Chapter 331

331 231 – No Hay?

Plotline: Main

Type: Social

“Honorable Yu De.” I said.

“Gyaa!” he replied, possibly because it was dark. “Don’t DO that!”

“Don’t be polite?”

“Don’t sneak up on people. Especially not at this hour of the morning!”

Oh, that. Yeah... maybe, but probably not.

“Yu De, I notice all the living dead aren’t in the doom room. Where did they go?”

I suspected they had gone somewhere because most of their cots were also missing.

.....

“What? Just inside the gate. The Shrine Sisters are caring for them until they can be carted to the middle zone.”

“Hrm. So we’re only keeping the ones with souls?”

“You’re the only one who can determine their actual condition.” Yu De said. “At least on our end.”

I was... “That seems highly unlikely.” I said.

He shrugged. “I can only tell you what I know about.”

“Are we expecting anyone new?” I asked.

“Not for a few days. I’d go back to your duties in the meditation room.”

“Good to know.” I said.

Of the three I asked, two (including the man I’d hesitated on) volunteered. I noticed the third was also gone, but didn’t see her among the cots outside.

It was frustrating. Why was I spending my mana to save people, if they weren’t actually spared? Oh, and the Tainted man was also missing, but I didn’t care about his fate.

But there were also two hours before my work shift, hours being different between the charnel room and normal duty. That was two hours to visit the nearest market, and discover that in spite of harvest having just been taken, there was... almost nothing.

By which I mean, nothing humans would consider edible. Not even bales of hay, although I hadn’t seen too many horses or other beasts. There was one entrepreneur selling fried and breaded rat skins, but on a cost versus nutrition standpoint, they weren’t on the menu.

The smell of them made my mouth water, though.

I did buy two suspiciously soft oranges (picking up a new pathogen), and four servings of tangled cotton. Properly infused, the orange pulp squeezed over the fibrous puffs, it became a total of forty eight nutrition. It was like pouring water into the desert, but for an hour or so my hunger had a softened edge.

“I’m sorry, honored Bei Lala?” I asked.

“I didn’t stutter.” she said. “Destroy the water in the barrel for Water mana.”

“I ... don’t know the incantation for that spell, honored superior.”

“PIIIING! How is anyone so worthless? Just invoke your Metal affinity, and suppress the Water’s ability to exist. As it presses back, it will generate Water power. Absorb that power as normal. Now just get to it.”

“Honored superior, that sounds like an advanced technique.”

She snorted. “You can do it.”

I turned to my fellow apprentices. “Can either of you perform something like this?”

Blank looks met my question.

“On any element?” I asked.

Incinerator Bei waved her fan through my personal space. “I have told you everything you need to know to perform this task. Get it done. By noon. I want my fire mana by the time my lunch is done. You’ll want to hurry; it will be a small lunch.”

She turned and left.

The “task” went beyond the pale. Du Jing’s warping of the earth was magically abusive. This was abusive and dangerous and ... it may be a recipe for magically generating Taint.

Done wrong? Magic would chew me up and spit nothing out.

Well, I guess I didn’t have Mystic Research at third level by NOT trying new things. I started small, fishing out a metal bowl with two servings of water, and setting it on the stone. I mean, cut stone wasn’t as good as raw earth, but I wasn’t tapping it for mana, I was just reinforcing the metal.

It didn’t work, and I realized in short order why. Water grew wood, which grew fire, but water directly reduced fire. I didn’t need metal to reduce water; I needed stone, or another form of raw earth.

“Damn it.” I said.

We weren’t supposed to disturb the mages during their own work, but I needed a tool we didn’t have. Letting her know early seemed prudent. So I was poking around the barracks level of the main gate when she found me.

I was moving forward fast enough that her fan strike to my head missed entirely.

“Ah, honored Incinerator Bei. I needed to speak to you.” I said.

“I. Am. Not. In the. Mood.” she said, her face livid and red.

