I should have known the fifth member of our little work gang would be here, somewhere. A stupid oversight that left me at their mercy. Now all of them were on me, and I had little choice but to ball up and take it.
They kept kicking for longer than I’d have expected, though time moves different when you’re taking a beating.
When they finally tired of kicking I felt a warm glob of warm spit splattered on the back of my neck. Seems we hadn’t made friends yet just yet.
“You can sleep there for the night, pale face. And when you show up in the morning, you better match the pace we set, or you’ll get worse tomorrow night.”
Whatever anger and dismay I felt at my new life being no better than a torture camp, I couldn’t help but crack a bloody smile as I the now familiar change inside my body took place. I checked my stats:
Name: Adam Henshaw
Title: —
Level: 14
Class: —
Stats:
- Toughness: 18
- Mental Acuity: 12
- Harmony: 14
- Total: 44
“Not bad at all,” I mused, before crawling off into the corner of the nearest buildings. Bloody, bruised, and with a broken nose and at least two broken ribs, But I had the beginnings of a plan as I drifted off to sleep with surprising alacrity.
I woke up aching, barely conscious, and hardly remembering what had happened the evening before. It took a few moments for the pain to come flooding back, bringing with it the memories.
I wasn’t ready to wake up, but the nudging from a nearby foot served as my alarm clock.
“What did I tell you? Don’t get injured again. Seriously, Henshaw. Do you think I have all my time to waste healing your miserable carcass?”
I looked up into the yellow eyes of the mage who’d healed me yesterday, and smiled. Relief flooding me that she was here again. “Trust me, the last thing I want is for you to need to heal me again.”
The buzz from her glowing hands swept through my body, healing mostly superficial wounds.
“In fact,” I continued, feeling a substantially better. “If you just taught me how to heal myself, you’d be completely free of my clumsiness, wouldn’t you? I might even be able to help you with some of the others’ injuries around the place.
She scoffed, though it held about as much humor as a kick to the crackers. “So now you’re trying to steal my job as well as make my life a misery?”
I held up my hands, a gesture I seemed to be using a lot lately. “Okay, I won’t heal anyone. I’ll just heal myself if you show me.”
“Even if you could use magic, people have affinities and develop according to their nature. Harmony is exactly what it sounds like. The balance of the energy inside of you with the energy outside.” She gestured to the air around us. “If you really want to access it, you need to acknowledge your own nature and connection. Once you do that, then you’ll need someone to show you how to channel. When you get to that stage, don’t come to me.”
“Why not?” I said, getting to my feet as she tried to extract from the conversation. “I mean that genuinely as well. Is it just a matter of your time? Can’t you just give me some pointers? Or is there something deeper?”
“You’re a pushy, strange smelling Xenos, with no understanding of magic. My skin crawls just to be around you. The Velorians may have fallen far, but not so far as I would willingly dispense ancient knowledge to one of your ilk. At best, you are a slave. At worst, you look far too much like an Archon to trust.”
I laughed at the comparison. “Me? Look like an Archon? I think you’ve been drinking, Keala.”
“It is Mage Unstele!” she snapped. “And yes! You do. If an Archon house lived in a cave with no access to magic and practiced inbreeding for five centuries!”
I stared slack jawed at the outburst and particularly cutting insult. “I think I liked it better when you kept your cards close to your chest, Mage Unstele. Thanks for clarifying your position, though.”
She turned and stalked off without another word, and though I didn’t particularly want to, I had to follow her because that was the way to the Chargehand’s shed.
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Eest looked up as I walked in, then thumped his desk angrily with an open palm. “Where the hell have you been?”
I saw no reason to lie. “I was attacked. I’ve just been healed by the mage.”
“I don’t want to hear excuses. We’ve got quotas to meet based on manpower. You better work twice as hard to make up the shortfall.”
I could only have been fifteen minutes late at best, but that wasn’t my main grievance. “You know why I got beat up, don’t you?”
He’d already looked back down to the papers on his desk. Now he looked up with an expression of mock bewilderment. “Ah, you’re still here. Did you misunderstand something?”
Knowing a losing battle when I saw one, I headed out of the hut, irritated but not surprised. I’d already intended to work just as hard today anyway. Harder if I could manage it. Despite that, I still stopped again in the doorway. “Is there anywhere I’m supposed to be sleeping? Or do you just expect us to sleep on the streets?”
“Plenty of bunks in the dorms. If you don’t find one, that’s down to you.”
“Yeah, I thought you’d say that.” I jumped from the rickety wooden porch and set off toward the loading area, feeling alone but more determined than ever.
The work was in full flow as I arrived, but that didn’t stop my work colleagues from stopping to stare at me as I took my place.
I smiled and greeted them all before I got into the work. I started slow to warm my muscles and stretch them out. But by the time the second cart came, I’d found my rhythm and increased it steadily.
