Chapter 2.11 (Patreon)

Ed didn’t give Flint or Winona the time to wash up. So instead, they got dressed, relieved themselves, washed their mouths out with Twylip’s dental peppermint concoction and started their journey uphill. Initially, Flint thought it would be for the best if they maintained a professional image and didn’t make their affairs public. Then Winona took his hand, their fingers intertwined, and the thought went out of the window.

Considering how closely everyone in the fort lived, keeping secrets wasn’t an option. The news would’ve spread when Winona and Flint entered the stone hut together. They weren’t particularly quiet during the night either. Given the smiles and nods passing people flashed at them, Flint guessed everybody already knew what had happened. Perhaps people had seen the kiss a couple of weeks ago and considered it just a matter of time.

Bjorn and Maya smelled something curious on Ed, and the former wanted to follow. Flint discouraged them using an empathic push. He wanted the pair to spend time with their pups and stay still. The brownies had arranged fruit and raw meat for the couple to consume. He spotted several children milling around too.

He instructed one of the younger brownies to keep them away—Seven had left him there to attend to the pups if they needed it. Maya and her babies deserved privacy. Perhaps Bjorn would keep everyone away, but Flint didn’t want them bothered at all. If not for the pressing matters uphill, he would’ve assigned one of the young aspiring guards or an unoccupied adult to guard the hut.

“What should we expect, Ed?” Flint asked as they started their journey uphill. An empathic push got the bloodhounds to follow him. They weren’t as powerful as Maya or Bjorn, of course, but he hoped they’d be sufficient if things took a turn for the worst.

“I wish I could tell you, Mr Flint,” Ed answered. “I slept by the gate, and one of the pucks showed up breathless and rambling. He didn’t speak the common tongue, and even Keen couldn’t make sense of what he was saying. So all I got is there is a stranger in the sewer system, but they don’t look like a threat.”

Ed held a near spear in his hands. The head was twice as long as Flint’s palm and tapered into a sharp point. Runes didn’t just cover the polished metal but also ran down the shaft. Flint hoped Adam either finished his essence-powered hand cannon soon or found the materials for a crossbow. He hadn’t missed carrying a weapon for the past few weeks, but now, he couldn’t help but feel naked.

“Let’s hope they’re right about the stranger being non-hostile. We’re not ready to deal with underground threats.” Flint’s brows furrowed as he increased the pace.

“I’m weapon enough for both of us,” Winona said. “I’ve got over a century of arcane training under my belt.” She raised her left hand and stuck it in a neighbouring building’s shadow. The darkness squirmed and came to life before leaping to wrap around her digits. The black tentacles coiled around her forearm and stopped just past the elbow. Even though Flint stood on her right side, he could feel the cold radiating from it. “Three decades of close combat training should help too.”

“You stopped being a weapon the second you swear your oath,” Flint said. “You’re a lot more to the Woodson lands than a weapon.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Winona chuckled. “I’m a commander and teacher too.”

“You know what I meant.”

Sunrise had just passed, but by the fort’s standards, it was late in the day. Everyone was already at work. Flint passed a pair walking downhill with baskets full of food for the defensive forces. He crossed Adam’s new opponents carrying down aetherite and iron weapons for the watch too. He checked them for extras and claimed a small iron club. It housed a pea-sized aether crystal, and runes covered it. Flint didn’t know what gifts Adam had bestowed upon it, but it gave him more comfort than the dagger from before.

Much to Flint’s surprise, a large crowd had gathered around the trench. Half the guards were already at the site and had started a blockade to keep curious people away from the edge. A fall into the empty ditch would result in crippling injuries, if not death.

The trio rushed down the stairs to the pipe’s mouth. Rowan and Keen stood in front of it, armoured and armed. They nodded at Flint and Winona before stepping aside from them. The pair didn’t appear overly concerned, and he took it as reassurance.

