the bards for turning any story of people helping each other into tales of monsters and adventurers with more power than the common folk will ever be able to grasp.”

*

Ruppert stuffed his face in the bag as soon as they stopped.

“Where does he put it all?” Heather asked as they made camp.

“His core, I’m guessing,” he added, trying to avoid sounding too confident. He wasn’t supposed to know about what Ruppert was, and even with having the core as a source of information, he didn’t want to make Heather suspicious. She was too attentive to details.

“You can tell her it goes in my reserve. I absorb all that essence. Why are you not telling her what you know?”

“He says that it goes in his reserves once he digests it.”

“He has a reserve like mine?”

Ruppert snorted. Then sneezed. “That doesn’t go in there.” He sneezed again, raised his head and shook it. “How to I get that out of there?” he sneezed again.

“Blow through your nose.”

“Blow what through there?”

“Air, what else?”

Ruppert stared at him, and Tibs sensed the essence take shape. It was rapid enough all he could do was watch as the blast of air exploded and sent Ruppert barreling back.

Heather jumped to her feet, hand on her sword. “What was that?”

“I’m not sure.” Tibs leaned over the back. “Why did you do that?”

Ruppert hurried to his feet and preened his fur. “It’s what you told me to do. Stop that.” With what seemed to be a lot of effort, he got his body under control.

“I just said to blow your nose.”

“With Air.”

Tibs blew air through his nose. “Like that. I see you breathe. How do you not know how to blow air out of your nose?”

“I don’t know how this body does anything,” he exclaimed, gesticulating. Then he was preening his fur again. “See. I’m not doing this.”

Heather joined Tibs. “What’s he saying?”

“Don’t tell her!”

“I thought you wanted me to tell her everything.”

“All the things you know and aren’t telling her. Not this. This is….” The gesticulation returned, then he was preening again.

“I think the word you’re looking for is embarrassing.”

“Yes. That! I don’t know why, but I don’t like it.”

“I need to tell her something.”

“What is he embarrassed about?” she asked.

“See?”

Ruppert glared at him. “She’s only asking because you said the word.”

“I said it so you’d know it.”

The squirrel slumped, and the preening took on an air of defeat. “Don’t make me seem too pitiful then.”

“Ruppert doesn’t know how the body he’s in does most of what it does. And he doesn’t like it.”

“That’s not something to be embarrassed about,” Heather said. “You’ll figure it out.”

“She’s right. You absorbed the information, so it’s just about paying attention to what the body does and figuring out how it works.” He picked him up and placed Ruppert back on the bag. “But it might be good not to bury your head in flour until you do.”

*

“Why aren’t you telling her what I am?” Ruppert asked, curled up on Tibs’s chest.

“Because I don’t trust her.”

Heather had gone into her tent a while before, and her breathing was slow and steady.

“Why not? Aren’t you her helper?”

Tibs needed to think over how Ruppert had reached that conclusion, then chuckled. “People are more complicated than that.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Because we’re people, I guess. I’m helping her because I want to learn about her element in the process. Force is one I’d like to have, but there’s hardly anything in the books about it. I can’t even work out how she got her audience. I hit her with Air. What did you hit her with to send her flying?”

“A bunch of essence. I just wanted her….”

“You can say it, Ruppert. It’s in the past.”

“Dead,” he said softly. “I wanted her dead. So I just exploded everything I had at the ready.”

“So that also doesn’t explain how she got an audience with Force. She hit the ground, so that should mean Earth, or Air, with it around her.”

“So you want her to help you like you help her.”

“I want her not to try to throw me in a cell by the time this is over. Or try to hand me over to the guild.”

“She’d do that even with you helping her?”

“It’s why she was chasing me. And she needs to prove herself to others.”

“Because you broke rules.”

“Yes. Although she’s blowing it out of proportion. It’s not like I stole from people who couldn’t deal with it. Nobles have more money than they should, anyway.”

“Just explain that to her.”

He chuckled. “It’s not that simple. She considers all theft wrong. All I can hope for is that the help I give her will be enough for her to let me walk away at some point. She’ll probably chase me again eventually, but I’d like some time without having to worry about her on my heels.”

“You should become friends. It makes everything easier.”

Tibs wished that were true.

What I'm Working With

Return to the village with grains of flour. And news they are safe and where the camp with the rest of the flour is. The reception is cold, and the vilagers are more scared afterward. Tibs refuse any reward and need to explain to Heather why. Ruppert behaves properly.

Once on the trade road, come accross a village terrorized by bandits. Tibs goes to deal with them. Heather won’t let him do that alone. As part of the fight, Tibs will have to reveal he has and element. Then have to explain away his eyes.

Once this is resolved, proceed to a city.

This little adventure is done.

This went pretty much as I wanted. The main thing I wanted to establish, again, playing on Heather’s overall inexperience with the ‘outside’ world. Is that people with power are scary to the small folks pretty much no matter what they do. There is a high level of ignorance in this world. And while I am still approaching it with a lack of maliciousness on their part, bards are not helping the situation with their constant exaggerations and changes to stories while claiming them to be true. From their point of view, it’s all just for the entertainment, but they are also utterly disconnected from the common folks.