I didn’t look at the others as I worked, but by hell, I could feel the weight of their eyes on me. In the slight breaks between carts rolling in to our work area, I gently stretched, taking long deep breaths, more often than not with my eyes closed, in an attempt to remain focused. I didn’t want to get drawn into a staring match at this point, there’d be plenty of time for that later.
When the whistle sounded to finish the day, they all left muttering and casting dark looks of pain to come my way. I stayed back, watching them walk out of sight for their evening meal. Once they were gone, I finished emptying the cart we were working on, then I grabbed the tarp that covered the rocks as they were brought up from the mine, and threw it in the cart.
Satisfied, I headed back to the food serving area, exhausted and beyond hungry. I was the last there, so there was no queue for food, and the servers were starting to pack up. Thankfully, the cauldron of stew they served from still sat on the table, and I managed to get a good hearty bowl of stew that was possibly higher toward the brim than the one I’d gotten the day before.
I scanned the tables still filled with people eating, and predictably, there was no available seating. With a disappointed expression, I headed toward the barracks, bowl in hand.
The moment I was out of sight, I sped up and turned away from the barracks to make my way back to where we’d been working. I kept to the shadows, taking great care to make sure I hadn’t been followed.
At the loading area, I waited for ten minutes in the darkness, crouched behind a large boulder rolled into place to be broken up in the morning.
Once I was sure the coast was clear, I picked my way over to the empty wooden cart, slid in the bowl of stew then hauled myself in, before piling up the hinged side board.
I sat in silence for a few more minutes, making sure no one had seen me, then I happily slurped my stew. I was exhausted, so my mind barely wandered from the chunks of meat and vegetable and bland broth in front of me. And once it was finished, I pulled the tarp over me and almost immediately dropped into a deep and dreamless sleep, with only a hint of disappointment that I hadn’t leveled in Toughness again after all of my hard work.
I awoke much fresher than I had the previous morning, but still stiff and aching. Full body healing certainly helped with the aches and pains from a day of hard labor, but I didn’t want to have to take a sound beating just to get it.
The alarm to start the work day hadn’t sounded yet, so I stowed my bowl and the tarp from the wagon in the undisturbed rocks at the base of the mountain. The act preceded a tingle in my mind. It wasn’t unpleasant, but I hadn’t felt anything like it before. I checked my stats:
Level: 15
Class: —
Stats:
- Toughness: 18
- Mental Acuity: 13
- Harmony: 14
- Total: 45
Mental Acuity had gone up a point. As overjoyed as I was, it seemed odd to receive a point for stowing the bowl and tarp under a rock. But, I got annother overall level, so I wasn’t about to complain.
I went through a series of stretches, mind more on the stat increase rather than the movements. After a lot of thought, I suspected the increase was for the whole action of using the cart as a place of safety to sleep, perhaps even having the foresight to use the tarp and hide it away.
As the alarm went, I shrugged and filed the conundrum away for later thought. It was time to work.
My fellow work mates walked into the area together, a tight-knit group full of hostility toward me.
“Made it on time, did you?” the leader grunted. “You plan on trying to embarrass us again today?”
The rumbling of the first cart of the day being pushed out saved me from a pointless interaction. With a thumb, I pointed toward it. “Time to get to work, huh?”
Then I turned and got to work, pulling the side nearest me down to start unloading.
“You gonna pay for this,” their leader said again and spat at my feet as he seemed to like to do.
I wanted to deck the bastard, scoop the spit up, and rub it in his face. Instead, I hauled another rock from the truck.
At the end of the day, I repeated the same pattern as the night before and finished clearing the last truck as the others left. They paused to watch me, but the Chargehand was out and about shouting at people so they moved on as he came to speak to me.
“Numbers are up on your team yesterday. Must have really put your back into it, hey, Henshaw?”
“I’m doing what I can,” I replied, between rocks.
“You’re finished now. Leave the truck and get dinner.”
“I don’t like leaving a task unfinished, and this will give us a better start in the morning.”
The Grunir looked at me for a long moment as if trying to weigh if I was insane or not, then with a shrug, he turned. “Suit yourself.”
By the time I walked into the dining area, I noticed my work colleagues had chosen a table near the serving counter. They were all looking at me as I passed.
“You sit here with us for dinner tonight,” their leader said loudly, causing others to look around to see what the fuss was about. He slapped the table and the pity spot next to him. “Teams should eat together. Good for morale.”
“Teams don’t attack new members on their first day. That isn’t so good for morale.” I retrieved my bowl of soup, glanced back with as cold an expression as I could manage, then set off in the opposite direction that I needed to go so that I could loop back later.
Eyes were on me as I walked away, and I nodded and smiled to the most intense of the watchers. I noticed that some of them were watching what was going on behind my back, which alerted me to the fact that I was being followed.