The builders had completed their work on the pipeline. It continued deep underground, and lanterns lit the way forward. As instructed, Flint’s subordinates had restored the holes connecting to the toilets on the surface. They’d have to connect the water supply to the sanitation system before testing everything, but he hoped to provide the people at the gate with working bathrooms too. He had scrapped the plans for connecting the sewers to the outer moat. Instead, Flint hoped to either connect it to the water supply or leaving it to the dryads. He was starting to understand their magic, and only a more powerful plant mage would be able to take command of another’s plants.

[Keen Eye] highlighted a figure in the distance. It looked a lot like a brownie but grey-skinned, and its limbs were stretched to human proportions. Its ears were unusually large too. They were as wide as Flint’s hand and twice as long. Most unusual of the creature’s features was its eyeless face. Flint was glad that it didn’t just send shivers down his spine.

Winona’s shoulders and back had stiffened too. He had never seen anything of the kind before. If the creature had no eyes and bat-like ears, perhaps it had super hearing too. The pipe ended not far behind it and

“Good day…friend,” Winona said. Flint was glad she took the lead. He didn’t know what to say or how to approach the situation. But Flint, his companion, knew something about the creature in front of them. The shadows around her left forearm writhed, rearing to go. “What brings you to our territory?”

“Oh, lady, so polite!” The creature exclaimed, sounding like it had water stuck in its throat. “You dig outside tribe water. Chief want to know why.”

“This is our land,” Flint said. His empathic sense stirred, reaching out to the stranger. He did sense colours and temperatures, but they didn’t match anything he had sensed before. “We’re repairing our old sanitation system—”

“Chief no want tunnel into Black River Bat waters,” the creature said. “You come. We attack.”

Flint wasn’t sure whether it would work or not, but he tried anyway. He pushed calming and friendly tones on the Black River Bat. “This tunnel will be blocked off soon, and it will feed our unwanted waters into your river. We have no plans of entering your territory. Maybe, we can be friends, though.”

“Schleb like friends. You want fish?” Schleb withdrew a stone-tipped spear from the darkness behind him and held out the fish skewered on its end. It was bigger than the strange creature’s torso.

“We’re fine, thank you, Schleb.” Schleb’s lipless mouth extended into a wide grin at the mention of his name. Flint wanted to like him, but he got an uncomfortable slimy feeling from Schleb. “I’m the leader of the fort above. Would it be possible for your chief and me to meet? I’d love to discuss our friendship and maybe trade?”

Flint glanced at Winona for encouragement, but her back and shoulders were still stiff. The shadow-covered hand remained clenched as a fist too.

“Trade?” Schelb tilted his oblong head to the side like a confused dog.

“Yes. I give you fruit and vegetables. You give me fish.”

“Fruit!” Schelb bounced. A loud gurgling sound escaped his throat. Winona took a step back, and shadows coated her right hand too. “Schleb loves big juicy fruit.” He flashed his two rows of pointed teeth. “Black River has no fruit. Give bats fruit. Bats give fish! I bring chief.”

Schleb turned on his heel, ran down the pipe and dove into the water. Winona grabbed Flint’s forearm. Her essence’s frigid temperatures made his bones rattle. She pulled him up the pipe towards the exit in the distance.

“What was that thing?” Flint spoke in a whisper, hoping Schleb’s giant ears didn’t pick them up. “I’ve neither seen nor heard of anything like it.”

“I don’t know,” Winona answered. “I thought for a moment it might be some kind of water nymph or pixie that got trapped underwater and adapted to the darkness. Then I felt Schleb’s essence. It’s not normal.”

“In what way?” Flint asked. “Everything I felt through the empathic sense made me squirm. Something is wrong with that thing, and I don’t know what or why. You don’t recognise the essence?”

“That’s the issue. I do recognise it. The two Vikings that escaped, they had eaten these chunks of flesh with a similar essence signature. Alais says it belongs to creatures that live in the void between disks. We need to talk to him.”

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