I knocked her fan away from my nose. “Your task requires an earthen bowl to complete. Raw earth or stone, not pottery or carved.”

“It requires no such tools! You are inventing things to avoid the task.”

“And harvest doesn’t require a sickle. But if you want it done quickly, properly, then I need the proper tools.”

She took a swing at my head, and I stopped her by grabbing her wrist. I held it tightly and firmly.

“You DARE! Let me go! Help, ASSAULT!” she screamed. And she smiled at me as though she’d just won something.

“What’s going on?” a sleepy female asked. “I gotta burn a bitch?”

“This male assaulted me. With sexual intent. I demand his immediate execution.” she said when a soldier arrived.

“What’s your story?” he asked.

“You don’t NEED his story. I’m the victim here. Look at this bruise!”

I sighed. “I am a Truthspeaker, and literally cannot lie to you.”

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“Huh?” Came the female voice from behind me. “Hey, elder brother. Turn and let me see your eyes.”

I did so.

“Ping?” she asked.

“Honorable Blacksoul Madonna?” I asked.

“Meh.” she waved a hand in dismissal. “I vouch for him. This asshole’s a class-holding oath-taking Speaker of the Truth.”

“So what happened?”

And I explained the encounter to the honored sergeant.

“Well, that sounds like assault to me, if not sexual assault.” he said.

“Quite so.” Bei Lala said, as he pulled out a pair of manacles.

Why did he HAVE those? Those weren’t standard issue.

He reached out, slapped one of her wrists into a metal cuff.

“What are you DOING?” she asked, as he placed the other wrist into its own cuff.

“Oh, you are guilty of criminal negligence of children.” the soldier said. “Hey, boy? You promise to accompany us to the local justice and not cause trouble? Or do I need to get a second pair of these things?”

“Honored elder, I promise to accompany you to where we are going and to not attempt to escape until and unless it turns out you have lied about your intentions.”

“You can’t... I promise that, too!” Bei Lala said.

“Ah-ah. What is the first principle of Truthspeaking?” the guard asked.

Without waiting for an answer, he set a hand upon the chain between the cuffs, and began hauling her to what should have been both of our dooms.

“You can’t... do you KNOW who I AM? I’ll burn you so badly, your children will be born BLACK.”

“Uh-huh.” he said, continuing to move her forcibly along the hall.

And, eventually, he asked me, “Kid, do you know any SHUT UP magic?”

“Slumber.” I cast, and she fell as though axed in the neck.

“Ah, yeah, that’ll do.” He slung her over the back of his neck, like a hunting quarry.

And so we marched off to what should have been certain death for both of us. Instead of a tribune, we got taken to a civilian justice. We were seated on long benches, as case after case dragged by. I eventually gave up, lay down on the bench, and drifted off to sleep.

Oh, Gods, justice is boring when evidence and testimony doesn’t matter.

The soldier wasn’t gentle in waking us, but why should he be? After all, we’d both gotten to sleep, a pleasure not afforded to him. He’d had to stay awake with his gnawing hunger.

As the proven and admitted instigator, I was questioned first. Turns out that under Daurian law, abusing a child is no reason for the child to abuse back.

“All right, show me this bruise.” the justice asked.

Incinerator Bei showed her wrist.

.....

“I cannot see where this grasp bruise begins and ends under the bruises you have inflicted resisting arrest. No injury, no assault, no crime. I find Ping of no family innocent. Now on to other matters...”

“I beg your pardon, your honor, but there is a relevant fact. All of these so-called abused children are apprentice mages.”

The eyes of the justice lit up. “Is this true, Ping?”

“Your honorable sir, it is, but...”

“Innocent!” he said. “It requires great will to become an adept, or greater. Physical and mental challenges are expected. Go whine to the other mages if you feel her tests are unfair or overly dangerous. Next case!”

Bei Lala looked at me, condescension in her eyes. “Special Training, outside, now.” she hissed.